He shakes his head slowly. “I wasn’t enough. I didn’t protect her like I should have. I was naive enough to think things would blow over and it wouldn’t matter once it was found out. But I was so fucking wrong.”
His voice drifts as he closes his eyes. Shame spreads across his features. I steady my palm on his cheek, my stomach sinking at the anguish in his eyes. His sorrow makes my chest hurt. It reminds me of the sunrise and every time I’ve screamed when no one could hear me, hoping like hell a hand might reach out of the dark to tell me it’s okay.
I wonder if this is what I look like on the jetty—if this is the face I make when I think I’m alone.
“Are you scared?” I ask. “Of reliving that pain again, I mean.”
“I’m terrified of not being enough, of failing and someone else getting hurt.”
“That’s why you left me last night,” I realize.
He nods. “Last night, I thought it was the thing I’d run from, and it scared the hell out of me.”
I don’t know why it sounds like he’s talking about something I can’t see.
I shift in his grasp and try to smile in the hopes that it’ll cut through this thick air. “I don’t think there’s anything on the island that’s going to hurt us,” I say nervously. “I mean… there have been bear sightings. But they’re just black bears, and unless you really piss them off, they just run away. Oh, and occasionally an alligator. That’s always weird.”
His lips curve, eyes lightening, and I swipe my thumb across his dimple.
“Thank you,” he whispers.
“For what?”
“For not running when you see my pain. Sometimes I can’t help the haunt.”
My chest constricts looking at him. “Sometimes I can’t either.”
“What do you do when you feel it?” he asks.
A heavy sigh leaves me, chest suddenly feeling as if a brick is sitting on it. It took him all of three minutes to get me to this place, to the verge of letting go of the wall I’ve built this last year. The wall that crumbles some days and stays erected the next.
He has a chisel to it.
“I remind myself that grief and pain… it isn’t linear. It isn’t a straight and narrow line that eventually disappears. It bobs and weaves and hits you at the most random moments. It punchesyou in the gut with a photo, a sunrise, or a song. No matter if it’s for a person, a feeling, yourself, or the life you thought you’d have. It beats you until you beg it to stop, and while it might for a while, it just comes back. Over and over and over, and just when you think you’re past it, something triggers it again. And then you wonder… You wonder how the hell you’re supposed to move on tomorrow with this empty place in your soul and nothing that can ever take its place.”
A tear drops down my cheek, and Nick catches it. Memory hits me as the cool pad of his thumb swipes over my skin. The feeling weakens my knees and swerves through my veins.
I’ve felt that before.
This morning.
Nick’s eyes close as he rests his forehead against mine. I blow out a breath and try to steady my pounding heart.
“You don’t think the emptiness can be fixed?” he asks.
“Numbness never truly fixed anyone.”
Even if it felt like it did at the time.
Even if it feltso fucking goodnot to hear it, not to see it, not to relive it. Not to have it replaying again and again on an endless loop while someone told you everything would be okay.
It isn’t.
Nick kisses my forehead before hugging his arms around me. I nearly collapse into his embrace, hugging him as tightly as he’s holding me.
I wonder how badly we both needed this.
“One day, I hope you can tell me what happened to you,” he whispers.
