Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Harry
Flashback
“ I’ll let you think about it,” Richard had said, “and see whether witnessing the pain of her discovering the truth makes you feel better than maintaining the lie.”
Well, I’ve been fucking thinking about it. For months.
I’ve thought about it, tortured myself for so long about it, that it’s now fucking spring.
And I’m going to tell her, consequences be damned.
“Do you really think she’ll believe the words of a nothing stranger?”
But even if that were true, I’ll be able to witness firsthand whether she remembers me – remembers us. Remembers what we had that night.
There’s no toying with nerves tonight as I walk up the familiar driveway leading to the brick house. No cars. No signs of life from the inside other than the light from her bedroom window.
I glance up. Through the narrow gap in the curtains I see her. Back turned, she brushes her hair.
She walks forwards, disappearing from my line of sight.
From being here enough times, I know the side gate is never locked. I slide through the narrow gap, careful not to let the gate scrape the brick. Gravel crunches underneath my feet as I make my way round the side of the house.
As I near the concrete patio, I slip off my shoes, not risking the police potentially discovering the make, model, and size in their attempt to track me down. I slip my hand underneath the doormat and retrieve the key, using it to slip through the back door.
I creep through the hallway until I reach the staircase.
At the top of the stairs, the door to Jack’s room is just as he left it.
Closed.
Untouched.
She hasn’t gone in there for five years. Maria hasn’t either. No one has. I know because I’ve asked around. Casually.
The floorboards creak under my weight. I freeze and wait – but there are no footsteps. No one’s breath but my own. If she’s eager enough to discover the truth, then she’ll find me here. Waiting.
I slip into Jack’s room, deliberately leaving the door ajar.
The room smells faintly stale, a fine layer of dust on everything, owing to the fact no one has dared step in here since he was alive. Everything is as he left it – the screwed-up sheets, the dirty laundry shoved in the corner, every part of him written all over the room.
Posters curl slightly at the edges with age. A stack of old books that’ll never be read sits propped in the corner. It’s the kind of room that looks lived in but isn’t.
I stand there letting the grief bleed out of me silently.
I miss my best friend.
Worse, I envy him. Jack always had her without even trying.
I’m going to tell her about everything. Richard. The truth about her brother. That night she melted into me like she didn’t belong anywhere else—
I hear the sound of her footsteps. Slow and careful, stopping just outside.
Her shadow stretches into the room under the hallway light.
She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t ask who’s inside.
She hesitates, as if common sense is telling her to flee.
And still, she doesn’t run.
I hear the hitch of her breath. She’s on the cusp of breaking her silence, but then her fingers curl round the doorknob, twisting it slightly.
That’s it.
Come closer.
It’s at the front of my mind, the memory of her saying our kiss was the realest thing she’d ever felt.
How her face lit up when she said Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet was her favourite.
The way she panicked with the worry her parents might wake up.
How her face is ingrained in my memory even though it shouldn’t be.
She pushes open the door, her eyes finding me instantly.
“You were mine, if only for a night,” I want to say. “I remember everything you told me.”
I want to tell her everything – but I don’t.
Our gazes lock, and all the words I rehearsed turn to ash.
Because in her stare, I see her searching. And not finding.
None of what I planned matters.
Because now, she’s looking at me like I’m a stranger.
Yet her eyes don’t widen. She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t even blink.
And I know now I can’t say a word.
Can’t break her heart. Can’t give her the answers she seeks. Can’t ruin her perception of everything she thinks she knows. Can’t tell her there was once an us.
I’m not hurting anyone now – not hurting her.
I’m just seeing her one last time. Just for one more minute.
She looks at me with a sense of familiarity I don’t even think she’s aware of. I watch the thought form in her: a flicker of recognition, a twinge of curiosity, fear, or maybe memory. It lives in her eyes. But neither of us move or speak.
She stands there framed in shadow like something from a fever dream. And maybe I’m the same to her, familiar in a way that hurts to question.
As she steps fully into the room … I step back.
She stands there in the moonlight dressed in an oversized T-shirt and socks. Her smooth hair tumbles down her shoulders, freshly brushed.
We stare at each other, her in the light, me in the darkness. For a moment, I don’t think either of us breathe.
Yet there’s something … unspoken between us.
Like we already said everything once.
Her eyes trail over me as if she’s trying to place me in a life she doesn’t recall.
She deserves a normal life, and perhaps I’ll regret for the rest of mine that I didn’t tell her all the answers she deserves to know.
She doesn’t stop me, but she watches me go.
I reach the bedroom window, my fingers curling round the frame. I turn back to look at her.
She watches me, eyes full of questions I don’t answer. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Then she tilts her head, and I see it. A flicker of intrigue beneath all that confusion.
Her gaze follows me into the dark as I leave through the window.
And still, neither of us says a word.