Page 131 of All the way home

Nunya

Is it important

Egregiously

Why

I need you

For?

I just need you

A14

Code Orange

I’m on my way

It’s the last exchange that’s making it so hard to breathe.

I just need you.

Her whole life, Rena has needed Kieran. She needed him when they were so young she hardly remembers it, when he was the only one who could get her to calm down. She needed him to help her navigate the mess of elementary school and making friends and desperately needed him in junior high, when the girls around her discovered cruelty and she didn’t understand why. She’s needed him and needed him and he has never, not once, needed her back.

Even, apparently, during the biggest crisis of his life.

She can’t stop shivering, a bone-deep tremble.

He’s coming.

Then she puts her head in her hands.

She needs him for this more than she’s needed him for anything in her life.

The thing is, once Rena makes a decision on the inside, it’s impossible to function at all until she’s acted on it.

But she can’t do this here.

Not tonight.

For one thing, they’re going to be stuck together for however long they’re delayed, and then there’s a four-hour flight to consider, and it’s the holidays. It’s the holidays, and Lucas will be destroyed.

The years press against her, heavy fingerprints in bone marrow. Memories a slow bleed: the first school dance they’d gone to as a couple, where Rena had worn a shimmering lilac dress and felt as much like a princess as she ever had while Lucas pulled her close in a slow dance; sitting with his head in her lap out on the grass on lazy summer days; the way he always traces shapes into the curve of her palm while they watch movies.

Asking him big questions about the world, and morality, and life that he wouldn’t answer. The way her stomach turns to stone whenever he hugs her too tightly. The weeks stacked on weeks of saying yes to everything she hadn’t wanted to.

If you loved me it wouldn’t be a question.

Her hands shake.

What is she giving up?

An eternity could have passed by the time Kieran turns up, and Rena wouldn’t know.

At the sight of him, a wave of relief crashes into her, because—

Well, because it’s Kieran.