Chapter 64 Beckett
Cody comes out of the lake house at ten-thirty.
He looks like a man who just put something down that he's been carrying for a long time. Not lighter exactly — you don't get lighter from those kinds of conversations, you just get different. Reorganized. Like the weight shifted from one place to another and the new place makes more sense.
He stops in front of me.
I'm leaning against the hood of my car, where I've been since eight this morning.
"Your turn," Cody says.
I nod.
He gets in my car and puts the seat back.
He closes his eyes, and he's asleep in four minutes.
I stand there and look at Cody Ravenshaw.
The asshole who I helped put in a hospital bed, who I watched fall apart in a waiting room, who stood outside a girl's dorm because he didn't know how to leave her alone.
He's a disaster.
But he loves her.
And because he can sleep right now, I wonder if she loves him back.
If she does, I don’t stand a fucking chance. Do I?
When I open the door, she's at the window that overlooks the lake. She's standing with her back to me, her arms crossed, and her hair down.
She doesn't turn around when she hears the door.
I don't say anything yet. I go to the kitchen and find the coffee. I pour two cups, and I put one on the counter beside her.
She picks it up as I lean against the counter and watch her.
She looks tired.
"Is Cody okay?" she asks, and I’m a bit thrown by the question.
"He’s asleep in my car."
Something moves across her face. Not quite a smile. The ghost of one. "He always could sleep anywhere."
Shit, she still loves him.
"Yeah."
Silence falls around us, and I’m not sure how the fuck to go about this, but what I do know is that the time I had with her wasn’t enough.
"Beck," she says, turning around. She looks at me across the kitchen with those eyes that have always done something to me that I've never fully been able to understand.
"You played me the entire time," she says.
I stay quiet because it’s not the full truth.
"And I felt so much guilt for sleeping with you because you’re Cody’s teammate, but then––" She stops. "I find out it was all an agenda. Was any of it real?”
"Yes.”
She glares at me like it was a rhetorical question.
"No,” she says. “I’m being so fucking serious, Beck. Did any of it mean anything?" Her voice is stripped down to its core. "Or was I just—"
"It meant something," I say.
She looks at me.
"It was real for me," I say. "None of it was fake."
She looks at her coffee. "Then explain to me why it feels like you used me?"
"Because of what it looks like,” I admit. “And I get what it looks like, but––” I run a hand through my hair. “I was never supposed to sleep with you.”
She looks up.
"I told you about a girl once," I say. "In your dorm room. You asked me about being in love, and I told you I met her at a tough time. But I knew the first time I saw her, I had to have her."
She's very still.
"That wasn't someone from high school," I say.
I look at her face.
She's already there. I can see her getting there.
"Beck," she says quietly.
"It was you," I say. "In that hallway, kissing your––” I fly my hands in the air because I can’t talk shit about Cody now. It’s obvious that she still loves him, and I’m no better than he is.
“Your boyfriend and I thought I would never treat you…fuck.” I put my head in my hands.
“It doesn’t matter. I’m not trying to make excuses.
We promised to give you the entire truth. ”
She looks at me for a long time.
And when I look up at her as I drop my hands, her eyes are wet.
“I don’t know what to say,” she says softly.
I put my coffee down on the counter.
"I'm sorry.”
Two words.
Everything I have.
I can’t fucking stand the distance any longer, so I take four big steps towards her and pull her into a hug. I wrap my arms around her and hold her the way I have always held her — carefully, completely, without agenda — and I feel her exhale against me.
She doesn’t pull away, so that has to mean something.
“You felt like my safe space through the hardest time in my life.”
I cup her face now. “I’m still that same person.”
Her eyes search mine, and then she drops her head onto my chest and says, “I hate to say this, but I’m not that mad at you. I’m pissed off, but there are two people I’m more upset with right now.”
I rest my head on top of hers and soak in those words. She’s not that mad at me. I can live with that.
She pulls away and inhales, “I want to get this over with. Will you –– send Theo in?”
I swallow the lump in my throat, and I pull away.
She’s kicking me out.
I reach into my back pocket that Theo told me to give to her, and I place the folded piece of paper on the counter beside her coffee mug without a word.
She looks at it, then at me.
I turn around and start to leave.
"Beck."
I halt.
"Thank you," she says.
I nod and walk to my car, open the passenger door, and Cody is still reclined in the seat with his eyes closed, his arms crossed, and his jaw loose.
I’m her safe place.
I like the sound of that.