What The Heart Learns

by Gadziala, Jessica

  "When you say - or write - mean things, hurting someone is always your intention. Otherwise, you wouldn't say - or write - it."

  "You're not wrong," he agreed, exhaling. "I never would have said that to the face of any author."

  "I shouldn't have come here," she murmured again, sounding deflated, sad.

  "Stop saying that." His voice was raw, vulnerable. And for someone who hated being those things, he genuinely didn't care that he was. With her.

  "It's true. As if the situation wasn't fucked up enough already, now I've slept with you."

  "Hey," he said, hurt, moving to stand, closing the space between them in a few strides, snagging her chin, dragging it up. "You can't honestly tell me that you regret this. With us."

  "There is no us."

  Ugh.

  He couldn't have anticipated that hurting as much as it did.

  But the fact of the matter was, this wasn't just a fling to him anymore. He wanted more. He wanted a chance at what Eric and Lena had. What James and Emily had. What Sam and Anna had.

  He wanted something serious.

  He wanted to wake up with her every morning, make her breakfast, watch her work on her laptop, come home to her reading in bed, make dinner, talk books in bed, have sex, sleep in each other's arms.

  He wanted that.

  In a more permanent kind of way.

  It was excruciating to hear her say she wished it never happened, that she didn't have all those book talks, all those meals, all the kisses and touches and even the disagreements and frustration.

  He cherished it all.

  And she wished they had never experienced it.

  And that she didn't want any more of it, any more of him.

  That didn't just hurt; it gutted him.

  "There could be," he tried, not caring if he was sounding desperate.

  "There could be what?"

  "Us. There could be an us. If we can get past this. Obviously, you got past it for a while. Otherwise you never would have let me put my hands on you. We could move on. Start over with everything on the table for a change."

  "Don't do this."

  "Do what?"

  "Make this harder."

  "Make what harder?"

  "Me leaving. It's hard already, despite all this review crap. Don't make it harder telling me possibilities that don't really exist."

  "They exist. You're just putting blinders on to them."

  "I'm being realistic."

  "That's not a cap you wear well, and you know it."

  "It's your cap. But since you refuse to put it on, I have to."

  "You could stay. See what it would be like now that all the cards are on the table."

  "My life is in the city, Liam. I think it is time I get back to it. And I know what would happen here if we were in some romance would be that you go all over-the-top-alpha on me. But this isn't a romance. You're not a pushy, braindead alpha, and I am not a spineless girl who gets talked out of her own mind. Don't try to reduce us to stereotypes. Just accept this. Be glad for what we had, but accept it, and move on."

  What little heart he had shriveled, dried, and turned to ash in his chest.

  His hand fell from her face.

  His body moved back a step, turned, and walked to the door.

  She didn't call him back.

  She didn't change her mind.

  She had chosen her path.

  She expected him to respect her choice.

  His feet felt weighted with lead as he made his way down the stairs.

  People spoke to him, but his ears were deaf to it.

  He went back across town, closing his shop, grabbing an entire shelf of books, and making his way into his apartment.

  He didn't plan to reemerge.

  He planned to fall into his books, fall into other worlds.

  Not the ones with happily-ever-afters.

  No.

  The ugly ones.

  Where nobody wins.

  Where nobody comes out on top, gets to know happiness.

  That felt more true to reality.

  He stayed there, day in and day out, not opening the shop, not going shopping. Not even when he ran out of the healthy stuff he liked to eat, choosing instead to eat the cookies and chips and boxed macaroni and cheese that he had gotten for her.

  He didn't think about his brother, his sort-of friends, Maude who had likely slammed on the door to the bookstore day in and day out.

  He just wanted to disappear.

  He wanted to forget reality.

  Because in his reality, she was gone.

  And he didn't want to be there anymore.

  He didn't want the pain there.

  So he stayed away from it.

  Avoidance was maybe not what a therapist would consider healthy.

  But it kept him from doing something crazy.

  Like drive to the city and beg her to come back.

  She'd made up her mind.

  She'd given him her answer.

  He had to respect that.

  Even if it was killing him.

  THIRTEEN

  Riley

  Her apartment felt more empty than it had when she'd left.

  As maybe sad as it was to admit, in the past, her overflowing bookshelves had been all the fulfillment she thought she needed. Nothing was more full than a room lined in paperbacks.

  They were whole worlds in each one, after all.

  What could be more filling than that?

  But she found herself viewing things differently.

  The fridge that had always been empty save for condiments, creamer, and a pint or two of ice cream in the fridge felt sad, pathetic even. After seeing a rainbow of freshness nestled in Liam's fridge.

  Her space was too neat.

  There were no books laying around out of place, no sweaters hanging off of chairs, no piles of mail or paperwork sitting on the table. Mostly because she didn't have a table. She ate on the couch with a book propped open on the arm.

  She would play her iPod in the dock in her bedroom while she showered.

