For Keeps. For Always.

by Haley Jenner

  Surely, love isn’t that powerful.

  Surely, love isn’t so all-consuming that my worst isn’t enough to turn him away.

  I fall back onto my bed, refusing to let the panic of loneliness set in.

  I’ve been alone most of my life.

  Yet I’d never been truly alone until Brooks walked willingly out of my life.

  My cell sounds, and I ignore it, comfortable in the suffocation of my solitude.

  Three months ago, I came back to the United States. Not Lake Geneva, but New York City, where Brooks and I held the promise of forever.

  Traveling the world no longer held the same allure to me. Brooks was my world, and he was now out of reach, so traveling just seemed counterintuitive. I knew what I was missing. I knew what I needed—no—what I wanted, and I’d ruined any chance of that.

  The universe had pushed us together time and time again, yet I’d chosen to ignore every fucking sign.

  I silence my cell, the bite of the ringtone crawling up my spine in annoyance.

  I couldn’t even blame my fuckups on my messed-up family. If you could even call Jacinta that, and Derrick, when he was around.

  It was me.

  All of it.

  Brooks gave himself to me completely, in a time of hurt, and I shunned him because of the fear of my own guilt and feelings.

  I flirted with the concept of Glasgow being our second chance, only to rip it away from him after I knew he still wanted me. For what? A guy I barely knew.

  I took a gesture of love and intimacy and threw it back in his face like a grenade. Watching it explode with no remorse. What woman wouldn’t want a man to jump on a flight in the middle of the night because he couldn’t not be with her? Apparently my pig-headedness.

  I offered him everything, promised to love him always, only to break my promise the moment it served my pride to do so.

  I ran the first time we really tried and things got hard.

  I told him we were broken from the start, when, in fact, it was me. I was broken, and Brooks Riley loved me through it all.

  He took a chance on loving his sad and pitiful best friend.

  Time and time again.

  Even after I proved I wasn’t worthy.

  What if that was it?

  What if I threw our final chance at our happily ever after away?

  What if he finds someone better to love? Someone who hasn’t shattered him the way I have. . . time and fucking time again.

  I didn’t treat our love as though it was for keeps like I promised. It was for sometimes, for when it worked for me, and living with those consequences might be enough to destroy me.

  I growl at my phone, wishing like hell I’d changed my number all those years ago to keep her at bay. “Jacinta,” I sigh into the line. “You do remember we agreed on going our separate ways?”

  “Your father is dead.”

  No prelude. No pleasantries. Just straight in with news that would emotionally buckle most people.

  “You said you didn’t know who my father was.”

  “I mean Derrick, Henley. Don’t be purposely daft.”

  I gulp back the unwarranted emotion in my throat. “Derrick wasn’t my dad.”

  My mother growls down the line. “You are being difficult. Derrick is dead. The man you called dad for seventeen years is dead.”

  “Are you. . . crying?” I pull the phone away from my ear, looking at the caller ID before putting it back.

  “I’m allowed to grieve my ex-husband.”

  My eyes flash red. Anger and resentment and rage pause my breathing. “In what world?” I spit. “In what fucking world are you allowed to grieve a man you lied to for seventeen years?”

  Her voice sounds over the line, but I cut her off before her first words are free.

  “A man you dropped like a trash can the moment something better came along? You have no fucking right to grieve Derrick Wright, and you know it.”

  “And you do?” she bites back.

  “Likely not, no. Is that all, Jacinta?”

  She goes quiet. “His lawyer contacted me.”

  I wait impatiently on the line.

  “You’re requested for the reading of the will.”

  I scowl. “What? Why?”

  “You’re being daft once again, daughter.”

  “I have no reason to be at the reading of his will. I’m not entitled, nor do I want anything from the man. Not in life and certainly not in death.”

  “We failed you, Henley, or so you believe. Take a little something for yourself. Just once in this life, grab one thing that can offer you a semblance of peace and keep it. The funeral is next Monday.”

  With that, she hangs up, and for a reason I can’t begin to fathom, I burst into tears.

  I researched depression a lot in my youth, coming to terms with the fact that my personality would be best categorized as melancholic. My earliest memories are persistent with sadness.

  In my early teenage years, I believed I was caught in a constant state of grief. Forever mourning the life and family I’d been given. It’s all very self-absorbed when I reflect on those times now. I grieved because my family wasn’t what I expected them to be.

  In truth, I don’t give credence to the belief that I was depressed. Nor was I grieving. On an elementary level, I’m certain it was far more simple. The absence of happiness in my life, in my home, was enough to hold me hostage in my perpetual bleakness.

  How does one know how to be happy when they’ve never been shown it?

  How does one even know it exists?

  My life was monotone, a grayscale painting with no depth. It held dips of lifelessness that only forced me further into myself.

  Then I met Brooks.

  I met my best friend.

  The love of my life.

  As Brooks opened my world up, I tasted the buzz of happiness, and it frightened me. More than that, it petrified me.

  Happiness was a drug. A potent sedation you could wake from at any moment. A seduction that would have you forever searching for its highs.

