Chapter 19
Chapter Nineteen
LILY
I make it three blocks from Cedar Street before my vision blurs so badly I can’t see the road. My foot slams against the brake, and the car jerks to a stop in front of Jerry’s Diner, crooked across two parking spaces. I kill the engine with shaking hands.
Then I shatter.
The first sob rips out of my throat. My forehead hits the steering wheel. Once. Twice. The pain doesn’t help.
You saw what you wanted to see. The project. The charity case.
His words loop through my head, each repetition cutting deeper. My lungs won’t expand properly. I can’t catch my breath. The air in the car is too thin.
I fumble for the door handle. Miss. And try again. The cold night air hits my face when I finally stumble out, but that doesn’t help either.
Every cruel thing he said circles in my head. Every accusation. Every lie he told me to push me away.
Except … what if they weren’t lies?
Through the diner windows, I can see our old booth. The one in the back corner, where I used to take him after school sometimes, pretending I was hungry when really I just wanted to make sure he ate something.
He’d order black coffee and the cheapest thing on the menu. I’d order extra fries, a milkshake, and a burger I could never finish. I’d cut the burger in half, and push it toward him, claiming I was too full, my stomach hurt, and I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.
He always knew what I was doing. I could see it in his eyes—the shame mixing with hunger, and pride battling need. But he’d eat it anyway, because survival won over dignity every single time.
Was that what he meant? That I turned his hunger into my heroism?
My stomach turns.
You still can’t fix what’s broken inside me.
My phone rings. Cassidy’s name lights up through the haze of tears, and I reach for it with hands that won’t stop shaking. It slips through my fingers, and hits the pavement, cracking the screen.
“Fuck.” The word comes out broken, followed by another sob.
I crouch down, scrabbling for the phone. My knees hit wet asphalt, and the cold soaks through my jeans. On the fourth ring, I manage to swipe the screen.
“Lily? Where are you? I thought you were coming over.”
“I can’t—” The words won’t form properly. “I … I did something stupid, Cass.”
“What did you do?”
“I went to see him.” Saying out loud makes it real …makes it worse. “I went to Cedar Street and I—God, I’m so fucking stupid!”
“Where are you?”
“Parked outside Jerry’s.”
“Stay there. I’ll call you a cab.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“Don’t even bother arguing with me. I’ll order pizza from Antonio’s.”
She knows me too well. I sniff, wiping my face with the back of my hand.
“Okay.”
“The cab will be there in five minutes.”
It arrives sooner. I leave my car where it is, parked at an angle. I can pick it up tomorrow when my hands stop shaking and the world isn’t falling apart. The driver takes one look at my face and mercifully doesn’t try to make conversation.
By the time I reach Cassidy’s apartment, I’m barely holding it together. She has the door open, waiting, and the second I see her face, every defense I have left crumbles.
I don’t even make it past the threshold.
My legs give out. I hit my knees on her doormat, one hand clutching the doorframe to keep from pitching forward. The sob that tears out of me doesn’t sound human.
“Oh, honey.” Cassidy drops beside me, arms coming around my shoulders. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
But she doesn’t. Nobody does. Because the only person who ever really saw me just told me it was all a lie. He accused me of playing savior while he went along with it.
I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but break apart while Cassidy holds the pieces together.
She doesn’t try to move me right away, just sits there on the floor with me, one hand rubbing circles on my back, while the other strokes my hair.
Eventually, the sobs quiet enough that I can pull in a full breath.
“Come on.” She helps me up, and guides me to the couch. “Sit down. I’ll get wine and tissues.”
She disappears into the kitchen. I slump against the cushions, pressing my palms against my eyes until stars burst behind them. When she returns, she’s carrying two glasses and a box of tissues.
“Tell me everything.” She settles beside me, handing me a glass. “From the beginning.”
So I do.
“He’s different.” The wine burns going down. “I expected that. I knew he’d be different. But his eyes—” I reach for the tissues. “His eyes still hold all that same pain.”
“Of course they do.” She takes my hand. “Prison isn’t going to fix what broke him in the first place.”
“I know that. I do. But he—” I press my fingers to my lips. They’re still tingling, still sensitive. “He kissed me.”
Cassidy goes very still.
“And Cass, it didn’t feel like nothing. It didn’t feel like he was playing a part or pretending. It felt—” My voice breaks. “For a second, it felt like before. When we were eighteen again and the whole world was the two of us in that factory, and nothing else mattered.”
“What happened then?”
“He pushed me away, and told me to find someone else to save.” The memory hurts my heart. “But before that, for just a second, he was looking at me like …”
Like I was the only real thing in his world.
Like I mattered.
