4. Sophomore Year #2
I'm stunned. I had no idea those words had cut him so deeply.
That night replays, and I sift through how I felt and what I said, wishing I could get a do-over.
Had I said what I truly felt, the next day may have looked a lot different.
Perhaps it would have looked the way I dreamed it to be.
I breathe deeply and turn to him, only to be met with the slamming of a truck door.
I was so lost in my thoughts I hadn't realized we were home.
He comes around the truck and opens my door. When he extends his hand, my voice is barely a whisper.
"London." His name hangs in the air between us, weighted with regret.
I trace my fingers along his hand, savoring the exquisite buzz that always comes when he's touching me, but it's not until my eyes lock with his that I see it. Not only does he care…he cares deeply.
But right now, that's enough. There's something else lurking behind his obsidian stare, and I can't help but wonder if all of this is too little too late when he answers, "Not now, Laney," through clenched teeth.
The second my feet hit the ground I'm hoisted into his arms. I could walk, but I don't argue. It would be futile. He won't allow it, and truthfully, cradled against his chest with his heartbeat steady beneath my ear, there's nowhere else I'd rather be.
Walking through the front door of my ranch, he strides straight to my room the way he's done countless times over the years, each step assured and familiar.
His scent surrounds me, a comfort I've known since we were young.
Then, nudging the door open with his foot, he navigates the familiar path to my bed.
His warmth vanishes far too soon as he sets me down.
The mattress dips beneath me, and his fingers linger at my shoulder for a fleeting moment, reluctant to break contact completely.
His eyes, usually guarded, reveal a flicker of something that makes my breath catch, and then he's across the room, rifling through my drawers.
"Why did you wear my shirt?" he asks, his tone giving nothing away.
"It was Sydney's idea." I try to match his indifference.
"Uh-huh, but why did you agree?"
This time, there's a faint hint of curiosity in his voice. He's fishing, and the last time I didn't give him the truth, we lost a year.
"I wanted you to see me."
He turns around. "I've always seen you. Why this way? Why tonight?"
I know what he's asking. Of all the ways to step out of my comfort zone, why did I choose this avenue? That answer isn't easy. It's twisted in a multilayered fear. Fear of misstepping, losing my best friend, and never knowing what it's like to be his.
"I'm scared of messing up." I sigh. "I think my mom is considering taking a new job again. I didn’t want to give her any ammunition to say yes."
"Wait, I thought she took a full-time offer at St. Anthony's. Doesn't that mean her traveling nurse days are over?" He closes the distance between us and hands me a pair of shorts. "Put those on," he says before giving me his back.
"Why?"
"Laney…" he draws out my name. "Please. Can't you see this isn't easy for me?"
"I didn't ask you to stay," comes out before I can think it through.
He turns around, his eyes wild as they snap to mine. "But I want to," he says intensely before closing them and pulling air through his nose. "I need to make sure you're okay."
I can see he's worked up. I just wish I knew the roots. Is he worked up because he wants a chance at us, or does he feel obligated to protect me? It could be both, but one of those reasons weighs more than the other.
I pull off my damp underwear and hide them under one of my extra pillows before pulling on the shorts and saying, "You can open your eyes now."
He opens his eyes cautiously, keeping them keenly trained on mine, ensuring he doesn't see a trick before dropping to his knees to remove the Ace bandage he put around my knee at the party.
His hand barely touches my calf, and my whole body begins to tingle from the contact.
It's not until my chest starts to tighten that I realize I've been holding my breath, waiting for this moment to become a figment of my imagination because there is no way London Hale is on his knees for me, in my room, while I'm swallowed up in his hoodie wrapped in his scent.
This has to be some kind of alternate universe.
The slight tremble in his hand as he unwraps the bandage is the only sure way I know this is real because, in my dreams, I don't make him nervous. He makes me nervous.
"Why do you think your mom will make you leave?"
"If I answer one of your questions, you have to answer one of mine," I counter.
Those midnight eyes flash up to mine. "Deal."
"A few months ago, she left her computer open, and one of the tabs was for jobs, but not just any jobs—the traveling kind.
