If I went up there, I was going to either introduce myself asHannah’s boyfriend and only make things difficult for her, or I was going to hurt this guy. Or both. So, I was talking myself out of committing aggravated assault when my phone began to ring.
“Hey Dol.” I pinched my eyes shut. “What’s up?”
“Tanner.” I could hear the frown in her voice. “Why did I just get a voicemail from Hannah saying she’s leaving and that she won’t need the apartment anymore this fall? She was saying something about going back home or back to him, I’m not really sure?—”
Suddenly I was sitting back in my truck, blinking up at the balcony through the clouded windshield. Hot tears burned with my confusion.
“Can I call you back?” I asked Dollie and she mumbled an okay, hung up, and then I was on autopilot.
Once I got back to the hill, my phone started buzzing again. The texts from her made me want to toss my phone into the gravel and run it over with my truck. She wanted to talk it out, but I couldn’t listen to her explain why she didn’t choose me. But then she calls me and keeps sayingyet. Asking if I’m just not ready to talkyetand I have to pull the phone away from my ear to regain my composure before I had to let her go. Let her leave.
One minute she was under my body with me buried inside of her, telling me she loved me. Then the next, she was going back to what she worked so hard to get away from.
Finding out Dollie was my grandmother was painful in its own right, but I had gained something with that revelation. This? In an instant, I had lost the two best things that had ever happened to me. My life hadn’t just tilted, it had been thrown on its back, the wind completely knocked from its lungs and left gasping for air, and sense, and well, Hannah. There wasn’t, and would never be, anyone else for me, but I guess there was always going to be someone else for her.
For weeks I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t understand. Icouldn’t sleep. I couldn’t answer her texts or calls. I couldn’t let her explain that she didn’t love me enough to stay. I knew it. I just couldn’t bear to hear the words from the same lips that kissed mine and confessed their love to me.
When she and Winnie came and found me at the farmer’s market, I almost begged her to stay. Almost dropped to my knees at her feet and begged. Winnie was wearing her Cubs shirt and Hannah was wearing an expression that broke my heart, but I couldn’t make sense of why.Shewas the one leaving. Not me. She was the one who decided to go back after everything.
I gave her the flowers I had saved just in case she did show up. The goodbye flowers. The last thing I could give her, and I just prayed if she wouldn’t accept my love, then she could at least take these.
But later when Hannah’s panicked eyes landed on me from across the street, I needed to go to her.
“Where is she?” I asked Gwen when I ran over.
“Lauren? She?—”
I shook my head. “No.Hannah. Is she okay? Where is she? She looked?—”
“She went with Rhett and Lauren to the hospital. Lauren is bleeding.”
“Tanner is my mom’s boyfriend.” I heard Winnie’s little voice tell Jackie and everyone went quiet. Jackie, Mayben and Gwen, all stared at me. “And they make out.”
Fuck. I wish we still did.
“I’m going to her,” I told Gwen. “Are you guys okay with Winnie?”
“They’re going to Marnmouth.” Jackie called out after me as I was already striding away.
I found her alone in the waiting room with those damn flowers I gave her. I contemplated whisking her away and tucking her back into my bed and telling Ethan to eat shit. Butinstead of saying anything, I just pulled her back into her place in my arms. Her curves fitting into their places against my body.
We sat there together for hours, pretending like weren’t completely brokenhearted. Pretend like we were just two friends catching up after a few busy weeks. All the while, she had clung to those damn flowers, plucking at the petals and picking at the stems.
Once Rhett gave us the update, I drove Hannah home and I couldn’t sit in the same car with her for a second longer. I couldn’t smell her perfume, or her hair. I couldn’t see her hands resting in her lap and not pull them into mine. My self-restraint was quickly dissipating, so I left her sitting there in her seat.
I found my mom, Taylor and Bailey finishing taking down the flower stand. Most of the other vendors were long gone, and from the look of it so were all of my flowers.
“How is she?” Mom asked.
I bobbed my head. “Good. Yeah, she’s okay. They’re keeping her for the night. Baby is okay.
“I have your dad at home making a casserole to drop off to them tomorrow,” she said. “But I meant Hannah. How is she? She looked rather devastated after that cold shoulder you gave her at the stand.”
My eyes darted from the empty flower buckets up to my mother who had that look in her eye. The one she would give me when I wasn’t giving her the whole truth.
“She’s fine.” I lied.
“So, things are over?”