Like every cruel word he said was a lie.
“He was gentle,” I whisper. “After everything, after being so harsh and awful, he touched me like he didn’t want to hurt me … and then he broke me anyway.”
“Oh, Lily.” She pulls me closer.
“He said …” My voice wobbles. “He said none of it was real.”
Cassidy’s hand stills on my back.
“He said I never really cared about him, and that I just wanted to save him to prove I was better than everyone else. He said he was my charity case, a project.” The words stick in my throat. “He said I fell in love with how helping him made me feel, and not with him.”
“Lily.”
“What if he’s right? What if I did convince myself I loved him because it felt good to be needed? What if I did just like being the only one who could reach him?”
“That’s not—”
But I’m not listening to her. “Every time I brought him food, every note I left, every time I showed up when he didn’t ask me to … what if I was just proving something to myself? What if I turned his suffering into my hero story?”
“You were just a kid,” Cassidy says firmly. “You saw someone hurting and you tried to help. That doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you human.”
“I’ve built a life.” The words come out desperate. Surely, if I say them enough they’ll be true. “I went to therapy. I dated other people. I moved on, Cass. I fucking moved on!”
“Did you?”
The question is like a slap.
“I tried.” My hand presses against my chest, trying to ease the ache that never really left. “God, I tried so hard. I went on dates with nice guys who had stable jobs and healthy families. I smiled and laughed and pretended I was normal. But I compared every single one of them to him.”
She sighs.
“They didn’t stand a chance. None of them ever measured up.
” My laugh is broken. “How stupid is that? What was there to measure up to? I told myself it was okay, it was because I was young when I loved him, and first love always feels bigger than it is. But seeing him again …” My voice breaks again.
“It’s still the same. The way my heart stops when he looks at me.
Everything else disappears. Seven years, Cass.
Seven years of therapy, and moving on, and building a new life, and he shows up on Main street and destroyed it all in thirty seconds.
” I wipe my eyes. “Why does it still hurt so much?”
“Because you never got closure. There was no break-up fight or even an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ conversation. One day he was there, the next he wasn’t. You didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.”
“It still feels like everything happened last week. And it reminded me that I didn’t just lose him, I had to live through what happened after.”
“What do you mean?”
“The whispers. The pitying looks. ‘Poor Lily, falling for the wrong boy.’ I was treated like some foolish girl who didn’t know any better. I couldn’t possibly have seen anything in him worth loving, so he must have done something to trick me.”
Isn’t that what Ronan claimed?
Cassidy is quiet for a moment, holding my hand while I try to pull myself back together.
“What are you going to do now?”
“I don’t know.” And that’s the painful truth. “I can’t pretend he isn’t here, or that seeing him doesn’t break open every wound I thought I’d healed. But I also can’t …” I swallow hard. “I can’t be that girl again. The one who thought love could fix everything.”
“You don’t have to be. You need to be who you are now.”
“I don’t know who that is anymore.”
“Yes, you do. You’re someone who understands that loving someone and saving them aren’t the same thing.”
“I see him in my classroom sometimes.” The confession comes out quietly. “Not him, obviously, but transfer kids who come in mid-year with too-small clothes and empty lunch boxes. Kids who flinch at loud noises and sit at the back and try to disappear.”
Cassidy’s thumb traces circles on my hand.
“There’s this boy, Marcus. New this year. Same haunted look Ronan used to have. Every time I pack extra snacks, or make sure he eats lunch …” My throat closes. “I see Ronan. Seventeen years old and starving, and I’m trying to save him again through every kid who walks into my classroom.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“Isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean he’s right, and I am saving people to feel good about myself? Maybe my entire career is just one long attempt to fix what I couldn’t fix back then.”
“Or maybe,” Cassidy says softly, “he taught you to see the kids everyone else overlooks. That’s not about you having a hero complex, Lils, it’s you taking your experience and using it to stop anyone else from fading away.”
The doorbell rings then, the pizza arriving right on schedule. Cassidy gets up to answer it, and I blow my nose while she talks to the delivery person. When she returns with the box, I’ve mostly got myself under control. The room fills with the familiar smell of Antonio’s special sauce.
She doesn’t push me to eat right away,. Rain falls outside, the drops hitting her windows in a steady, almost soothing rhythm. I lean my head against her shoulder, letting the sound wash over me.
“First love always hurts, Lily. I understand that. You saw the mess I was in when me and Mike broke up. But what you two had … that was different. It wasn’t just a high school romance.”
“It haunts you.”
“Yeah, it does.” She squeezes my hand. “And maybe that’s okay. Maybe some things are supposed to leave marks. It doesn’t mean you haven’t moved on. It means it mattered.”