Chapter 13
Henry
My gruff declaration forces Venus to backstep, her hands fondling her bracelets with familiar agitation.
But she doesn’t run.
She spilled her soul tonight, cut herself open, and laid herself, gutted, before me with honesty and vulnerability, feelings that, frankly, I came to believe her incapable of expressing. After she was gone, anger filled the gaping hole she left behind, crowding out what I once adored about her.
I forgot how loving she could be.
How funny.
How protective.
I forgot how hard she tried to contain her feelings so that they wouldn’t betray her.
I forgot her.
Instead, my defenses kicked in, deeming her cold and heartless for leaving me.
She’s neither cold nor heartless. She never was. I’m angry at myself for getting her so wrong, and pissed that she didn’t give me a chance to get it right.
She stands under the lamplight, her eyes and dress sparkling, and I’m caught in this awful battle between wanting this to be over and never wanting it to end.
“Whatever you need to say to me,” she says after a beat, “go ahead. Tell me.”
“I’m not okay, Venus. I understand why you did it, but it still hurts. You say you’re cursed because you fear commitment. I crave commitment, and can’t have it. My relationships crash and burn because they aren’t… well, they aren’t you.”
Her brow pinches with my confession. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but it’s the truth. And my last chance to say it.
She nods, encouraging me to continue even as her green eyes glint with building tears.
“… I’ve been with other people, obviously.
I have a son I wouldn’t trade for anything.
I tried so hard to love his mother the way she deserved.
I wanted us to be a family. That didn’t work.
No one has worked. Damn, Venus, you’re the smart one.
Why can’t I let you go? That’s what I should want. That would make it better.”
“I understand.” She nods, catching tears as soon as they slip from her eyes. “I feel it, too. It’s because we’re unfinished. We never even… that’s the problem, Henry.”
“How do we fix it?”
Her brows knit studiously as she considers the question, though I meant it rhetorically. There is no fixing us. We’re the past. Not the future. With Olly, my career, and now the museum, my cast is set, and Venus would be the last woman on earth to mold herself to it, not that I’d want her to try.
It’s like Dr. Blake told me when he found me passed out drunk in the greenhouse after she left, and I’d destroyed the remains of the herb garden we’d started in our corner bed.
He sat with me, made me drink a lot of water, and said, “Venus is a sunflower who believes she’s a cactus. I’m sorry, son.”
Nothing he said then made sense to me.
Not that she’d left.
Not that she’d been struggling.
Not that it might be a long time before she returned.
And not that she didn’t want to talk to me.
At that moment, I didn’t give a fuck about sunflowers or cacti. All I wanted then was for her to sneak into my bedroom, curl against me, and apologize for prom by whispering, “My bad,” from Clueless. That would’ve been enough for me.
But you can’t tell someone what they are—I see it now.
This unwitting sunflower bobs on her boots, looking desperate and believing she’s too prickly to love, oblivious to how much I long for her.
Still. She fiddles with her jewelry, one hand and then the other, and her cheeks flush with her rising nerves.
How do you tell the most intelligent, confounding, beautiful, brave woman you’ve ever met that she let fear get in our way?
That she didn’t trust me? That she didn’t give us a chance?
“I have an idea,” she says, breathless.
Pages of memories flip through my thoughts, all the times those four words led us to something great, all the times they landed us in trouble. I wonder which it will be this time.
I have an idea… let’s build a lean-to and test it in the storm.
I have an idea… let’s start a controlled burn.
I have an idea… let’s hide all of Dale’s ashtrays.
I have an idea… let’s—
“Let’s fix it by finishing it.”
“What do you mean?”
“One night together,” she blurts, while her soft green eyes darken and flicker with hope.
“We deserve a more satisfactory ending. We could get each other out of our systems and move on to an amicable closure. It would end some of the mystery and satiate this constant yearning for what might have been. We could stop idealizing each other. Or, better yet, we might discover that we aren’t as compatible as we imagined, making our dissolution easier.
It’s one thing that we never did that we still could without adding complications. ”
“Since when is sex uncomplicated?”
She sighs softly. “Why does it have to be?”
“Says the girl who ran the two times we came close,” I say with an unintentional scoff.
She slumps slightly, and perhaps it’s unfair to bring up memories from so long ago.
