Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
LILY
I was dying, Lily.
The words chase me as I drive away from the grocery store parking lot.
I try to ignore them. I need to go home and figure out what I’m going to do about the school board meeting tomorrow.
I have to focus on saving my career instead of losing myself to memories of the man who keeps shattering what’s left of my heart.
But his words won’t let me go.
I was dying, Lily.
The image of the last time I saw him before everything fell apart forms in my mind. That night in the factory when I told him I was leaving town for a week. The way he’d stood there, voice cold and cruel.
I slam on the brakes, my car squealing to a stop in the middle of the street. A car behind me honks, swerving around, the driver shouting obscenities through the window. I ignore him.
Because I’m seeing that night from a whole new angle.
The tremors in his hands he hid by shoving them into his pockets. The sweat on his forehead despite the December cold. The way he swayed slightly. How he kept his distance.
I thought he was exhausted, that he was pushing me away because he was scared.
But there had been something else. A look in his eye that I couldn’t interpret back then.
And now, looking back at that memory with adult eyes, I can see it clearly.
He wasn’t just breaking up with me, he was saying goodbye.
The truth crashes over me in waves, each one pulling me deeper. He hadn’t been speaking metaphorically in the parking lot. He wasn’t talking about emotional pain or feeling lost. He’d been telling me the truth.
He’d literally been dying.
Cars continue to swerve around me, horns blaring. My hands are shaking on the wheel. My vision dims at the edges, and I have to blink hard to refocus.
Taking a deep breath, I ease back onto the gas, and pull over to the side of the road, before I cause an accident, while trying to stop the revelations from tearing me apart.
I sit there, engine idling, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The windshield fogs with each exhale.
Dying.
The word keeps repeating in my head, and each time it does, another piece clicks into place. Another memory shifts my perspective. The way he wouldn’t let me touch him that last week. The excuses for why I couldn’t visit. How he stopped showing up in the library where we used to meet.
I thought he’d grown tired of me, but now I don’t think that was it at all.
He was hiding.
All these years ... I went to college. I became a teacher. I tried to help kids who reminded me of him. And now …
Now I’m not sure I understood anything about that time at all.
What if the cruelty he showed me that night wasn’t cruelty at all, but desperation? What if he wasn’t pushing me away to hurt me, but to protect me from watching him …
My throat closes. I can’t finish the thought. I don’t want to think about what that week must have been like. What would have happened if I’d stayed, and seen through his lies?
Would it have made a difference?
How bad was it? How close did he come? And why ... why did he think pushing me away was better than letting me help?
Anger takes me by surprise. If he thought he was protecting me, then he took away my choice. He decided for both of us what I could and couldn’t handle. He’s doing the same thing now. Still keeping secrets, and deciding what truths I’m allowed to have.
I force myself to take a breath. Then another.
My hands are still trembling when I put the car back into gear and start driving again, easing back into the afternoon traffic.
Instead of driving through Main Street, I take the back roads.
That way I won’t have to pass the school where my career might be ending, and I won’t have to deal with seeing faces of people who are probably already spreading rumors through town about my suspension.
And then I realize where I am. The old factory appears ahead, its windows dark against the afternoon sky. And there, parked in the shadows where I used to leave my car … is Ronan’s Honda.
My heart skips a beat, then races to catch up.
Why is he here? In the place where everything between us began. Where it ended. Where …
I told him less than twenty minutes ago to stay away from me. I walked away from him. I need to rebuild the walls around my heart so I can continue with my life.
But in that moment, none of it matters, and it doesn’t stop me from pulling my car in beside his and cutting the engine.
If I drive away now, I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering, trying to understand what really happened that week.
I’ll never get answers to the questions I’ve never had the opportunity to ask.
My fingers curl tighter around the steering wheel, and I take a deep breath, then force myself to open the door and step out into the cold air.
Going in there means risking hearing things that will hurt me more, but not going in there means living without closure forever.
As I make my way toward the entrance, it dawns on me that for the past seven years, I’ve gone out of my way to avoid driving past it. Now I understand why. Some part of me knew I couldn’t face this place without it opening old wounds I’d patched over and told myself were healed.
Weeds push through the cracks in the ground, and I step carefully, making my way to the room he claimed as his own. I try not to think. I don’t want to let anything take over except the need to understand.
When I reach the doorway to his room, I stop.
Ronan is on the floor near the wall where he used to sit. His hands are pressed to the ground, fingers splayed wide. His shoulders are hunched so far forward his spine curves. His head is bowed, face hidden.
But it’s his hands that make my breath catch. They’re bleeding. Raw and scraped, fingertips dark with blood and dirt.
For a moment, time jumps and the man he is now is overlapped with the boy he used to be.
Eighteen and desperate. Twenty-five and still running.
My heart pounds against my ribs. Every beat hurts. There’s a lump in my throat that I can’t swallow past.
He looks … broken. The way he’s folded in on himself, the tremors I can see in his shoulders.
This is what coming back here has done to him. Whatever he came looking for, whatever he hoped to find, it's clear he didn't find it. And now I'm here, about to demand answers he doesn't want to give me.
But I need them. After seven years of not understanding, of building my life on assumptions that might have been completely wrong, I need to know the truth.
“What do you mean you were dying?”
The question bounces off the walls. He doesn’t move, but I see the tension ripple through him. His shoulders lock. His fingers press harder against the ground, and fresh blood wells up around his torn nails.
I take another step forward.
The room seems smaller than I remember, or maybe I’m just more aware of everything now. The broken windows. The cold. The space between us.
“In the parking lot.” My voice comes out steady, surprising me with its firmness. “You said you were dying. Tell me what you meant.”
His head swings toward me. For half a minute, he just stares at me, and I can see him deciding whether to answer. His eyes are dark. There’s a wildness in them that I recognize from that last night. It’s the look of an animal that’s been cornered with nowhere left to run.
His tongue wets his lips. When he finally speaks, his voice is rough. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
Of course it matters! Why would he even say that?
“Seven years, Ronan.” My voice rises, despite my efforts to control it. “Seven years of not understanding why you turned so cruel. And now you’re telling me you were dying?”
All the signs I must have missed. If I’d looked harder, I would have seen it … wouldn’t I? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to see it. Maybe that was the point.
“You don’t want to know this, Lily.” His voice drops even lower, becomes almost a plea. “Some stories are better left buried and forgotten. Turn around. Walk away. Pretend you never met me.”
“It’s not your choice to make.” I move deeper into the room. “Not anymore. If you ever cared for me at all, you’ll tell me. What really happened, Ronan?”
Even if the truth destroys everything I thought I knew about us. I need to know.