by Jessi Kirby
I start to unfold it without even thinking but stop dead when I recognize the tattered, cream-colored stationery. My heart drops right through the bottom of my chest. All my guilt and secrets come rushing back at me from the thing in my hands. Like punishment for what I’ve done. I don’t have to open the letter to know what it says. I wrote draft after draft, night after night, until I felt I’d gotten it exactly right. Until it said exactly what I wanted to say to the person who had Trent’s heart.
Nausea rolls through my stomach as I unfold it slowly, careful not to tear the once-thick paper that’s been worn down by more than just the storm. My eyes run over the words, over my handwriting, over the creases that aren’t mine, creases from being folded and unfolded, over and over again. The ones Colton must’ve made to fit it into his pocket. To carry it around with him.
I look down at the words, my words, so full of grief and sadness. The person who wrote that letter feels like a stranger. She was someone who was looking for a way to hold on to Trent. Someone who didn’t think she could love anyone else. Who didn’t know that the person she was writing to would be the one to prove her wrong.
“What’re you doing with that?”
Colton’s voice snaps my head up, and the look of shock on his face must mirror my own.
His eyes are glued to the letter in my hands.
“I . . .” I fumble to fold it back up, but he sets the two steaming cups of coffee on the floor and takes it from me before I can. His sudden intensity startles me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean— It was in your pocket, and I thought maybe it was—”
“It’s not yours to read,” Colton says, and I don’t know what’s worse: his tone, or the awful irony of his words.
I look at him standing there, trying to fold it back into the small rectangle that was tucked down in his pocket for who knows how long, and I can’t do it anymore. Can’t stand that I’ve kept this secret for so long. Finally, I find the words. I say them carefully, so there’s no mistaking them.
“It is mine.”
His hands freeze in the air. He looks at me, confused.
“What?”
There’s a quaver in his voice that makes me not want to say what comes next, but I have to.
“It’s my letter.” I swallow hard, my mouth all of a sudden dry. “I wrote it.”
“You what?”
I try to keep my voice even. Wish there were more air in this room. “I wrote that letter,” I say. “To you. Months ago, after . . .” My voice breaks. “After my boyfriend was killed in an accident.”
These words, and all the truth in them, are made of air, barely audible, but he hears them, and every muscle in his body tenses. He shakes his head.
“Before I knew you,” I add, with the unreasonable hope that somehow that’ll make a difference; but I know as soon as I look at Colton that it doesn’t.
He stands there silent, and statue still, except for the tiny motion of his jaw tightening.
I stand up, take a step toward him. “Colton, please—”
He backs away. “Did you know?” he asks, his voice cold. “When we met. Did you know who I was?”
The question sends a hot flood of tears to my eyes. “Yes,” I whisper.
Colton turns to go.
“Wait,” I plead. “Please. Let me just explain—”
He stops. Whips back around to face me. “Explain what? That you went looking for the person who got your boyfriend’s heart? That you found me after I signed a paper that said I didn’t want to be found?” Anger flashes over his face like the lightning over the ocean. “Or that you sat there next to me a few hours ago while I told you everything, and you said nothing?” He pauses, and something else flashes over his face. Maybe the memory of what came after that. But it’s gone just as quickly, and his voice goes hollow. “Which part did you want to explain?”
I open my mouth to answer, but the truth of what I’ve done leaves me speechless for a moment. And then I give the only explanation I can come up with.
“You never wrote back.”
I say it to the floor, not an accusation, but the explanation for it all, in its most simple, honest form.
Colton takes a step toward me. “And why do you think? I never wanted this. I never wanted any of this.” He looks directly into my eyes, and I swear I don’t recognize him at all. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Forget you knew me. Because I never should’ve known you.”
And then he’s gone. Through the automatic doors, out into the night.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Broken Heart Syndrome
“Broken heart syndrome is a condition in which extreme stress can lead to heart muscle failure. The failure is severe, but often short-term. . . .The cause of broken heart syndrome is not fully known. In most cases, symptoms are triggered by extreme emotional or physical stress, such as intense grief, anger, or surprise. Researchers think that the stress releases hormones that ‘stun’ the heart and affect its ability to pump blood to the body.”
—The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
I SIT IN the waiting room chair in a haze. I can’t move. My chest is caving in.
Faceless people come and go past the chairs where I sit. Garbled voices speak over the intercom. Gran is on one side of me, one hand tapping the armrest, the other resting on my knee. Ryan is on the other side. She doesn’t look at me, doesn’t say a word, and I’m not sure if it’s because she’s worrying about Dad or because she’s just as horrified by me as I am.
I am a horrible, selfish, lying person.
We wait, together in those chairs, but in our own separate worlds. A doctor comes to give us an update. Dad’s just been taken to surgery. Settle in. It’ll be a few hours. Mom comes back to us quiet, lips pressed together to maintain control. She looks small standing there in front of us. And so scared. It’s heart wrenching and terrifying at the same time.
Gran gets up and wraps her arms around Mom. “It’s going to be all right.” She can’t know for sure. None of us can, but we all cling to the sureness in Gran’s voice.
