49. Nolan
49
NOLAN
I was still shaken when I climbed the stairs to the second floor. I’d spent the last two hours talking to Rafe and Jude, trying to wrap my head around everything Lilah had told us.
I’d felt sick when she’d left the room. Still did.
How could Lilah — funny, resilient, unforgettable Lilah — think her life wasn’t worth living? But I knew how, knew we’d been part of it, that our dumb bullshit had lit a match to her life.
I just hadn’t realized how quickly, how totally, it had burned.
I knocked on her door and waited, something I always did because I knew Lilah was edgy about privacy and control.
“Just… go away,” she said through the door.
“It’s me,” I said. “I just want to talk to you.”
It was true, but not the whole truth. I was also worried about her heart, a preoccupation that kept me up night.
I pondered my options if she told me to fuck off but was saved from having to use them when she opened the door. Her perfect face was tear-stained, her cheeks flushed. I wanted to kiss her and hold her tight and promise never to let anyone hurt her again, promise her we would never hurt her again, but somehow, I didn’t think she’d believe me.
“What do you want?”
I lifted the stethoscope around my neck.
She rolled her eyes. “Really? That’s why you’re here? You want to listen to my heart?”
Yes , I thought. I want to listen to your heart. I want to listen to it for the rest of my life .
“That, and I want to talk to you.”
She sighed and opened the door wider. “Fine.”
I entered the room and saw that her backpack, open and half-filled, was on her bed.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Packing.” She put a rolled-up T-shirt into the backpack.
I sat on her bed and took her hand. “Can you just… stop? Just for a minute?”
She looked at the floor. “I guess I needed to get all that out. You don’t have to say anything.”
“I’m glad you got it out,” I said. “I’m glad you told us.”
And I was, even though I felt like I had a hole in my fucking heart that would be there until the day I died — the very least I deserved — because of it.
“It doesn’t matter now,” she said.
“It matters to me.” I was glad when she let me pull her onto my lap. I lifted my stethoscope and placed the chestpiece against her skin, relieved by the rhythmic beat of her heart.
I dropped the stereoscope and wrapped my arms around her waist. “There will never be enough ways to say I’m sorry.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I know.”
“Rafe’s a fucking asshole.”
She laughed a little and tipped her head against mine. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“We’ve been talking,” I said.
It was a simplistic word for the conversation we’d had in the living room after Lilah went upstairs. There had been talking, sure, but there had also been arguing and a near fistfight between Rafe and me before Jude broke it up.
I shouldn’t have expected any different. Rafe didn’t know how to handle even the most basic of emotions — thanks to his dad, something Lilah didn’t know about yet — and what Lilah had told us went way beyond basic.
“What have you been talking about?”
“About what to do next,” I said.
She met my gaze, her forehead still tipped to mine. “And? What’s the verdict?”
“The verdict?” I looked into her eyes and swore to myself I would go to the ends of the earth to fix this, to make sure she was okay, that she was allowed to live the life she deserved. “The verdict is Greece.”