“Well, Evan never buried anything,” I snap, knowing I’m losing ground the more Liam’s logic teases out. “You’ve just unearthed things I never asked for.”
“Only your vitality,” Liam says. “Only something you love and arereally fucking good atthat’s also vital to your whole personality as I know it.”
I sputter. “Can you even see how unhealthy that is? That if you wrap up your whole being into one thing, if you lose it, you’ll be—”
Nothing.
My eyes flick to his cast before I can resist the urge. Liam notices.
“At least I never lied to myself,” he murmurs, “about how much it meant to me.”
I swallow. “There is a difference between lying to myself and protecting myself.”
Liam pockets his phone and rubs his hand over his eyes. He gazes out at the park, then focuses back on me. “When you first played me ‘The Pitcher,’ it felt like you were gifting me something. A little piece of your heart that sewed itself to mine. And it was like—” Again, he looks over my head. “Like you made something that was as much for me as it was for you.”
I nod my agreement, terrified where he’s going with this.
“The act—the act ofsharingit,” he chokes out. “It bonded us. That song made me feel connected to my own life and all the people in it in a way I couldn’t have ever processed or experienced on my own.”
I sob into my hands, conflicted beyond measure.
“You have to keep sharing it, Paige. It’d be a crime to cut yourself off from the possibility of giving other people the same feeling your music gave me.”
It comes to me then, what might be the biggest difference between me and Liam.
His passion was selfless. Half of Liam’s own enjoyment of the game of baseball came from other people’s love for it.
Mypassion is stingy and narrow and ungenerous. I coddle it, obsess over it, suffocate it. I’ll give it a small gasp of oxygen and then lock it in a dark room.
To protect it,I reason with myself.Letting other people have a piece of my heart will warp the passion out of it, surely it will.
My gaze flashes back to his sling.
Liam can’t grasp that I have the capability to do something but won’t, and I can’t understand why he didn’t protect himself when he still had the chance.
“Stop looking at my arm like it’s a metaphor, Paige.”
“How could itnotbe? Your dreams faltered, so you turned your focus on me.”
“I applied you for this programweeksago and just got the news of your acceptance yesterday.”
My gaze shoots up to him, eyes narrowing. “So even when you thought you’d get drafted, you were going to send me away?”
“Send you—?” Liam makes a choked noise, tearing at his hair. “I understand you have a history of codependency, Paige. I’ve always known this. But I’m trying to show you there’s a healthier way to be in love.”
“What’s healthy about deceit?” I ask.
“I wish it had never come to that,” Liam admits. “But I can’t give you up, and I can’t let your life revolve around mine either.”
He doesn’t want me to be like his mom: purposeless without his dad.
I hate how much sense it makes.
I hate that Liam won’t just let it happen anyway.
“The whole fucking sky, Paige.” He looks at me sadly, his voice in mourning. “I wish I could show you what you are from my eyes.”
I push my thumbs to the bridge of my nose. My heart feels like it’s being fisted. “I’m scared,” I cry softly. “Nobody has ever treated me like you treat me. I’m afraid of the me that you see. Most of all I’m afraid she’s a sham, and it’s everyone else who got it right. I’ve always followed other people’s lead, and if I stop doing that, I’ll be this whole other person I’m not even sure I want to be.”