Mom nods into her shoulder, and her lip trembles. Her eyes well up, but when she sees Ryan and me, something shifts in her. She meets Gran’s eyes, and Gran releases her from the embrace. Mom wipes her own eyes, straightens up, and opens her arms for us to come to her. Becomes as strong and sure as she can for us as she repeats Gran’s words.
“It’s going to be all right.”
We all sit in a row: Gran, Ryan, Mom, me. We’re quiet as we wait, weighted with worry, but pulled closer by the strength we draw from one another. Eventually, exhaustion overcomes them. Gran falls asleep with her cheek propped on her fist. Ryan moves to an empty row of chairs and stretches out over them, and falls asleep the second she closes her eyes. Mom’s chin drops to her chest.
And then I am alone again.
My eyes burn, and my body aches for sleep, but my mind won’t allow it. The scene with Colton plays again and again in my mind as the clock ticks away the hours like a heartbeat. His hurt and anger, my guilt and shame. Secrets. Lies. Wounds that can’t be helped or treated. Damage that is irreversible.
I don’t know how much time has passed when the doctor appears in front of us. I put a hand on my mom’s shoulder, and she sits up immediately, blinking in the fluorescent light. The lines around her eyes are deep, but when she sees the doctor, she stands, alert.
He smiles. “The news is good.” Ryan and Gran are both up now too, and they join us around the doctor. “Surgery went smoothly, and we were able to remove the clot and place the stent. He’s up in recovery now.”
Mom hugs the doctor. “Thank you, thank you so much.”
His smile is sincere but tired as he pats her back. “He’s not awake yet, but I can have a nurse take you up so you’re there when the anesthesia wears off.”
When the doctor leaves us, a nurse comes to take Mom to Dad, and Gran decides she’ll stay and wait but that Ryan and I should go home. We don
’t argue with her, and we don’t say anything as we walk down the hall, but we both seem to breathe the same sigh of relief. It only lasts a second for me, though. We walk out the same doors Colton did, and now there’s even more room in me to feel the full weight of what sent him through them. Guilt comes in like air with the next breath I take, and my heart and lungs carry it through every part of me.
I wonder where he is. Come back, I think. Be here. But I know he won’t.
The distant whine of a siren gets louder and closer as we cross the parking lot to Ryan’s car. She clicks the remote key and opens her door. I watch the ambulance pull in under the Emergency sign. The siren stops, but the lights keep spinning, blue-red, blue-red as the side doors open and medics climb out on both sides.
Blue and red lights, swirling against the pale sunrise sky. The clipped voices of the medics, the loud jumble of their radios in the background.
I can’t breathe all of a sudden.
“Quinn,” Ryan says, but her voice sounds faraway.
I’m there on our road, on my knees, losing everything all over again.
The back doors of the ambulance burst open, and another medic climbs out, then reaches in and pulls the end of a gurney. Calls to the others, “Get him in there! Let’s go, let’s go!”
“Quinn, let’s go.” Ryan’s voice snaps me back here, to the present, but it doesn’t hurt any less.
Here, I’ve lost even more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Go to your bosom; knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”
—William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
I SIT ON my bed, staring at my phone in my hand. At Colton’s number, ready to be dialed if I just hit the call button. But I don’t. I know he won’t answer. I’ve called, again and again, and now it just goes straight to voicemail, like he turned off his phone, or threw it away. I’ve thought about going to him, tried to imagine what words I could say that might make him understand, but there are none. I try to picture if we could go back in time. Try to see us out on the water together, or at that cove with the waterfall, or watching the sunset from the beach. But I can’t do that either. All I can see is his face, so angry, and hear the words he said to me, in a voice that sounded like a stranger’s.
Forget you knew me.
It wasn’t anger I heard in those words. It was hurt. Caused by me. No one can tell me it was an accident, or that it was beyond my control, or that I couldn’t have done anything differently.
I searched for him. I found him. I let myself fall in love with him.
I had no right to do any of those things.
They were choices I made, but in making them, I took away his, and like Ryan said, I took away any chance that we had for something real. I erased all our moments, and days, and experiences before they even existed. And now I’m the past that he wants to forget. I have no choice but to let him.
I retreat into the isolation of my own past, where I deserve to be. Where I am alone with all the things I wish I could change. I don’t sleep. Don’t eat. I tell Ryan what happened when I went to his shop to tell him the truth, and then about the storm, and the hospital. After that I hardly speak. She gives me my space. Runs by herself. Doesn’t ask questions or offer advice. I can’t tell if it’s because I don’t ask for any or if she has none for this.
A couple days later, when Dad comes home from the hospital, I pull myself out of my room to let him know how relieved I am that he’s okay. How much I love him. I try to help take care of him, but I’m only half there. Ryan, still shaken from witnessing his attack, hovers around him, giving him hugs and getting teary out of nowhere. Mom manages his recovery: doctors’ orders, prescriptions, covering for him at the office. I fade into the background, sinking lower and lower.
Losing myself again.