The ones she used to take before we settled down here.
I think she's considering leaving again, and I don't want to give her any reasons to pull the trigger.
" He's quiet, and when I draw my eyes away from his face, I see it's because my knee is exposed.
"Oh my god, I think I'm going to be sick. "
"Lie down. I'm going to clean it up," he says, getting to his feet and quickly crossing the hallway to the bathroom.
Blood has always made me queasy, but it isn't that so much as it is the small indention from where the nail head broke the skin.
He rushes back in with supplies. "I think it looks worse than it is.
Once I clean it up, I'll know if we need to go to the ER.
" I throw my arm over my eyes. That's the last thing I need.
"If it comes to that, you tripped and fell on the porch. "
"Okay," I agree with a grimace .
"This might sting a little, so I will talk through it. Your mom's job search…is that why you've holed yourself up in your room?" he asks as I feel the cold liquid drip down my leg before the sting settles into the open wound.
"Yes," I answer with a wince as I roll my lips and pull a lungful of air through my nose. "But it's my turn to ask a question." A towel starts to trail up my leg, catching the excess liquid, and I ask, "Why the shorts?"
"Of all the questions you could have asked, that's the one you chose?"
Maybe it sounds out of place, but it's the most direct-indirect question I can ask to find out what side of the fence we fall on after all that happened tonight.
The question hovers between us, deceptively simple after everything we've confessed.
The answer to this one feels the lightest on what's already been a heavy night.
Yet somehow, this seemingly innocent question carries the power to define whatever fragile thing exists between us now.
"Because being on my knees in front of you wearing nothing but my hoodie is difficult enough; the shorts make this bearable."
I throw my arm off my eyes and push myself back into a seated position to see him.
The honesty and vulnerability I just heard was unexpected, however, if those words mean half of what they mean to me, you wouldn't know it by looking at him.
I'm sure he can feel my eyes boring into the top of his head as he tends to my knee, but he doesn't acknowledge it.
I give it a few more seconds, waiting to see if he'll say something, anything, that tells me that admission was a loaded one, and when he doesn't, I ask my next burning question.
It doesn't mean he'll answer, but at least I won't lose sleep over the regret of not asking. "So we're not going to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?"
"Us," I answer boldly. He doesn't get to act like he hasn't said a lot of things tonight that weren't cloaked in admissions, ones that echo the same sentiments I've had since the first day I saw him.
"There isn't an us," he says flatly, and I stifle my desire to audibly growl my frustration with his dismissiveness. He's strung me along all night, only to shut me down the second I ask for the slightest clarification.
"I get that, but what if I had said I still wanted to marry you that night?" I ask, going in for the kill.
"You didn't." He uses a cotton swab to wipe away the dried blood. "I don't think we need to go to the ER."
"I know what I said, London, but?—"
"No buts, Laney." His eyes find mine for the first time since I sat up; I see the plea in them before he adds, "We're not doing this tonight."
Those eyes that cause my heart to stumble every time they fall upon mine stay pinned for moments.
I wish I could hold onto them a little longer before they're focused on my knee once more.
He starts covering the wound, and I consider his silent petition to let it go for tonight, but I can't. I've played the passive hand, but not now.
I can't play it safe after I've come this far.
"I don't understand. Why not?"
"Because you almost died," he states loudly as his hands slam onto the bed beside me, and I startle. "I almost lost you, and I'm struggling to work through what almost was while staying grounded in what is."
He closes his eyes as his hand fists in my blankets, knuckles whitening with the strain.
The weight of all the words he gave me, sparse and carefully chosen as they were, crash into me.
I knew he cared, but it's the realization of its depth I hadn't fully understood until now.
The tremble in his fingers against my bedsheets and how he can't meet my gaze now are confession enough.
"London…" I reach for his cheek, and the tension in his jaw loosens. I lean my head against his. "I'm sorry. I won't push."
His head subtly shakes as his hand covers mine. "You have nothing to be sorry for."
"I overthink everything and—" His eyes pierce mine straight through to my soul as his thumb brushes over my bottom lip .
"Never apologize for how you feel, especially if I'm the one that made you feel it."