  Grieving Derrick seemed prosperous when taking a third-eye view. But something inside me broke at the news. As if a valve finally released and the hurt and pain and rejection he painted me with flooded my body.

  I was drowning, caught in a wave of emotion I didn’t know how to ride.

  They were tears I cursed myself for shedding. They weren’t warranted. The man I had called dad for the better part of my adolescence didn’t deserve them. He stepped away from my life long enough ago that he should be nothing but a distant memory.

  But following Jacinta’s phone call, my heart felt heavy. The agony I felt when he rejected me all those years ago, after promising he loved me. . . overtook me. Derrick’s failure was an open wound once again.

  33

  HENLEY

  Voicemail:

  “Brooks. Please come back. I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to leave. God. You fucked up, and I wanted to hurt you. Why do I do that? Why am I so set on hurting people the way I hurt? I’m sick. Call me back. Or just come back. Please.”

  Voicemail:

  *sob* “Brooks. I’m sorry. Please call me back.”

  Text Message:

  Please. Please. Please come back. I didn’t mean it. I do want you. I do want us. I shouldn’t have said that I didn’t. I was hurt, Brooks. You hurt me. My emotions are a fucking mess. Let me make it right. Let us make this right.

  Voicemail:

  “I know I’ve always cut you out when shit got hard. I’m starting to understand how wrong that was. I never felt it from your side. It’s awful. I’m sorry, Brooks. Don’t be me. Don’t be hurtful to prove a point. You don’t have to protect your heart against me. I promise. I’m in. All in. My heart has always been all in. My mind just couldn’t accept it. It gets it now. I fucking get it now.”

  Text Message:

  As awful as my childhood was, I wish I was there right now. With you. I wish I knew from the moment I me
t you, who you would be to me.

  My heart.

  The better half of my soul.

  Brooks. Please forgive me.

  Please.

  Text Message:

  I love you.

  Voicemail:

  “Do you remember the Whitsundays? Do you remember when Jada said something about forever not coming by often? You looked so confused. I was so embarrassed. Even though I told you I loved you often. I was scared it would frighten you off. She meant you. She told me you were a ten. I told her you were a forever. My forever.”

  Voicemail:

  “Where are you, Brooks? Even your mom hasn’t heard from you. I’m so worried.”

  Text Message:

  I’m now mad. At least tell me you’re alive. Or tell your mom if you can’t stomach the thought of talking to me.

  Voicemail:

  While you might not have reason to believe me, you were my always, Brooks Riley. You were the one person in this world that I wanted to keep forever. I won’t contact you again. I have to have faith that you’ll reach out when you’re ready. As hard as the waiting will be. I know you love me enough to tell me if our chance for forever is lost. I know that. I trust that. I love you. For keeps. For always.

  34

  BROOKS

  I knew she wouldn’t be at the service. It would’ve been a gross waste of my time to even visit the church.

  I know my girl. She would reject her grief, enough she’d feel obligated to mourn in private. She’d let tears course down her cheeks and deny the ache in her heart without anyone to hold her.

  It was the way Derrick and Jacinta taught her to cope with her feelings.

  The small hike through the bush is exactly like I remember it. Brush having grown thicker than before, forcing me to push my way through, the sound of the river pushing my feet forward.

  My heart pounds in my chest, praying like hell I was right in my assumption. Maybe she’s not even in Lake Geneva. Maybe she took off to some far-off place to forget the way Derrick hurt her.

  Maybe I don’t know her as well as I think I do.

  I did exactly that when she broke my heart this last time. I fled. Ran away and let myself get lost in the world. I cut off all lines of communication to everyone who meant anything to me. Afraid any technology available to me would have me caving and calling her, begging her to reconsider our ending.

  I spent three months in my head. Filing through every memory, every happy and hurtful moment Henley and I shared. I was aching to work out how we loved each other so deeply but couldn’t get our shit together. How do two people who belong together forever push one another apart? It took me nearly eight weeks to accept that understanding Henley’s emotions was a moot point. Henley didn’t even fucking understand them.

  We are what we’re taught. What we see in the world.

  Henley spent seventeen years trapped in a home that survived only on resentment and revenge. She was told this was love.

  She spent the next year held hostage by a mother who kept her from the people most important to Henley. Again, she was told this was love.

  She escaped, only to travel the world alone, telling herself that was called freedom.

  We fell in love, and through that journey, we caused harm. To others. To one another. Time and time again, the truth of my love for Henley was spiked with pain, with betrayal, and regret.

  I told her I loved her and expected her to believe me.

  Just like Derrick and Jacinta.

  I showed her I loved her by cheating on my high school girlfriend. Clouding my declaration in guilt that wasn’t hers to feel.

  I showed her I loved her by demanding she break up with someone who was showing her happiness away from the stone walls of hate at home. I tempted her, played on her past feelings, and then scorned her when she did the right fucking thing.

  I showed her I loved her by jumping on a flight that I told myself was romantic when, in fact, it was exactly what Henley accused me of it being. An international booty call. I wanted to fuck her. I couldn’t give her more than twenty-four hours. I lured her in only to cut her down.

