He swallowed hard. “Fine. I get it. And I wish I knew what to say. But I don’t, Aubs. I don’t know what Icansay, except that I hate myself and I hate what I’ve done and I hate the way you’re looking at me right now, and I’d do anything to change it.”
A corner of her mutilated heart lifted. She tried to command it into quiet, but it strained toward him, ignoring logic.“Anything?”
“Anything.”
The moment cracked around her. She wanted to throw up. Purge herself of the sharpness slicing at her insides, then army-crawl her way back to yesterday, when the future had lain before them, still. When she’d only had to apply pressure to ensure life followed the course she’d laid out for it. “Does ‘anything’ mean you’d still go to New York?”
He had never stood so motionless. “What?”
She stared him down. Her eyes ached from crying and someone had clearly pulled her stomach out through her throat, but somewhere amid all that destruction, an eternal candle flickered. Because she loved him. Still. Of course she did. What they had together didn’t just vanish with a single snip of the scissors.
No, once her rage cooled, she could find her way to forgiveness. Maybe. Probably.When life knocks you down, get right back up.
Because her dad had done this to them. He’d admitted as much without blinking, and she saw no better way to throw his deception in his face than to survive it. The effort would be hard and horrible and leave her with permanent scars, but that was life, wasn’t it? And she’d already decided Nick was worth it. Worth anything.
He only had to commit to this, body and soul. Fight for it as hard as she planned to.
“I’m not asking if you’d leave your kid.” Her voice warbled, but she ironed out the ripples. “You have a responsibility, I get that. But being a good dad doesn’t mean you have to marry Tansy. I mean, what if you did half your time in New York? Half your time here?”
He retreated a step. “What? What’re you talking about?”
“After I graduate, we could come back to Henderson, maybe.” Her voice stabilized.If life sticks you between a rock and a hard place, split the difference and aim straight down the middle.“I could teach, at least until your kid goes off to—”
Horror overtook his expression. “You don’t want to teach. You’ve never wanted to teach.”
“No, but—”
“You don’t want to teach,” he repeated, his tone laced with desperation. “And I can’t just... bounce back and forth between two places. I have to work. Find some way to pay for this whole new person. I... I don’t even understand what you’re saying.”
She clamped her teeth over her lip to keep from screaming. “No? Then what’s your solution?”
He looked stricken. “I don’t have one. There isn’t one, this time.”
“Nick. You said you’d do anything. Youjustsaid that. Four seconds ago.”
“Yeah.” He gazed up, agonized. “Anything except drag you down with me.”
Despite her earlier waterfall of tears, hot prickles stabbed at her eyes all over again. “What?”
He hesitated. The moment lifted and held, a sword primed to fall. His expression collapsed on itself. “I didn’t come here to beg, Aubs. I came here to tell you goodbye. And to say I’m sorry. And that I love you. I’ll love you for fucking ever, and I’ll never forgive myself, but I’m not going to rip away your dream because I turned out to be just like the asshole who raised me.”
She’d thought nothing could hurt worse than him proposing to Tansy Burroughs. And she’d been very, very wrong, because Nick might as well have leveled the words against her chest like a gun, then pulled the trigger.
She stared at the boy she loved, the one she would have taken herself apart for if only he’d let her. Anguish swam in his eyes, and hers must have cast back the same, amplifying his pain with her own, some logarithmic function that never ended. Animage flashed—of distorted funhouse mirrors, reflecting each other, duplicating heartbreak into eternity.
“There has to be a way,” she whispered. “Therehasto.”
Nick broke in that moment. She saw it. Felt it in her own bones. “There isn’t,” he said. “Not this time. I know you didn’t believe me before, but life doesn’t work that way.”
“Only if you don’tmakeit work that way.”
He shook his head and stepped back. Shadows curtained his face, but the darkness couldn’t cloak the glitter of grief coursing down his cheeks. “I can’t leave, Aubs. Not now. But I do love you. Forever. And I’m sorry. Sorrier than I have words for.”
She stood there and watched him go, too gutted to cry or call out or even move. Long after the yard had settled into stillness, she pulled the curtains shut, then stared at the fabric’s weft as if into an infinite distance, where that intolerable candle still glowed, the one she’d thought would light her way until the world went dark.
How long, she wondered—how manyyears—until it would finally burn itself out?
32.