  But that was the only noise in her life day in and day out.

  Unless the neighbors counted.

  Neighbors whose names, professions, voices she didn't even know.

  Had she really enjoyed that? Being no one to anybody?

  "What's with the doom and gloom, Ry?" her sister asked, walking around the apartment to dip her finger into the soil of each plant to test if they needed water again while she held her daughter on her hip, her fat fingers tugging on her giant beaded necklace.

  "This is a weird way to live," she admitted, shaking her head.

  "What is?"

  "Living in an apartment all alone. Rarely going out. Not having any close friends. Not knowing the names of your neighbors."

  "Ry, if they know your name, they might want to stop over and chat sometime."

  "Would that be so bad?"

  "Christ, Ry... what if they're like meth dealers? Or, worse yet, those people who like to force their religion down your throat?"

  "But how do you know unless you open up a dialogue?"

  "Are you feeling alright?" Ronni asked, head cocked to the side while her daughter attempted to strangle her with her own necklace. "You're pale."

  "I didn't get much sleep last night. It was a long drive. And then I was having trouble readjusting to the noise here."

  "Funny. I have trouble sleeping when I leave the city. All that quiet. It's unsettling. I swear I am about to become an episode of Forensic Files. You ever notice how all those cases are in those backwoods, sleepy kinds of places?"

  "There were no killers in Stars Landing."

  "Sure. That's what everyone thinks. Until someone finds a decapitated head in the local river."

  Glad for a moment of levity in what felt like a deep pit of unhappiness, Riley let out a snort-laugh that had her sister smiling.

  "So, what are we having? Chinese? Pizza? That greasy Mexican place you love?"

>   "I was thinking about throwing together a stir-fry," Riley said instead.

  "Wait... what?" Ronni asked, brows drawing low. "I think I must have misheard you."

  "I'll have to hit the market first."

  "Okay. What do they put in the water in Stars Landing? Because the only explanation for this is some kind of drug. Are you pupils dilated?"

  Riley smiled a bit at that. "I spent time around people who liked to cook there. I guess it rubbed off on me."

  "What do you plan to put in this stir-fry of yours? Chicken, rice, and a few little slivers of broccoli?"

  "I was thinking no meat, rice obviously, broccoli, peppers, celery, green beans, kale, and carrots."

  "You hate carrots."

  "I've grown to hate them less."

  "So... we are actually going to leave your apartment, go to a market, select a cart full of vegetables, and you are going to cook me dinner?"

  "Try not to sound so shocked," Riley told her, shaking her head. "I can do more than order from a menu."

  Hopefully.

  Sure, she had watched Liam cook a lot. Had helped slice things up. But she hadn't actually done any of the cooking herself. She was crossing her fingers and toes that she could pull it off at least a little bit. Enough to make something they could both choke down. Enough that it wouldn't poison her little niece if she shared some too.

  A few hours later, Ronni was helping clear the plates, her niece asleep on the couch pillows piled on the floor. "This was amazing. We should do this more often."

  "We should," Riley agreed, but the words were empty. Not because she didn't think they should, but because she knew they wouldn't.

  It was the same way you said We should get together some time when you ran into some old acquaintance when both of you knew that it was never going to happen.

  The fact of the matter was, Ronni was often busy. With a husband, a first-grader, and a baby, and about a million events on her calendar, despite living in the same city, they maybe saw each other three or four times a year aside from holidays.

  They talked on the phone, but the face-to-face interactions were few and far between.

  Riley had a more steady relationship with the Chinese takeout delivery man than she did with most of her family.

  And as her sister picked up her sleeping niece to head downstairs to meet her husband and head home, Riley realized just how empty her apartment really was.

  How empty her life really was.

  The loneliness was a black hole inside, sucking her in little bit by little bit.

  She reached for books, but couldn't seem to concentrate on the words.

  She tried to sleep, but all she could do was think about how empty her bed felt, how much she missed hands on her skin, a warm body below her, around her.

  She missed him.

  She missed him and she hated herself a little bit for that weakness.

  The ride back to the city had given her nothing but time to think. About the things he had said, about the possibility of them being true.

  But, in her heart, she couldn't disconnect herself from her work. She couldn't shrug off his reviews, his words. Even if she had noticed all of them had disappeared sometime between her leaving Stars Landing and returning home.

  Not that she needed them there. She knew them all by heart.

  All except the last one.

  She hadn't gotten the chance to study that one, commit it to memory, let it eat her alive like the previous two had.

  Maybe it was for the best that way.

  Unable to do anything else, she drank coffee that tasted crappy in comparison to what she had in Stars Landing, sitting on her couch, looking out at the city that never slept, and thinking.

  About what he said.

  About her work.

  She had started another historical fiction story a few weeks before, really just getting down the first few pages before stopping, deciding she needed to sit and plot things out before she got too far into the story.

  But she couldn't fight off the insecurity Liam's words sent through her.

