Chapter 2 #2
I didn’t.
“Three months after you and I gave up, he was still trying. Still leaving voicemails.” Lucas shakes his head. “I found him one night, sitting in his truck outside the post office at two in the morning. He’d written her another letter. Couldn’t decide whether to send it.”
“Did he?”
“No. He threw it away.” Lucas takes a sip of tea. “That was when he finally stopped.”
I think about Nate. Stoic, steady Nate, who never talks about his feelings, who shows love through actions instead of words. Sitting alone in his truck with a letter he couldn’t send.
We’ve all been carrying this for ten years. We just carry it differently.
“I should get some sleep too,” I say.
Lucas nods. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
He’s not wrong.
My room is dark and quiet. Through the wall, I can hear Lucas still moving around. Probably organizing something. He does that when he can’t sleep.
On my other side, Nate’s room is silent. But I’d bet money he’s awake too.
I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling.
We built this house together. Nate and I started it those first few years after she left, when we needed something to do with our hands besides check our phones. Lucas joined us when he came back from residency two years ago, slotting into the room we’d left empty for him like no time had passed.
Four bedrooms total. One for each of us.
And one sitting empty at the end of the hall.
Cozy room. Big windows, but with blackout curtains so she could make it dark whenever she needed. Window seat for reading. Soft lamps, because omegas need that for nesting. Built-in shelves along one wall for blankets and pillows. A bed big enough for four.
We built it to be her nest. Nate researched what omegas need — spent weeks on it, wouldn’t let us help until he had it perfect.
He designed the whole layout. Lucas picked out the lighting, the soft colors.
And I planted a garden outside that window.
Roses and lavender and all the flowers I knew she loved, so she’d wake up to color every morning.
We never talk about it. The door’s been closed for years. Sometimes I walk past and my hand reaches for the knob before I catch myself. Old habits. Muscle memory from a future that never happened.
Nine years since we finished that room. It was the first thing we built, that first year after she left. We were so sure she was coming back. So certain that any day now, she’d need a nest. Need us.
The roses are still there, blooming every summer for no one.
I wonder what she’d think if she saw it. If she’d understand what it meant. That we built her a room in a house she’d never seen, in a future she’d already walked away from.
That window seat. Nate was so sure about it.
And suddenly I’m back there.
Sophomore year. Spring. I’m sixteen and completely, hopelessly gone for Cara Donovan.
She’s on the porch swing with that romance novel she’s read a hundred times. Dog-eared pages, cracked spine, quotes she’s underlined in pencil. I don’t understand how she can read the same book over and over.
“Because I already know it ends happy,” she told me once. “Sometimes you need to know it ends happy.”
I’m supposed to be planting roses along the back fence. Grandma Eileen hired me for the summer. Ten bucks an hour, lemonade breaks, and unlimited access to her granddaughter. Best job I’ve ever had.
But I keep getting distracted. Cara in her sundress, bare feet tucked under her, afternoon light catching the honey tones in her hair. Her scent drifting across the yard every time the breeze shifts. Sweet citrus and something warm underneath that makes my chest tight.
I’m so far gone it’s embarrassing.
I force myself to focus on the roses. Dig the hole. Place the roots. Fill it in. Don’t look at her. Don’t think about how she laughs. Don’t think about the way she says your name.
“You’re staring at that rose like it owes you money.”
I look up. She’s standing right there, holding a glass of lemonade, condensation dripping down her fingers. When did she get so close?
“Brought you a drink,” she says. “You’ve been out here for hours.”
I stand up, brushing dirt off my jeans. I’ve grown over the winter, finally taller than her, which she pretends to be annoyed about. From up here, I can see the freckles across her nose. The way her lips curve when she’s trying not to smile.
“Thanks.” I take the glass. Our fingers brush. I try very hard to be cool about it.
“You have dirt on your nose,” she says.
“I always have dirt on my nose.”
“I know.” She reaches up and brushes it away. Her touch is soft. Lingering. “You always have dirt somewhere. I think the earth just likes you.”
