Chapter 27 Lili
Twenty-Seven
Lili
I hug my arms around myself as Wren backs down the road, turns, and drives off without looking back. I didn’t even get a chance
to say anything, to defend myself or explain.
Or tell him not to go.
I turn away and angrily brush the tear from my cheek. That’s when I see Goldie push open the screen door and step out onto
the porch. There’s no way to know how much she overheard, but Wren hadn’t exactly been quiet.
Whatever she heard, she knows enough to be silent now as I walk over to her and hand the album back to her.
“Please thank Mrs. Mayhew for letting me see some of her husband’s collection, but I can’t look at anything else right now.”
Then I turn and start back down the steps.
“You’re leaving? What about the other letters? There’s so much stuff, Lili. We could spend days going through it all together.”
I completely ignore the hopeful pitch in her voice as I continue walking. “You can’t understand this, but right now, the last
thing I care about is the past.”
She hurries after me, trying to keep pace with my quicker stride. “Please? Just for a little bit.” When I show no sign of slowing, she leans in a little closer, her face hardening. “I could still tell Mom that you didn’t come home the other night. She won’t let you go back to the museum.”
I laugh but my chin also trembles. “Go ahead. I don’t think I’ll be going back anyway.”
She stops walking then. She played her trump card and lost. I guess I did too.
I quicken my pace. This wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It’s true I hadn’t exactly thought much about anything after I
texted Wren, at least nothing practical. I wasn’t ready to process the blow that this letter from a British official to Kezia
was to my dad’s theory, so instead, I’d focused on Wren. I had imagined the look on his face when I first showed him the letter,
the way he’d stare at me when I told him there was more, and the hours we’d get to spend close together poring through everything.
I’ve been telling myself I don’t want more than that from him—nothing that would hurt anyone in the long run. But with each
step, that belief weakens.
Because this hurts.
Because he does have someone else.
She is the one he’s with.
And I’m just supposed to be the tourist he’s tolerating for the summer in exchange for free help at McCleave’s.
It’s all so much worse now, knowing what he had no right to ever tell me. For weeks, I’ve been reining in my emotions, pulling
myself back each time my heart leaned toward his. I could barely admit my feelings to myself. I would never have said anything to him.
For Eryn’s sake and for his. And for mine, because it was so much better when all I had were my own impossible, unacknowledgeable
feelings. Those I could handle. Those I could deny. Those I could pretend didn’t exist.
But I don’t know how to get away from this when according to him, it’s my fault that he can’t stop thinking about me. I’m
to blame for his feelings. I’m the reason his relationship with Eryn will always be a little bit worse.
I stop abruptly, my foot hovering over the first step of the rebuilt porch in front of my house. He blamed me, accused me,
and left without giving me a chance to defend myself—or to point out that it was his actions that caused the most damage.
I turn before the plan fully forms in my mind, heading not back to Mrs. Mayhew’s and the answers that will now have to wait,
but toward the shed and the bike I left parked inside.
The first time I walked into McCleave’s Museum at the start of the summer, I’d been nervous and hopeful, and maybe just the
tiniest bit scared—even before I saw the mermaid skeleton. This time it’s an entirely different emotion fueling my steps.
I ignore the other visitors and thankfully avoid Tate’s notice as he checks out a family in the gift shop. No one tries to
stop me as I stride toward the Employees Only door and push it open.
I know he’s in there before I even see him at the long worktable where we’ve spent countless hours sitting side by side trying
to put Kezia’s story together. He’s not looking at her diary now. He’s not looking at anything except a blank surface, and
when he lifts his head and our gazes meet, I almost lose my resolve.
Almost.
“Lili? What—”
I shake my head and walk closer, stopping when only the table separates us. “No, it’s my turn to talk.” I take a breath. “You
said a lot of really unfair things to me.”
He drops his head forward again. “I know.”
“Good,” I say, but his visible lack of animosity now doesn’t change anything. “Because I didn’t deserve almost any of it.
I am sorry about the house and the stairs and for not thinking. I’m not going to stand here and pretend that I understand
anything about what that’s like for you. But I was trying to help figure out a way for us to still do what we were there to
do, and the way you shot me down was— Wren, it was cruel.” My voice automatically starts to soften and I have to fight to
push it back up. “I think I’ve earned a little bit of understanding from you by now. Because there are about a million different
ways you could’ve reacted, and you chose the one that you knew would be the most unkind, and then you turned it into this
whole other thing without even giving me a chance to react.” I pick up speed because there’s no way I’m going to risk him
interrupting me now.
“And yes, I know I’m here doing the exact same thing to you, but too bad. You do not get to blame me for whatever feelings
you have for me, not when you’re the one with a girlfriend. You’re the one who’s not available, you’re the one who I’m not
allowed to want, because if I do, then I’m the bad guy.” All my righteous anger is no match for the actual heartbreak I feel
saying this to him. “I don’t want to be that person, and up until today, you’d been making that really, really hard for me.”
Now would be a great time for him to yell at me or even blame me again, to call me Tourist Girl and mean it the same way he
did that first day we met. Anything to chase away this lump in my throat.
He’s certainly breathing hard enough that I expect it, and when he opens his mouth, his voice is hard. It’s his words that
aren’t.
“Come here.”
I frown because I really need to feel a certain way right now and I don’t trust my reaction to anything less than anger from
him. “What?”
His eyes lock with mine. “I said, ‘Come here.’”
I shouldn’t be going anywhere near him, but my legs have other ideas and I’m rounding the table before I can decide if getting
closer to him is the worst idea I’ve ever had. As soon as I’m within reach of him, I don’t have to walk anymore.
Those exact same arms that I casually admired that first day in the museum gift shop are around me, pulling me closer until
I have no choice but to stumble into his lap. And when he slides his hand up my neck and to my jaw, lifting my face to his,
I could’ve stopped breathing more easily than I could’ve stopped what happened next.
“It’s not your fault,” he says, and I feel his breath ghost over my lips. “It was never anybody’s fault but mine.” His gaze
drops to my mouth, and I know I need to pull away now as his thumb brushes my skin, before either of us forgets why this can’t
happen.
Because I can’t think beyond his arms and his face and how little it would take to feel his lips against mine.
Oh please don’t do this, don’t want this, don’t grab his shirt and lift your mouth that final fraction of an inch. Please. Please.
And that’s when we both hear the door open. And that sudden shocked breath that reminds us that there has always been only
one truly innocent person in all this, and she now knows exactly how guilty Wren and I are.