“I put an offer in that day. It was accepted,” he pauses briefly to shift me in his lap. “Sixty days after that, we were supposed to move in.”
Apollo died in the interim.
I glide my hand to his neck and then his shoulder.
“I tried to get out of the deal after he died, but Drake convinced me to move in.” He swallows. “He thought it was a good way to honor Pol’s memory, but every day I lived in this apartment felt like hell on earth.”
“I’m sorry.” I rest my head against his. “I can’t imagine how painful that must have been.”
His lips find my cheek for a soft kiss. “I tried to drown the pain. I drank too much at the bar across the street, and then I’d bring a woman home and…”
I don’t ask him to finish the sentence because I don’t want to hear about him and other women.
“I reached my breaking point one morning when I woke up next to a woman I didn’t know. I picked her up at the bar across the street the night before.”
I listen intently because I know that confessing this can’t be easy for him.
“She was going through my wallet.” He dips his chin. “She had a picture in her hand of Pol and me. We had taken it in one of those photo booths in Santa Monica when we went surfing about a year before he died.”
He’s quiet for a minute before he clears his throat. “I lost it. I told her to get out. I grabbed the picture. She held tight to it, and it ripped in two.”
I gasp.
His eyes linger on mine as if to reassure me that it’s all right. “I still have it taped together in my wallet.”
“Good,” I whisper.
“That picture represented something.” He shakes his head. “I don’t know how to explain it, but it was a day to end all days. It was one of the best days of my life.”
Tears well in the corners of my eyes. I feel his loss. My heart breaks because I know how devastated I would be if Drake died.
He reaches up to swipe a fingertip over my cheek to catch a tear. “I know you understand.”
I nod. “I think I do.”
He slides his hand to one of mine. Cradling it, he continues, “I hit a brick wall emotionally that day. I couldn’t take it anymore. I left Manhattan with Pol that afternoon, and I never looked back.”
My breath stalls as I take that in. Maybe I heard him wrong.
Pushing a piece of hair behind my ear, he looks into my eyes. “Pol was cremated. I took him home to California. My grandfather and I spread his ashes in the ocean. He loved to surf, so it’s what he would have wanted.”
A dark cloudhas settled over Manhattan again.
I stare out the window as rain beats against the glass. People on the sidewalk below are searching for cover. They want solace from the rainstorm.
It’s what Case wants too. He wants a break from the storm that has been raging inside of him for years.
I understand why California is home to him now.
His family is there. His grandfather and in a very important sense, his brother is too.
“You’re sure I can’t get you anything, Emma?”
I turn to watch him walk back into the living room. He put on sweatpants and grabbed a glass of water.
After he told me about Pol’s ashes, he kissed my cheek and told me he needed a minute.
I didn’t question him, even though all I wanted was to hold him forever.
