Page 26 of All the Beautiful Things
Her smile faltered once I met her eyes and she tried again, although it shook as if she’d been practicing that smile for hours.
“Hey,” she said, so softly and brokenly. All I could imagine was pulling her into my arms and holding her until she gave me every ounce of that anguish etched into her features. “Come in.”
I too had discarded my suit and tie and dress shirt once returning back home. After an hour of running myself ragged on the treadmill, I showered and threw on jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. Both were worn and faded, washed hundreds if not more times, and the ultimate pieces of comfort I could find.
Once I stepped inside, Lilly shut the door behind me and readjusted her hair that was now pulled up at the top of her head until it wobbled and fell right back to where it’d been.
“Thank you. For texting me to come.”
She opened her mouth to speak and then shut it, gesturing toward the couch. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No.” I only wanted her forgiveness and understanding.
I sat down on the couch and settled my elbows to my knees. There would be no relaxing. No laying with her on the couch while we watched television and laughed softly at our most memorable moments as children. Tonight’s agenda included groveling and laying myself bare before her.
She deserved it, after everything, and yet while I knew it was coming, sitting in her home, I’d never felt more unprepared for anything.
Lilly sank into the chair closest to me, tucking her feet to the side and digging her bare toes between the edge of the chair and the cushion. A blanket was thrown over the back of the couch and I wondered if she needed it, would accept it from me now. She picked at tiny pills of fabric on her thigh, her lips pulled to one side while her expression remained softened like I’d seen earlier but still tortured.
I opened my mouth to begin but she beat me to it.
“I met with your dad on Sunday.”
I wasn’t entirely certain when she went from insisting on calling him Mr. Valentine to David, but I knew it’d been a slice of trust she handed him when she dropped the formality. But to hear her say your dad instead of David, showed me how much that wall was back up.
“You did?”
“You didn’t know?”
I shook my head and pressed the palms of my hands into my knees, straightening my arms. “No.” I blew out a breath and shook my head. “He was gone Sunday afternoon and came home tired, but… no, he didn’t tell me.”
He told me he’d explain things since he was the one who insisted on keeping everything from her, but the least he could have done was let me know. If he would have told me how it went, I could now know how to guide this night.
And yet… she’d ask to meetme.Maybe Dad’s talk with her helped?
She flinched but quickly wiped it away, peering at me with narrowed eyes and a jutted jaw.
Lilly faced me, tortured and an ethereal angel at the same time. She carried herself as if she had the weight of the world’s condemnation on her shoulders and yet fought so damn hard to relieve herself of them. Her strength could bowl me over some days. Tonight was no different.
She messed with her hair again and then tucked her balled fists into the cuffs of her sweatshirt. “He told me about Melissa. And your mom.”
“Shit.” I scrubbed my face. Of all the dumb things for him to tell her. “He shouldn’t have.”
“Told me the truth?”
The bite in her tone made my hands fall to my lap and I twisted on the couch so I was facing her. “No. Told you shit that doesn’t matter because it had no bearing on anything. My mom—”
“Died of a drunk driver the very same night of my accident.”
As if I needed that reminder. But I was over that for a while. Not my mom’s death but the irony of falling for a woman convicted of the same reason my mom’s life was stolen from me. It was a coincidence, nothing more. It had nothing to do with why Melissa was drawn to her that first time she saw her. The two weren’t related.
“I know that,” I gritted. “And that was what kept me away at first, made me refuse to help Melissa while she begged me.” I threw it all at her, assuming Dad would have done the same way so I didn’t have to relive that pain. “But my mother’s accident or death didn’t—couldn’t—keep me away once I met you.”
She bit down on her lip and blinked. Swallowing thickly, she said, “I can’t have you hiding anything from me anymore. I don’t know… I couldn’t handle it again.”
Hope warmed my chest and made it swell. If she doesn’t want me hiding anything from her in the future… does that mean we had one?
Somehow able to read the direct line of my thoughts, she quickly said, “That doesn’t mean we’re going back to what we were.”