  Was she just a copy of a copy?

  Was she just some vague, pathetic facsimile of one of the greats?

  Was her voice just an echo of theirs?

  He hadn't been wrong about thinking that historical fiction was what she was supposed to write. It was literary. People respected it.

  And she had wanted that, respect.

  She wanted those people "In the know" to know about her, her work, to think she was the next big thing.

  She wanted not just to be published, to follow her dream, but to be at the top of her game, at the top of her category, at the top of the literary world.

  But was it what she genuinely wanted to write?

  If she thought nothing of accolades or money, if she only wrote what she was truly passionate about, would she be working in the genre she was working in?

  Even without sitting on it, mulling it over, really giving it some thought, she knew the answer.

  No.

  Absolutely not.

  She wanted what Liam had suggested.

  She wanted to build entire worlds.

  She wanted to create universes, dimensions, magical systems, customs for different species.

  She wanted to make people fall in love with green aliens, root for creatures with tentacles and their heart in their feet. She wanted to create heroes who could command the weather with a flick of a hand, and heroines who could wield a sword. She wanted to give them sidekicks who snarked and gave the story color, and pets that looked like talking beavers or octopi. Or a combination of the two.

  The choices would be endless.

  She could let her imagination run wild.

  Without even thinking of things like timelines or outlines or exhaustive research, she grabbed her laptop, opened a brand new document without even thinking of a title for it - when in the past, she spent weeks on that before she put a single word to paper - and she wrote.

  She wrote until her eyes were so swollen that she didn't have a choice but to throw her laptop on the charger and head to bed.

  She woke up late the next afternoon, chugging coffee while she scrambled eggs that came out a bit burnt, but were edible with a little cheese.

  And then, before obsessively checking Amazon or Goodreads, without even updating her social media like any responsible sort-of public figure, she opened her file and kept writing, annoyed at times when her fingers wouldn't move as fast as her brain would, making her wonder if she should attempt to learn how to use dictation software. But the idea of stopping to learn how to use it filled her with impatience.

  She'd been in the 'flow' when she had written before, lost in the world, not even aware of the words hitting the screen, just a vessel for the worlds to be brought forth through.

  But this felt different.

  This felt vital, necessary.

  It felt like she couldn't move from her laptop until she got it down. Not because of some deadline or the expectations of her readers, but because the story demanded it, demanded everything she had to offer.

  And she wanted to give it.

  She didn't even stop to refill her coffee until there was a distinct burning ache in her thumb and wrist, preventing her from writing another word.

  "Ugh," she grumbled, walking out of her apartment to head to the market, rubbing the spot just under the palm of her hand.

  "Got some carpal tunnel?" a voice asked, making her head shoot up, finding one of the dudes from across the hall - the ones who had burst through the wall in their apartment during a drunken fight - standing there in jeans and a tee, head tucked to the side a bit, watching her rub her hand and wrist.

  "I'm sorry?"

  "You're a writer, right?" he asked, easy smile pulling at his lips.

  "Ah... yeah," she agreed, wondering how he had known that, her big-city distrust rearing its ugly head.

  "You probably have carpal tunnel from all the typing," he explained. "I am
going back to school for sports medicine," he told her, making her feel guilty for thinking he and his roommate were nothing but slackers who drank too much.

  "What can I do?" she asked, miserable enough to let him like... adjust her or something.

  "Ice it. Let it rest if you can. Sleep with a brace on at night especially. You want to keep your wrist from curling."

  "A brace," she agreed, nodding. "Do I need to get a prescription for that or..."

  "Nah, the drug store right around the corner will have a whole selection of them. Get the most heavy-duty looking one for night. And maybe one of the lightweight ones for when it is really bothering you, but you need to work."

  "Wow. Thanks. I really appreciate it."

  "My first client," he said with a satisfied smile.

  "I will keep you in mind for all of my aches and pains."

  "Make sure you do. I could use the Yelp review when I get my business up and going."

  "I will be the first five-star," she declared with a smile. "I'm off to get my braces and some groceries. Do you need anything?"

  "Actually, if you don't mind picking me up coffee filters, I would really appreciate it. I will give you some donuts in exchange. I overestimated how many I can eat."

  "It's a deal," she agreed, moving to the elevator with a bit of lightness inside.

  She could do it.

  If she really applied herself.

  She could make her life in the city a little less lonely. She could get to know her neighbors - who she was ninety-nine percent sure weren't meth dealers. She could forge bonds, create friendships.

  She could forget about Stars Landing.

  Little by little, as all things were forgotten.

  By the time she was done with her book, she was sure she would barely remember the names of the people in town.

  She would forget the feel of Liam's hands on her skin, the way her belly melted when she walked in to find him cooking for her, the way she gushed or griped about books together, the way he squeezed her tight right before he fell asleep.

  Yeah, she was sure that someday, maybe, hopefully... she could forget all that.

  At least that was what she was telling herself.

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