But those two times are branded into me, too beautiful and upsetting to let go. Big feelings made her run the first time, when curiosity took our friendship to a new level.
She ran again later that year when we tailgated at the Fort Fisher Rock Wall.
I’d hoped for a beautiful sunset, and the sky delivered with hazy shades of red, orange, blue, and purple.
I wanted to ask her to the prom, but I got nervous and rambled on about the Corps of Engineers’ construction of the rock wall in 1865 to improve river navigation.
This prompted her to tell me about the unforeseen environmental impacts, particularly the creation of the greatest salt marsh on the East Coast. She went on to elaborate on the algae, mosses, and vegetation along the banks.
My prom question quickly got away from me.
It evaded me again when we started making out.
With her straddling me on the tailgate, her long hair creating a curtain around our faces, I fit the question in between kisses. “Go to prom with me. It’s dressy and silly, I know… but I want to be dressy and silly with you. I want you by my side. Normal couple things, you know?”
Breathless, she gaped at me, her eyes sparkling in the moonlight and her expression hopeful. But then, a shadow fell over her. “I. I wanna see how far I can go. On the rocks.”
She ran away, thrusting us into that night like we were fated to be tested. A test we passed and failed at the same time.
“I promise, I won’t run,” she says now, eyes locked on mine. “Do you… I mean, would you… Do you find me desirable, Henry?”
“Yes, of course. But it’s not that simple,” I argue, growing more frustrated, if that’s possible.
“I promise simplicity. No big feelings, no attachments, no more than one night.”
“No, it’s been an emotional day. We shouldn’t be making decisions like this.”
“This isn’t me being impulsive.” She glances at her feet.
“It’s just one of your wilder ideas.”
She shrugs lightly, her bracelets clattering as she moves. “Is it? Doesn’t feel wild to me. Or impulsive. How can it be impulsive when it’s what I’ve always wanted?”
Her words stun me, especially always, and I can’t stop myself from saying, “It’s what I’ve always wanted, too.”
A tiny smile slips up her cheeks. “Then, what do you say?”
“I don’t know what to say,” I admit. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
She steps forward, close enough that the tips of her boots and my sneakers meet. “Tell me to go, then. Tell me you never want to see me again, and I’ll stay away forever.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “I’m not… I can’t say that to you.”
She inches closer, resting her hand on my chest. “Then, reject me at least. Push me away. Tell me you don’t want me. Give me back some of the pain I’ve caused you.”
“No,” I say sternly. “We’ve hurt each other enough already.”
“Then, let’s make each other feel good for a change.” Her fingertips graze my chest, even the softest touch making me ache for more.
“Fuck, Venus,” I breathe out, hands slipping up her bare arms, unable to stop myself.
“We need this. It’s one night to end so many others. One night to end the sleepless nights I still have, thinking of you. One night to end the agony of a thousand what-ifs. It would give us a final chapter to our story. That’s all.”
I long for a better end to our story, too. She’s not the only one with sleepless nights and relentless what-ifs. Every second of wanting her, every moment we came close, every time I felt her absence—I have wanted Venus Blake since… always.
The first time I made her smile released butterflies in my stomach. Every smile since has done the same, a rare gift reserved only for me.
Latching onto her during the storm at eight years old felt like finding where I belonged. With her. Before I even understood wanting, I wanted her.
I have wanted her. Craved her. Yearned for her like breath in my lungs. And like my breath, I know what it’s like to be without her.
Now she’s offering herself up like a gift, wrapped in a prom dress—a gift I’m dying to unwrap.
Eyes locked on mine, she leans closer, her chest heaving against her tight bodice, pressing against mine.
Goosebumps erupt on her arms as my fingers slide up and down them, and I swear she gasps when I delicately graze her shoulder and the daisies on her upper breast. Her fingers curl over my shirt, pulling me tighter against her, and I’m sure she can feel my excitement through her clothes, even the full skirt of her dress.
Her hand trembles over my heart and holds it there, perhaps waiting for me to move it.
I clasp it in mine instead, pressing it to my racing heart.
I’m breathless, but in the best way. “This feels… like a game we can’t win.”
“Play anyway. Be with me, Henry.” Her lips part in a breath that waves through a loose strand of her hair.
“One night.” I breathe against her lips.