“Stop it!” I hold a hand to my chest. “That’s the sweetest thing.”
“Yeah, she’s pretty sweet,” he agrees, his mind lost in thought, his eyebrows dropping slowly. “I just remember… every one of my stories was old people. I didn’t quite grasp the idea that death could happen to anyone, anytime. And of course, they were ludicrous stories, like a guy who traveled back in time and was eaten by dinosaurs.”
A giggle bursts out of me, but Holden doesn’t react, too lost in his memories.
“But this one time—I think it was right before I started first grade—I asked her why, if God accepted everyone, there was a gate to enter heaven and why it was ever closed. I realize now, regardless of my religious beliefs, that evil exists in this world, and there’s nothing you can do about it. But for me, as a kid, evil meant villains in Marvel movies and comic books. I didn’t realize it was real life…” He drops his chin, his eyes leveling mine. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”
It’s immediate—the way he pulls my raw emotions from me, flips them upside down. Through the ache in my chest, I tell him, “You can’t let my childhood take away from yours, Holden.” I pause a beat. “What did your grandma say when you asked her?”
After a sharp inhale, he sits taller. “She said that sometimes life ends too quickly and that some things are left unresolved. So, to save people from purgatory, they had the opportunity to ask God one thing. It could be forgiveness, or it could be a question, or anything, really.” He faces me again. “What would your question be?”
I mull it over a long moment, my breaths becoming shorter with each passing second. Finally, I blink back the tears before replying, “I’d ask if He knew my mother.”
Holden nods as if he knew my answer before I said the words aloud.
“What would yours be?” I ask.
He sniffs once, his eyes red and raw as he stares ahead. Seconds pass, turn into minutes. I don’t take my eyes off him. “I would ask why he made it so easy to fall in love…” His gaze lands on mine, unwavering. “But almost impossible to fall out of it.”
It rains. And not the kind of rain that comes slowly in droplets and showers. No. It buckets down. “Sorry! I should’ve checked the weather!” Holden shouts over the noise of thunder clapping and large drops hitting the metal of his truck.
It’s pure darkness out, the rain killing the torches’ flames almost instantly.
We’d lain down to sleep less than an hour ago, and now I’m scrounging around for my phone amidst all the blankets. “It’s okay! I should probably head back, anyway! My ride will be here in a few hours!”
Besides, it would’ve been impossible for me to get any sleep while wrapped in his arms. It was far too tempting to cross the line—a line I’m now positive can no longer be crossed. Because he didn’t say it was impossible to fall out of love. He said almost. And almost is the single most heartbreaking word in the English dictionary. Almost leaves no room for questions. For hope.
He finds his phone only seconds before I find mine, and he uses what little light it emits to guide us through the sheets of water and out of the truck. “The blankets!” I yell.
“Leave them!” he shouts back, running to open my door. I slip inside, wiping the wetness from my face, my hair. In the seconds since it started pouring down, I’ve somehow managed to get drenched all over again.
Holden slides into the driver’s seat, his hands on the wheel as he shakes out his hair, spraying droplets all over me.
“Holden!”
“Sorry,” he laughs out. He’s not sorry at all.
It takes all of two minutes to get back to the main driveway, and he parks his truck beside my RV, leaving the engine running as he turns to me. He opens his mouth to speak, but I beat him to it. “Thank you for tonight,” I tell him. “You got your wish.”
He exhales a breath, his chest deflating. “And what’s my wish?”
I take him in, one last time—green-green eyes that give nothing away and lips I could spend my entire life kissing. A droplet of water streaks down from his hairline, past his temple, hangs at his jaw, where it clings to the few days’ worth of growth. I reach over, swipe it away with my thumb like he’s done with all the tears I’ve shed in front of him. “You’ve always made me happy, Holden. Always.”
I get out of the truck and close the door behind me because no other words need to be shared between us. If nothing else comes from my time here, he needs to know that one thing. It was never him who pushed me to leave or pushed me away. He was the only thing that could ever make me stay. I already have my fingers on the RV door when I hear the truck door open and close. “Jamie!” he calls out, and I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to say goodbye. Heated tears mix with the icy rain, and I try to force my features in line. I don’t want him to see me cry. I don’t want him to know how much this is hurting, how much it’s ruining me. I’m happy. I need to be. For him.
“Jamie,” he says again, his grasp on my hip begging me to turn to him. The second I do, I’m in his embrace, his arms around my neck, hand on the back of my head to hold me in place.
Rain falls like a torrent all around us, but I don’t feel a drop when he holds me like this. I just feel him. Covering me. Protecting me. He sniffs a few times, his chest jerking forward against my cheek. “I always thought it would be so much easier if you’d just said goodbye.” He wipes his eyes along my shoulder, soaking his tears into me. “It’s not, is it?”
I shake my head against his chest.
For seconds, we hold each other, my arms around his torso, my hands gripping the back of his shirt. I don’t want to let go, but I know I have to, and when he pulls back, I reluctantly release him. He kisses my forehead but doesn’t force me to look at him. “Take care of yourself, okay?”
I nod at the ground, and then he reaches around me, opening my door. I don’t look back as I step inside, close the door between us. I lock it, then lean my back against it, unable to catch my breath. I hear his car door close and then nothing.
And I wish I wasn’t hoping that he’d stay. That he’d ask me to do the same. Because he said almost. I heard the word.
He’s not in love with you, Jamie.
The truck starts, and I choke on a breath, my tears flowing fast and free. And when his headlights illuminate the darkness around me, casting light through all the cracked pieces of me, I can no longer stand, my legs too weak to hold me up. I slide down the door until my ass hits the floor, and I cry into my hands, cursing at the world for all my almosts.
28
Jamie
The rain doesn’t let up, and I don’t sleep. I simply watch the minutes turn to hours until my car to the airport arrives. I’d pre-booked the ride only moments after my decision to leave, and it took an entire day for anyone to accept it. Made sense, considering I was asking to be picked up in the middle of nowhere at six in the morning.
My driver, Paul, is a man in his mid-fifties with long, salt and pepper hair so wild it looks like he stuck a fork in an outlet. But beneath his handlebar mustache, I can tell that his smile is kind, similar to Miss Sandra’s from the diner. “I got it, sweetheart,” he shouts, his shoulder hunched, head down to avoid the heavy rain pouring down on us.