Epilogue
Hayden
I've been standing at the bottom of the stairs for three minutes.
Miles says it’s been five minutes, and I need to calm down. He’s wrong, and I feel him watching me like I’m about to either propose or pass out, and honestly at this point I'm not ruling either one out.
"She's coming," Autumn calls down from the top landing, and the smirk on her face tells me she's enjoying this more than she should be.
"Not helping," I tell her.
"I know." She disappears back around the corner.
I didn’t want to take anything away from Declan and Lileah because this is their prom, their time. So I made sure they both went with the whole fuss and photo shoot from mom, and Mason left with them to watch over Lileah while I’m here.
Mom is standing near the door with her phone already raised. I've told her twice not to make it a thing. She's going to make it a thing. I knew she was going to, but she’s smiling so I don't care.
I loosen my jaw. Take a breath and then I hear her.
Autumn saying something quiet I can't catch. Then Olivia appears at the top of the stairs and every single thought I've ever had in my entire life just stops.
The dress is deep green; I knew this color would look amazing on her. Floor length, fitted through the waist, with something soft around the shoulders that catches the light when she moves.
I asked Trixie months ago if she would help me make the perfect dress for her, and I have no idea, but Trixie knew what would be good for Olivia.
Green for the girl with big green eyes who sat under my tree house at ten years old and smiled at me with a gap in her teeth and changed my entire life without even knowing it.
She's looking at me.
I'm not moving.
I'm pretty sure I've forgotten how.
"Close your mouth," Miles says from somewhere behind me.
I don't close my mouth. I don't do anything.
I just stand there and look at her coming down the stairs toward me and I think, I've spent years being angry.
Years being hard. Years telling myself I didn't need her, didn't want her, had cut every single feeling I ever had for her clean out of my chest and buried it somewhere it couldn't touch me.
What a lie that was.
She reaches the bottom step and stops, one hand light on the banister, and she looks up at me with those eyes.
"You're staring," she says quietly.
"Yeah." I don't apologize for it.
The corner of her mouth lifts. "Is that all you've got?"
I reach out and take her hand off the banister, holding it in mine.
"You look—" I start, then stop, because nothing I say is going to be enough. "There are no words."
Mom moves a little, breaking my stare on Olivia.
"Picture," Mom says. "Don't fight me on this."
We don't fight her on it.
The venue is nothing like what mine was, this place is amazing.
Olivia walks in beside me and stops.
"Hayden." Her voice comes out carefully, like if she speaks too loud she might break whatever this is.
"Too much?"
She turns to look at me. "No." A beat. "It's perfect."
The room is loud and packed and smells like hairspray and cologne and the kind of nervous energy that fills a room when everyone in it is seventeen and certain that tonight is the most important night of their lives.
Olivia leans close to say something and I tilt my head down to catch it over the music, and she's laughing before she finishes the sentence, which means I get the laugh before I get the punchline, and it doesn't matter because I'd take the laugh over anything else in this room.
Around us it's everything a prom is supposed to be.
Groups of girls in every color, taking pictures with their phones held high.
Guys who look uncomfortable in suits they're only half wearing by now, jackets over the back of chairs, ties loosened.
The DJ is set up at the far end under lights that move across the dancefloor in slow blue and white sweeps, and the bass is loud enough that I feel it in my chest.
She catches me watching her. "What?"
"Nothing." I look away, and she shakes her head smiling, and I look back. "Just thinking, it should have been this the first time."
She doesn't say anything to that.
Someone bumps into our table on the way past, apologizes without stopping, and keeps moving. A group near the dancefloor erupts about something, loud and messy and seventeen. The DJ drops into something with more bass and half the room moves toward the floor.
Olivia's eyes follow them.
I watch her watching them, the way her head tilts slightly, the way she smiles at nothing, and I think this is what I wanted.
Not a private room. Not somewhere away from all of it.
This. The real thing. The noise and the lights and the too-warm air and her in the middle of it all where she was always supposed to be.
The song shifts. The DJ's voice comes low over the speakers, something about slowing it down, and the energy in the room changes.
The group near the floor reshuffles. Couples find each other.
The lights pull back to something softer, warmer, and the bass drops out and it's just a slow thing now, unhurried.
I look over at Declan dancing with Trixie, and they look so happy which makes me smile.
I look around for Lileah and smile when she’s dancing with one of her girlfriends, already knowing if it was a guy her whole night would be ruined, and that’s the last thing I want for her.
But she is laughing, laughing so much she wipes the tear away from laughing so much.
I push back my chair and hold out my hand.
She looks at it. Then up at me.
The dance floor is busy, and we find a space in the middle of it and she steps into me and fits there the way she always has. It’s like my body remembers her even when my head spent years trying to make it forget. Her hand in mine. Her cheek is close to my jaw, and she smells amazing.
We haven't spoken for a while.
We don't need to.
I feel her exhale slowly, and her hand tightens slightly where it rests against my chest.
"This is what it should have been," she says quietly.
"Yeah." My hand moves at her waist, pulling her an inch closer. "It is."
"I used to think about it," she says. "Prom. The night it was supposed to be. I used to think about it, and it would just..." She stops.
"I know." I do. I've done the same thing more times than I'd ever say out loud. "It's done now. That version of the night is done."
She tilts her head back to look at me, and we're close enough that I can see every fleck of green in her eyes above the soft sweep of the lights. I can see the way they've gone soft and certain all at once, and she says nothing, just looks at me.
"What?" I ask.
She shakes her head slowly. "I never stopped." Her voice is barely above the music. "Loving you. I never stopped. Not once. Not even when I tried." A small breath. "I've always loved you, Hayden."
I stop moving.
Not because I'm surprised. I knew. Somewhere in the part of me that never fully let her go, I knew.
"I love you," I say against her lips. "I’ve always loved you. I think I loved you at the treehouse that first day and just didn't have a word for it yet."
Her eyes go bright, and I catch the moment she blinks to stop it going further.
I pull her back in, and she comes, and I rest my chin on the top of her head, and we move slowly while everything around us keeps going.
But this is ours.
I hold her like I should have held her the first time, like I knew then what I know now. That there is no version of my life that works without her in it. That every road I took, that wasn't toward her, was a road I had to come back from.
Once I thought she took my life from me.
I thought she broke me.
I thought she hurt me.
I thought the one person I never thought would burn me, was the one who lit the match.
But here's what I didn't know then.
The venom doesn't kill me.
The anger was real. The years were real. The damage was real.
So was she.
So was the love I spent a year trying to bury, because burying it was easier than admitting that the one person who broke me was also the only one who made me feel like I didn't have to be anything other than exactly what I was.
I thought she lit the match.
Turns out she just showed me what was already burning.
THE END
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