Nineteen #2
She hadn’t even gotten out of bed to tell me goodbye.
There was no offer to take me to the airport.
I stood right over there, with my suitcase.
I’d had my other items shipped earlier that week.
The cheap airline ticket I’d been able to afford with what I had left of my tutoring money only allowed one suitcase and it was under a strict weight restriction.
Lucky for me, I didn’t own that much stuff. My clothing was very limited.
Ms. Richie had texted me thirty minutes ago to tell me she was on her way. That was the only person I knew to ask for a ride to the airport. I didn’t have family or friends. She’d been happy to—or it had seemed like it at least.
I hadn’t known back then that she’d been diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer and wouldn’t live another six months. I wished I had. There would have been so many things I would have said to her. Thanked her. She had seen me when no one else had.
When she had pulled up in her gold Nissan, I glanced back at this place only once, and instead of goodbye, I’d muttered, “Good riddance.”
Not once considering this day would come.
“The blue paint on the door is almost all gone. Guess Dick never got around to giving it a new coat,” I said, then began walking toward it.
Ransom followed me, but I didn’t look back at him. The sound of his boots on the gravel was a comfort. Reminding me he was here. The demons waiting inside couldn’t touch me. At least his presence was making it feel that way.
As if she had been here just this morning, smoking a Virginia Slim on the front stoop, wearing her hot-pink wrap, the scent of her presence lingered.
I took a deep breath as my eyes looked down at the doorknob, and the loneliness from my youth slowly seeped back into my bones.
Weighing on me like a nightmare I couldn’t shake.
The only memories inside this place were ugly. There was nothing to cling to except Ransom. The warmth from his body closed in behind me. I let that overpower the bad. Ease me the best it could.
Then I reached for the door and turned the cold metal knob. It was unlocked, but then I had expected it to be.
My gaze slowly scanned the inside, seeing more of it than I had when I lived here, with all the boxes and items that had been stacked against the wall.
Things she had ordered, but never used. Items she’d found at yard sales, only to sit and collect dust. None of it was there.
The floors weren’t covered in a thick layer of neglect.
They appeared freshly mopped. The fresh lemon scent that enveloped me as I entered was so out of place here that I didn’t know what to think.
Had it ever smelled this clean?
The kitchen counter was as spotless as it could be. There were cracks, like on the corner where I’d hit my head and needed stitches after my mother pushed me away from the sandwich I had been making myself.
“Your fat ass doesn’t need food!”
I winced and did my best to shove that away.
Slowly, I walked toward the sink. Had I ever walked inside to find it empty and the metal shining? Sure, I’d washed the dishes every day and cleaned it, but never had I come home to find it that way. She wouldn’t have left it like this.
“You had it cleaned,” I said as I ran the tips of my fingers over the edge of the cheap Formica.
“You didn’t need to see it the way I’d found it.”
His words made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Because his actions were so incredibly thoughtful and kind, yet he didn’t realize that I’d never seen it any other way. Until now.
“You didn’t have to do that. This,” I said, glancing back at him, “wasn’t ever what it looked like. What you found would have been normal. All I knew of this place. Of her.”
There was a glint of pain in his eyes that struck something so deep that I knew I had to stop it, but how could I? He’d been all I wanted for so long, what I had daydreamed about, written books about—how could I not feel more? Especially when he had done something like this.
“No one should have to live like that.” His tone was husky and strained.
A sad quirk of my lips held so much that I wouldn’t say as I tore my eyes off him and looked out over the living area.
“Maybe not. But I have to give her credit for one thing: her neglect and abuse gave me the drive. The push to get out of here. To become something. To be more.” I paused and sighed.
“If my childhood had been happy, I might not have been driven so hard. I might not have gotten on that plane and stayed gone.”
I felt him move in closer, but I didn’t turn to him.
“You’d have been a success, no matter what life you’d been dealt. It’s who you are. What you love. She doesn’t get credit for shit.”
I smiled then, although it didn’t meet my eyes.
“You didn’t leave me much to do here,” I pointed out.
