“You need help?” she asked.
“No.” He smiled at her in a way that looked affectionate. But what the fuck did I know about romance right now? “Thanks for calling me first.”
I stumbled onto my feet before giving in and leaning against him. “You let her leave, hockey star?”
I choked on a sob. “I thought we could have everything. For a few minutes, I thought she could have my baby and we’d be okay. We wouldn’t let each other sacrifice for us, but for the baby, we would have had to, right?”
Jace stopped moving and stared down at me. I lifted my head to look at him. All three of him.
“Is Sophia pregnant?” he asked.
“No.” My eyes filled with tears again. “But I really wish she was because then I’d be with her right now. I just want to be with her.”
Jace sighed. “Come on, let’s get you into bed.”
“Okay,” I said, my stomach doing somersaults up my throat as the floor moved up and down beneath me. “Can we just stop at the bathroom? I’m pretty sure I’m about to boot.”
Jace chuckled before stopping in the bar’s back hallway where he gently nudged me inside the bathroom. I did what I needed to do and when I opened the door and saw his sympathetic face, I broke down again. He pulled me against his chest, letting me cry until I was able to move my feet again. He walked me up the stairs and tucked me into his bed where I drifted off to memories of Sophia’s smiling face and her red-stained nose against a backdrop of snow.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sophia
Right foot.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Left foot.
I’d get off this plane the same way I got on: focused on my feet, never looking back, never thinking about if Leo would follow me or what his face would look like as I walked away. I moved straight to the arrival gate where my parents would be waiting. I’d made this trip home so many times now that I knew this airport like the back of my hand. There was no reason to look up to meander through the advertisements meant for the tourists or the shops boasting about authentic Hawaiian macadamia nuts. All I needed to do was keep my head down until I got in my mom’s car.
I walked past baggage claim with my single carry-on—I’d shipped my stuff home earlier in the week—and stepped into the warm, Hawaiianair, breathing in the smell of hibiscus and feeling that familiar sense of calm wash over me. I looked around and saw Mom and Dad standing at his car, looking excited to see me.
The minute I saw them some subconscious part of me must have realized it was safe to let go, to stop pushing aside all the tears and the anguish that I’d let build up during the flight, filling my body with so much pressure I was like a soda bottle about to burst.
“Welcome home, Soph,” Dad said, stepping forward to hug me. His arms wrapped around my shoulders and I broke down like I had when I’d lost my first tooth and was momentarily certain all my teeth would follow suit, and like I had when he’d picked me up from a middle school dance after I’d seen my crush making out with someone else in the parking lot.
Only this time, I couldn’t even hear his soothing words. I knew my dad, he must have been saying them, but my sobs were too loud. Not that it mattered what he said. Nothing would make this hurt less.
Mom must have stepped in behind me because I felt one of her arms loop around my waist from the back as she stroked my hair. “Let’s get you in the car, sweetie,” she said, letting go.
I released Dad and he stepped to the side, opening the door to the back seat where I saw Kennedy sitting, iced latte in her hand.
“Surprise,” she said sadly before sliding across the seat and hugging me as my parents and I got into the car.
“How did you do it?” I choked out between sobs, squeezing her shoulders as I collapsed against her. I was running out of energy to stay upright. “How did you get on a plane and leave Dad behind?”
She kissed my cheek. “It was the biggest mistake of my life, Sophia, and it nearly killed me.”
She finally let go and I lifted my head to see my parents facing me over the center console. My dad reached for Kennedy’s knee the way healways tried to soothe her when she felt the pain of her past decisions. I leaned against the window and wiped my eyes, chest heaving. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to breathe normally again. “I think I just made the biggest mistake of my life,” I said, closing my eyes.
I was basically azombie who lived in my dad’s pool house. Elena had all but moved in with me for the last few days and I could tell she didn’t think I should be here but she kept her opinions to herself for once. She must have sensed that sharing her opinion would cause me to crumble further because instead, she crawled into bed and watched romcoms with me, picking up takeout or bringing me meals prepared by one of our fathers. She hadn’t even complained when I’d spent the better part of an entire day listening to “Timezone”by Måneskin. She’d simply let me cry over the two people in the song who were apart only because of distance as she rubbed my back. Her usual reluctance to be around people displaying any sign of emotions had evaporated in my time of need but I was too out of it to thank her.
I left the pool house occasionally—there wasn’t a bathroom in there—and I’d found that I could be miserable and ignore everyone next to the pool just as easily as in the pool house. At least when I was in a lounge chair by the pool I could feel the vitamin D soaking into my skin, a feeling that had been nonexistent in Boston.
Five days passed like that, operating as a shell of myself, wondering how long it would take for the pain to become bearable enough that I could function. I spent a lot of hours in bed, typing on my computer. One thing the absolute shattering of my heart had done was made me want to preserve every minute with Leo in my memory, and whenever I was alone I wrote down every memory as vividly as I could recall it.
