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My eyes narrow at him, trying to understand what he means. I’m pretty sure if Henry Cole had come back and professed his love for me when we were seventeen, I would have remembered.

Henry takes a measured breath before picking up our mugs, removing the tea bags, and placing them back down in front of us on the island. He’s now standing even closer.

“I knew I fucked up the moment I let you walk out of that hotel room. Even if I still kicked everyone else out, I shouldn’t have let you go. We should have talked about it that night. Trevor passed out almost immediately, and it wasn’t like I could text you with my phone in the shape it was in, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I reasoned that you wouldn’t have looked so wounded if you didn’t like me too, and it all felt so monumentally wrong, knowing that we might feel the same way about each other and not being able to finally, finally kiss you. Not in front of an audience like the game promised, but just you and me. The way it always should have been.

“So I wrote you a letter, used the entire pad of hotel stationery, to tell you everything. How I’d had a crush on you for as long as I could identify that feeling. How I wanted to be with you.”

“I never got a letter” is all I can say, placing my hands around the warm mug because I feel them shaking. I can’t tell if it’s residual cold from the weather or if it’s the sudden tilt of my whole worldview.

“I know. After I woke up and realized I was missing the interview, everything changed.” His fingers brush against mine, still gripped tightly around my mug. “Norah, why did you ruin NYU for me?” His eyes are desperate, pleading, and I feel it. This is the question that’s haunted him for the last nine years in the same way that him not kissing me has for me.

“I was humiliated. People who weren’t even on the trip were texting me all night about your rejection. Was it petty? Sure. But in that moment, I didn’t want to envision a future where we spent the next four years at college together. Why would I willingly subject myself to that when you’d made yourself abundantly clear, or so I thought. I still don’t think it was as big a deal as you made it out to be. Julia Schmidt interviewed at a Chicago alumni event and she got in.”

Henry’s head drops, his entire focus on the mug in front of him. “I needed that specific interview for my scholarship application. It was the only way I could even think about Mom being able to afford to send me there. It was my one shot.”

“I didn’t know.” I instantly hate seventeen-year-old me for making such a selfish decision. Kristine always shopped at Whole Foods. I never would have expected this.

“How could you have? I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know. Especially you.”

I feel the need to reassure him. “It wouldn’t have changed anything for me.”

“I didn’t trust that back then. Missing that interview, losing out on NYU, it changed the entire trajectory of my life.”

“I’m not trying to be dismissive here, but you ended up at UCLA. It worked out okay.”

Henry grips the bridge of his nose. “Norah, I cannot begin to describe how much I hate Los Angeles. I don’t even want to go there to visit unless I’m desperate. My buddy Nick can come to New York. I’m never going back to LA unless there’s a true crisis.”

I give him a small smile. “What did Kristine say about NYU? If it was such a big deal, I feel like our moms would have conspired and I would have been grounded for the rest of my life.”

Henry runs his hand up and down the back of his neck, an almost grimace on his face. “I never told her. She was in Milwaukee when we were on the trip, helping my great-aunt recover from hip surgery, and by the time she got home—” He lets out a huff of air. He doesn’t want to finish that sentence. “By the time she got home, it didn’t matter anymore.”

By the time Kristine got home, we’d already lost my dad.

I feel sick. I’ve spent the last nine years holding on to so much anger and hurt about everything and I had no idea the pain he was carrying too. I reach for him, my fingers drawn like magnets to his cheek. He leans into my hand, letting out a slow exhale through his nose.

“You must have hated me,” I say finally.

“I can assure you I have never hated you. I’ve come close. I’ve been furious with you, resented you, felt hurt and betrayed by you, but then David died and none of that mattered. That day, you told me you could never forgive me. When I dropped you and Hannah off with your mom, you told me you never wanted to talk to me or think about me ever again. So I thought, if you need me to be the bad guy, I’ll do that for you. If you need someone to blame, you can blame me. You need me to be an asshole to you so you can feel justified in doing it right back? I’m your guy. I already felt half responsible for your feelings, so I just embraced it.”

Henry softens immediately, making it clear that I’m not hiding my emotions well. The confusion, the ache on his behalf must have been painted right across my face.

“Hey,” he says gently, running the pad of his thumb across my cheek, “don’t look at me that way. I get it. This was the only thing I could think of at the time after all the damage I’d already caused. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for you, Norah. You asked me to get out of your life. I had to oblige.”

His hand falls from my face and I immediately want it back, but he runs all ten fingers through his hair. “When you asked me about relationships back at the B&B, I meant what I said. There hadn’t been anyone important in a long time, Norah, I swear. I’ve only been in love twice in my life, and both times were with you.”

I look at him, and he holds my gaze, his eyes the clearest blue.

Henry loved me then, and he loves me now. My head is buzzing. He loves you. He loves you. He’s in love with you. It circles through my head on a loop.

I’ve been in love with you my whole life. I know that to be true in my core. I open my mouth to say it, but the words constrict in my throat.

“So are there any more loose ends or existential questions you need resolved, or can I kiss you?”

“I dare you,” I say with a smirk.

His hands cup my face, thumbs grazing my jaw, the rest of his fingers dancing in my messy curls. “Finally.”

Chapter 18