The living room was as clean as the kitchen. The furniture that had been in tatters ten years ago was gone too. There was nothing in the other room.
“Like I said, it’s all organized in the backyard. You can walk through, tell me what you want to do with things, and then we can leave.”
I didn’t need to look at the things in the backyard. It all could go. There wasn’t one thing I wanted to keep.
“We can load it all up in the back of your truck and haul it off. To the dump, or if it can be donated, we can do that. I don’t need to go through anything.
I want nothing from here … her.” I took a deep breath, then turned to look at him.
“And I want to know how much this all cost. This was my job. Thank you for making it easier, but I’ll pay for it. Just give me a price.”
One of his eyebrows lifted slightly. “Do I look like I need your money, Shakespeare?”
No. He didn’t need anyone’s money. That wasn’t the point.
“This wasn’t your job to handle.”
He tilted his head and leaned down closer to me. “Are we friends?”
I swallowed as his spicy scent hit me, then nodded.
“Then let that shit go.”
I shook my head and stepped around him, needing space before I grabbed his collar and pulled him closer to me like a crazy person.
“Fine. Thank you,” I said, walking into the living area and toward the narrow hallway that led to the room that had been my escape. The one place that was mine.
“I didn’t have your room emptied,” he said behind me. “Just cleaned. If there was something you wanted, I didn’t want it sitting outside, where it could be taken or damaged.”
I hadn’t expected my things to still be in there. I’d have thought she’d have turned it into a storage room for her hoarding.
“She left it my room?” I asked, not sure how to feel.
He blew out a breath, and I glanced back at him. There was … sorrow in his eyes. Then he shook his head.
“It was full of shit. I think a cat lived in there, too, but we never found one. Just a litter box among the clutter of boxes. It wasn’t until the team I had hired to move it all out got to the bottom that they realized it had once been a girl’s bedroom.”
That made more sense.
I said nothing as I made my way back to the door that I’d once wanted to paint pink so badly that I was brave enough to ask. I was slapped across the face and told to stop being a dumbass brat. But then, I’d only been seven and not realized all the things that set her off yet.
When I reached the dark wooden door, I didn’t hesitate before opening it and going inside. I’d never once been scared to enter this room. The fresh smell of lavender filled the space. I froze, my eyes going wide, and I gasped as the place I stared at looked nothing like the one I’d had.
Sure, those were my things, but they had been rearranged. There was a vase of fresh flowers on the side table. The fluffy pink quilt on the bed was new. That was not my worn blanket that had been patched with frayed edges from age and wear.
“My room never looked like this,” I whispered.
“Well, it does now,” he replied.
My eyes burned, and a lump formed in my throat as emotions I hadn’t expected began to break free inside me. I didn’t look back at him as I fought back the tears. I wanted to thank him. Seeing it like this, like it could have been, was something I hadn’t known I needed.
His hand touched my arm. “I’m sorry if this upsets you. I just …” There were a few beats of silence. “I didn’t like the idea of you seeing it so sparse.”
A broken laugh that sounded somewhere between a laugh and a cry bubbled out of me.
Why had he cared? It was my past. But he had. He’d cared.
I had no control over the explosion in my chest. The truth had always been there, and I knew it, although I had wanted to deny it.
I was in love with Ransom Carver. The kind of love that consumed me.
Controlled my moods. The love that had begun when I was a sixteen-year-old girl and he made me laugh for the first time.
He made me feel like a person. Someone who was seen.
Someone he took the time to text. And over the years, it had been fed, it had grown, and now, in this moment, it was in a full flourish.
Arden would have never worked. He wasn’t Ransom.
No one would ever be Ransom.
How tragic was my story? To give my heart to a man who would only ever be my friend. No, I hadn’t given it. That wasn’t fair. He’d taken it while I’d handed it over a little at a time. Until now. I released it all and tossed in my soul with it.
“Say something.” His voice was low and husky.
What did he want me to say? What I was thinking was not something he wanted to hear.
“I … I think this is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me,” I finally said, and my voice cracked.
“It’s what friends do.”