“I’m fine, Cody,” she adds quietly. “Karma’s leveling the field. I did worse than what I’m getting.”
A tightness settles in my chest. She doesn’t show this side often. Whenever I get a glimpse of this resigned girl, I’m fucking reeling. She believes she deserves all the suffering life has in store. She takes it, not even trying to draw a line between the person she was and the person she’s become.
“What are you doing, B?” I ask, feeling her tremble. “You want to be miserable for the rest of your life? Live in the past? Never move forward?”
She’s silently drawing a pattern on my chest, her whole body pulling taut the longer she’s lost in her head. I don’t realize she’s crying until the first tear puddles my chest. She swats it away, inhaling a shaky breath.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” she whispers, her voice full of self-inflicted torment. “I can’t.”
“No, you can’t. You can’t change what you did, but you can admit you were wrong. You can apologize and forgive yourself for not knowing things before you learned them.”
She burrows further into me, gripping the sheets and wrenching like she’s trying to transfer the pain ripping her apart. “I don’t deserve forgiveness. I haven’t done anything to deserve it.”
I gently nudge her onto her back, propping myself over her as I cradle her face in both hands, looking down into those tearful blue eyes. “You’ve done two of those things, B. You admitted you were wrong. You apologized to me and you tried apologizing to Mia. It’s my fault you never had the chance. I’m sorry for that.”
“Don’t be. I wouldn’t let me apologize, either.”
“Stop,” I whisper, brushing her tears away. “Stop punishing yourself. You’ve grown. You learned. You’re a better person than you were back then.”
She shakes her head, eyes closed to block my words, but both hands hold onto my t-shirt as if I might disappear.
“You told me about the bullying. You told me about your life. You haven’t made a single excuse, but I know...” I dip my head, pressing my forehead to hers as a pained sob rips from her chest, making mine swell. “I know you weren’t cruel for the sake of being cruel, baby. Why can’t you see that? It was a defense mechanism against your own hurt.”
“That doesn’t make it okay! The reasons don’t matter!” she chokes, moving her hands to my neck and threading her fingers into my hair. “I didn’t know I was projecting until I was older.”
“Exactly.” I drop a gentle kiss on her forehead. “And when you realized, you stopped. You learned. I said a lot of shitty things to you, B, but you forgave me, didn’t you?”
She slowly opens her eyes when I rise on one elbow, tucking her back. “There was nothing to forgive. I never blamed you, Cody. I know you’re a good person, and I—”
I press a finger against her lips before she says she deserves to be hated, hurt, and cast aside. She keeps saying that and it’s not true. No one who so blatantly admits their mistakes deserves to be judged solely on those mistakes.
People are the best defense lawyers for their own mistakes and the harshest judges of the mistakes of others.
Blair’s the opposite. She’s her own judge, jury, and executioner. She ruled herself guilty. A life sentence of sabotaging her happiness. Even though she doesn’t believe she deserves anything good, she’s not just waiting out her time. She’s growing as a person. Learning how to be better.
“You see good in me, but not in yourself? This is where you go wrong. You think your feelings, past, and everythingyouendured doesn’t carry any weight? That none of it left a mark?” I ask, trying to show her she’s being too hard on herself. “You’re not a bad person. You’re aware of the wrongs. You think you’re inflicting justifiable punishment on yourself, but you’re taking it too far.” I kiss her forehead, then flip her so my chest is flush against her back. “Enough, baby. Time to take a step forward.”
She says nothing else, but we’re both wide awake. The delicate aromas of the mango in her body lotion and coconut shampoo waft the room, keeping me eerily calm. I hope her scent will soak my sheets and pillows. And more than anything, I hope she’ll still be here in the morning.
TWENTY-FOUR
Blair
AKNOCK ON MY DOOR makes me jump off the stool, crossing the room faster than I usually move at this hour. It’s barely past six, but I’m nursing my second coffee, already showered and dressed.
I haven’t slept much. I’ve been replaying everything Cody said last night, the sincerity in his voice, the soothing delicacy of his touch. He really believes I deserve another chance.
He’s got a heart as big as Mia’s.
I almost let it slip that, in a moment of unexplainable courage, I visited Nico’s house three days after the graduation party, when they’d returned from Europe, and apologized to Mia.
I can thank Cody for that courage, but I don’t want him to know what I did. He might take it the wrong way... he might think I did it because I want more from him than we agreed.
I do, but that’s not why I faced the man made of pure wrath—Mia’s fiancé.
It was what Cody told me the day after the graduation party that ignited my new sense of courage and helped me knock on Nico’s door.
“You’re letting your mistakes define you, B. Use them to guide you.”