  I showed her I loved her by dragging a date to a wedding out of fear and then fucking her when I knew she had a boyfriend. I left her with nothing but a handwritten note after destroying her relationship.

  I showed her I fucking loved her by failing the first moment we promised to give it another go.

  I know she had her faults through our entanglement, maybe just as many as I can admit to, but she needed someone to be a solid fixture for her. She needed family, and I hid behind some ridiculous notion that she hadn’t asked me to put everything aside for her. In truth, I wanted her to be the one who sacrificed. I wanted her to build her life around me. I expected that to be enough for her.

  I called home the second the epiphany hit me, only for mom to tell me of Derrick’s passing. It’s as though the universe pulled my head out of my ass at the time Henley would need someone by her side.

  My feet slow as the river comes into view, and I pause, bending to untie my shoelaces before taking another step. Bare feet to the earth, I let my toes sink into the mud and grass, remembering Henley from all those years ago.

  “What’s the point of being out in nature if you can’t feel it between your toes?”

  I breathe a sigh of relief when she comes into view. Chin to her knees, arms hugging her legs, her eyes are closed.

  She doesn’t flinch as I approach, no doubt having sensed me the second I stepped into the clearing.

  “Nice rock.”

  Her lips tip upward. “I hold part ownership in it.”

  “Funny.” I slide up next to her. “Me too.”

  She opens her eyes then. Her beautifully wistful eyes scream for me to see the torment she’s in.

  I pull her into my body without delay, tucking her face into my neck to let my skin swallow the sob that breaks free from her lips without her permission.

  “I got you,” I soothe.

  She settles almost instantaneously, her breath a quick stutter and a soft exhale. The sound repeats. Quiet shattered gasps that vibrate against my chest.

  “You’re not wearing shoes,” she says.

  I shift back, but she holds on tighter. “Give me a minute,” she whispers against my neck. “I thought I’d lost this forever. Just give me sixty seconds to believe it's real.”

  My throat heats at her words. “I. . .” I clear my throat. “Someone once told me there wasn’t much point being in the forest if I couldn’t feel the earth between my toes.”

  “She sounds like a messy creature.”

  “The messiest,” I confirm.

  “Why do you bother with her then?”

  I bend, touching my lips to her ear. “Because I love her more than anything in the whole fucking world.”

  Sitting up, she stares at me intently.

  “What is that in your eyes?” I worry. “What can’t I read?”

  Her hand lifts up to touch my face, only to drop away again. “Relief,” she confesses.

  We let silence encapsulate us for minutes, our gaze set on the stormy flow of the river.

  “Talk to me,” I plead gently.

  “I’m confused.” Her fingers reach up, massaging at her right earlobe. Annoyed at the hoop threaded through it, she removes it without thought, dropping it into the pocket of her dress. “Confused that I’m upset. Confused. . . that I’m not as sad as I should be?”

  I stare at her profile, cataloging her freckles like I’ve done a million times before. I don’t stop my hand from moving, letting it lift to brush her hair back over her ear so I can see her better. “Unresolved issues and feelings?” I question, but she only shrugs.

  “Did you go to the service?”

  “I came straight here. I came straight to you.”

  Turning her face, she meets my gaze, shifting closer. “I couldn’t stomach going,” she tells me unnecessarily. “What if someone asked me how I was coping? What if I lo
st my cool and screamed at them that he betrayed me?”

  I know that, deep down, Henley would never have reacted that way, but I’m glad she didn’t go. I would’ve hated her having to swallow the pain of others' words.

  “It wasn’t my fault my mom lied,” she argues.

  “Baby, I know.”

  “But it wasn’t his either?” She frames it as a question, begging me to agree with her. Or to disagree. I can’t be sure.

  “I guess you’re right,” I admit reluctantly, being as honest as I can be.

  Her head nods up and down. “I’m sad because if he chose to accept me as his daughter, even if I wasn’t biologically his, maybe my life would be different. Maybe I wouldn’t be so afraid of love.” Her eyes graze over my face intimately when she declares this. Wanting the world to understand why she’s so jaded. Or maybe not the world, maybe just me. “Why didn’t he want me, Brooks?” The crack in her voice stabs at my heart, and the only thing I can do is reach out and cup her cheek. To touch her. To stroke my thumb along her skin and listen. “All those years ago, was it just his pride?” She struggles to speak, her words breaking over her cries. “Was his pride more important than the welfare of a teenage girl? I have so many questions that he’ll never be forced to answer, and I’m relieved,” she confesses quietly. “I’m sad, but I’m relieved, and I don’t know how to process that.”

  The side of her face presses more heavily against her palm, and I lean forward, placing a kiss on her forehead.

  I hate that I don’t know how to rid this pain for her. I hate that even in death, Derrick is causing her harm.

  But more than any of that, I hate that time and time again I’ve abandoned her in the same way Derrick did. I held onto my selfishness like armor, and when she wouldn’t serve my purpose, I left her. The way he did. I taught her that I loved her with condition and had the audacity to blame her for us failing when she’d shown me it wasn’t good enough.