I’m sitting at my computer in the same pajamas I’ve worn for the last two days, scrolling up and down Shelby’s blog, when Ryan comes in without knocking. She sees the picture of Colton on the screen before I can close the window.
“Still nothing?”
I shake my head.
“Why don’t you call him?”
“I have. Lots of times. He won’t answer.”
She presses her lips together and nods. “I guess I probably wouldn’t either, if I were him. Not after finding out like that.”
I don’t feel like talking about it, so I don’t say anything. Ryan takes a deep breath and leans against the desk in front of me.
“I got in,” she says.
“What?”
“To that art school, in Italy. They loved my portfolio. Apparently, heartbreak makes for compelling art.”
“That’s really great,” I say. But it doesn’t sound convincing. The thought of not having her here chokes me up. “When do you leave?”
“In a couple of weeks.” We’re quiet a moment, and though I know it’s what she wants, she seems a little sad too. “I’m gonna miss you,” she says. “And I’m worried about you.”
“I can’t stand me right now.”
“You know how I said he deserves to know the truth?”
I glance up at her.
“Well, he does, Quinn. He deserves to know everything—not just what he thinks he knows.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
“I’m talking the rest of the truth. That it started out being about Trent, but somewhere along the line that changed. That you fell in love with him. That you were scared. That you didn’t want to hurt him or lose him. Those things are all the truth too, aren’t they?”
My eyes well up, and I look at my sister. “He told me to forget I knew him.” I swallow over the lump in my throat, and my voice comes out thick with tears. “He doesn’t want to hear anything I have to say.”
“Are you kidding me? Those are the things he needs to hear you say. You think he’s not hurting right now, walking around knowing half the truth?”
Tears, one after another, roll silently down my cheeks at the thought.
“Think of all the things you’ve ever regretted not doing or saying. All the things you’ve wished you could change.” She shakes her head. “You, of all people, know how much those things can sting. You know how long they can stay with you, and change you.” She pauses and takes a long look at the picture of Colton on my computer screen. When she brings her eyes back to mine, they are serious.
“So don’t let them. Do something. Go find him and tell him.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“Give all to love;
Obey thy heart.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
I PULL OFF in the same overlook I did the first time I made this drive to see Colton. Sunshine and salt air pour in when I roll down the window, and I try to breathe, just like I did that day. My hands shake just the same at the thought of seeing him.
But so much is different.
Then, I drove over promising myself I wouldn’t speak to him, that I would be invisible. That I wouldn’t interfere in his life. Now I need him to listen. I want him to see me. And in spite of what led me to him, I don’t want to think of him not being a part of my life.
I need to tell him the truth that got tangled up in the lies. How I went looking for Trent’s heart, for a connection to the past. A way to hold on. But that what I found when I found him was a reason to let go. I need to tell him I wouldn’t change that, not even if I could.
By the time I turn onto Main Street, I am a mess. Even more now than on that first day. I park in the same place I did that day, in front of the café, and peek in the window to see if there’s a chance I could catch him in there again, but it’s empty. I take a deep breath and cross the street to Good Clean Fun, eyes down, trying to gather my courage as I go. When I step onto the curb and finally look up, the ground disappears from beneath my feet.
The store is dark inside. The racks that are normally filled with kayaks sit empty, and in front of the closed door, there are bunches of flowers and signs.
/> Signs with Colton’s name on them.
My eyes go blurry, and all the air in the world is gone. I take a step toward the door, but I can’t even see it. All I can see is the hospital, and Colton’s face, and the way he looked when I told him the truth. The way he looked when he left. The way he didn’t look back.
I crumple right where I’m standing, like I don’t have legs beneath me.
This can’t be happening.
Not when I haven’t even—when I haven’t gotten a chance to tell him, or set things right, or just . . . just see him.
My head falls to my knees, and I weep. Weep for myself, and for Colton, and for Trent too. It’s too much, this. Life, and love, and how fragile it all is. It repeats, over and over in my head, a sad, desperate refrain.
This can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t—
“Quinn? Is that you?”
It takes a second for the voice to register, but when it does, I lift my head slowly, afraid of what I’ll see when I look at Shelby. She’s standing above me, and I have to squint through the sunlight and my tears to see her. She looks at me, then at the flowers and signs in front of the door, and her eyes widen.
“Oh my god,” she says. Then she sits down in front of me and takes my hands in hers. “He’s not— This is— He’s going to be okay.”
“What?” The word barely comes out.
“Colton. He’s going to be okay. People just keep bringing stuff here because he can’t really have any visitors yet, and I had to close the shop until my parents can get back.”
Relief opens up my chest, and I can finally, fully look at her. She has the same green eyes as him—kind, and soulful, but weary in a way too.
I wipe at my own eyes. “What happened?”
“He went into acute rejection four days ago.”
“Oh my god.”
My own heart practically stops, and guilt wraps itself tight around me. Four days ago. Four days ago when we drove off from the shop after his fight with Shelby about missing his meds, and when we spent the afternoon together, and when not once did I see him swallow a pill.