“The earth likes me?”
“You make things grow.” She shrugs, but her cheeks are pink. “That’s special.”
Something shifts in my chest. I set the lemonade down on the fence post.
“Cara—”
“You have more dirt,” she says. “On your cheek.”
I probably do. I always do. She’s reaching for my face again, and I catch her wrist, gently, carefully, and press my cheek against her palm.
She laughs. “Theo!”
“What?” I rub my face against her hand, smearing garden dirt across her fingers. “You said I had dirt.”
“Now I have dirt!”
“We match.”
She’s laughing harder now, trying to pull away but not really trying. I catch her other hand and press it to my other cheek, my muddy fingers leaving prints on her wrists.
“Theo Holt, you are the worst—”
“The worst what?”
She stops laughing. We’re standing so close. Her hands on my face, my hands around her wrists, both of us breathing a little too fast.
“The worst distraction,” she whispers. “I can’t think when you’re around.”
“Good.” I lean down. Press my forehead to hers. “I can’t think when you’re around either.”
I kiss her. The way I’ve kissed her a dozen times now, but somehow this one feels different. Like we’re on the edge of something.
She kisses me back.
When we pull apart, she’s smiling. That real smile, the one that makes her whole face light up.
“I love you,” she says.
The world stops.
I’ve imagined her saying it. Dreamed about it. But hearing it out loud, standing in her grandmother’s garden with dirt on my hands and her taste on my lips—
“I love you too.” My voice cracks on the words. I don’t care. “Cara, I love you so much it’s stupid.”
She laughs. Watery, happy. “Stupid?”
“The stupidest. I can’t even plant roses without thinking about you. That’s how bad it is.”
“That is pretty bad.”
“Told you.”
She pulls me down and kisses me again. Longer this time. Deeper. Her fingers in my hair, dirt and all. My arms around her waist, pulling her close.
When we finally break apart, I’m grinning like an idiot.
“So,” I say. “Same time tomorrow? For the gardening?”
She laughs and kisses the dirt off my nose.
“Same time tomorrow.”
I press the heels of my hands against my eyes.
That was twelve years ago. I was sixteen and so sure about everything. Sure about her, sure about us, sure that nothing could ever come between us.
I was wrong about a lot of things back then.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand.
Nate: Stop overthinking. I can hear it through the wall.
Me: You can’t hear thinking.
Nate: I can hear YOU thinking. It’s very loud.
Lucas: He’s right. Your silence has a specific quality.
Me: Can’t sleep either?
Nate: No.
Lucas: No.
We sit with that for a moment. Three alphas in three separate rooms, all staring at our ceilings, all thinking about the same person.
Lucas: What are we going to do?
Nate: What we said. Keep our distance. Don’t engage.
Me: And if she tries to talk to us?
Nate: We walk away.
Lucas: Can we actually do that?
Nobody responds right away. Because we all know the answer is probably no.
Nate: We have to try.
Me: Yeah.
Lucas: Yeah.
Lucas: At least we’re disasters together.
Nate: Pack motto.
Me: Goodnight, disasters.
Nate: Goodnight.
Lucas: Goodnight.
I put my phone down and close my eyes.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll probably see her at the grocery store or the Honey Crumb. And I’m supposed to walk away. Keep my distance. Not engage.
I can do that. I can ignore Cara Donovan.
Probably.
Maybe.
The snow has stopped, I realize. The silence outside is complete. That particular hush that only happens after a storm, when the whole world is buried in white and waiting for morning.
She’s half a mile away right now. Lying in her childhood bedroom. Maybe staring at her ceiling too.
Does she think about us? Does she ever wonder what happened to the three boys she left behind?
Does she regret it?
I don’t know. I’ve spent ten years not knowing, and the not-knowing is almost worse than any answer could be.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to pretend she doesn’t exist. Pretend seeing her doesn’t make my chest crack open. Pretend I don’t still love her after everything.
God, I hope I’m strong enough to walk away.