Chapter Twenty-One
Lucy
Heathcliff stands on the moors like a storm given flesh.
The wind tears across the hills, wild and merciless, whipping my hair into my face as though it wants to blind me. The sky churns overhead—slate and silver, restless and bruised—and Wuthering Heights rises in the distance like a warning.
“You don’t belong here,” Heathcliff says, his voice gravelly and carved from thunder.
The words hit deeper than they should.
Because he isn’t speaking to Catherine.
He’s speaking to me.
I feel it in my bones. That aching pull toward something intense and consuming. The kind of love that devours. The kind that doesn’t ask permission before it wrecks you. Heathcliff’s eyes are dark and furious and desperate all at once, and I understand why Catherine couldn’t look away.
There’s something magnetic about destruction when it calls itself devotion.
But I am not Catherine.
And this is not my story.
The wind howls louder, tugging at my coat, trying to drag me toward him. Toward the house. Toward a love that burns instead of comforts. My chest aches. Not from romance, but from recognition.
I know this kind of love well.
I’ve read it a hundred times.
“You don’t belong here,” Heathcliff repeats.
And suddenly the words shift.
They aren’t about the moors.
They’re about being left behind.
The sky darkens. The ground beneath my feet feels unstable, like it might give way at any second. I imagine watching someone I love walk toward a horizon that doesn’t include me. I imagine loving someone whose world keeps getting bigger while mine stays the same.
The wind presses harder.
“Lucy.”
The voice is faint at first, distant and wrong in this world of wind and ruin.
“Lucy.”
Heathcliff’s figure flickers at the edges, like ink bleeding through wet paper. The moors blur. The house dissolves.
“Lucy.”
This time the voice is steady. Real.
Mom.
The storm breaks apart like pages ripped from a book, and I’m back in my bedroom, breath shallow, the dim light soft instead of violent. Wuthering Heights rests open on my comforter, my fingers still curled against the margin as if I’d been clinging to it.
The silence is almost startling.
I force my hands to unclench.
There’s something about stories like this that fascinates me. The way love is portrayed as inevitable and catastrophic. As if the greater the suffering, the greater the devotion. As if being consumed is the same thing as being cherished.
But that’s not what I have with Dylan.
With him, there are no storms. No cliffs. No threats of ruin.
There are quiet horror movies on my parents’ couch. There are laser tag wristbands and grilled cheese at midnight. There are hands held under restaurant tables and whispered I-love-you’s in the dark.
It isn’t consuming.
It’s calm.
And maybe that’s what scares me.
Because even steady love still has the power to leave.
“Lucy? Are you in here?”
Mom’s voice floats in through the cracked door.
I push the book closed and run my hand over the cover, tracing the embossed lettering. Heathcliff and Catherine loved like a hurricane. Dylan and I… we love like something built brick by brick.
“Yeah, Mom,” I call back. “I’m here.”
The door creaks open, and she steps inside, sweater sleeves pushed to her wrists, a determined smile on her face. She looks better than she did at the hospital, but exhaustion still shadows her eyes. A reminder that life doesn’t pause just because love feels overwhelming.
“What’s going on?” she asks, sitting on the edge of my bed. “You’ve been in here for hours.”
“I was reading,” I say, glancing at the book. “It’s… intense.”
Mom laughs gently. “You always did like the dramatic ones.”
Maybe I do.
Or maybe I’m trying to understand something before it happens to me.
She rests her hand over mine. “I wanted to talk about Thanksgiving.”
There it is.
The real storm.
I twist the edge of my blanket between my fingers.
“I actually needed to talk to you about that,” I say quietly.
Because this year, for the first time in my life, I won’t be here.
And the thought of leaving—of choosing someone else’s home over this one—feels bigger than it should.
Bigger than a holiday.
Bigger than a plane ticket.
It feels like stepping off the moors and trusting the ground won’t crumble beneath me.
Her brow pulls together, not in anger, but in that quiet, maternal way that means she already senses something shifting.
“What’s going on, Lucy?”
I inhale slowly, like I’m about to step into cold water.
“Dylan invited me to Dallas for Thanksgiving. To meet his mom. And… I said yes.”
The words sit between us, fragile and irreversible.
For a heartbeat, her face gives nothing away. She studies me the way she used to when I’d come home from a rough day at school pretending I hadn’t cried in the bathroom, measuring what I’m saying against what I’m not.
“You’re going to Dallas,” she repeats evenly.
I nod. “I know it’s sudden. And I’ve never missed Thanksgiving. Not once. But… it feels important.” My voice softens. “He wants me to meet his family. And I—I love him.”
There it is. Not dramatic. Not stormy like Catherine and Heathcliff. Just honest.
Mom’s eyes glisten at the corners before she reaches for my hand. Her grip is gentle and familiar.
“I know you love him,” she says. “I see it every time he walks through that door.” She pauses. “I just didn’t expect this so soon.”
“I didn’t mean to spring it on you.”
“I’m proud of you,” she says. “And I’m going to miss you terribly. Those things can both be true.”
My shoulders loosen for the first time since she entered the room. I didn’t realize how tightly I’d been bracing for disappointment.
“Dylan’s practice schedule means we might not leave until late Wednesday.”
Mom nods. “Your first flight.”
“I’m going to miss you and Dad,” I whisper.
“Maybe it’s time you started building some traditions of your own.”
Building my own traditions.
For most of my life, my world has been small in the best possible way. The same neighborhood. The same bookstore. The same kitchen table where Dad reads the newspaper and Mom hums while she cooks.
I’ve always loved the safety of that.
But maybe loving Dylan means letting my world grow wider.
Not abandoning what I have here, just carrying it with me into whatever comes next.
The thought is equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
“I guess it is,” I say.
She brushes a strand of hair behind my ear like she’s done since I was five. “Now tell me about this trip. What’s his mom like? Have you actually spoken to her, or have you just imagined her in your head like one of your characters?”
I laugh, tension easing out of my shoulders. “I’ve emailed her. She’s… brilliant. Funny. Kind. A little intimidating.”
“That sounds about right for the woman who managed to arrange your love life through email,” she teases.
We talk for a while after that. About flights, about what to wear, about whether I should bring a gift. When she finally leaves my room, I feel steadier. Not fearless. But steadier.
The future still feels like an unfinished sentence. Dylan wants to go pro. And me? I haven’t figured out what I want to do with my life the way he has.
I love writing, but I still don’t know whether that means graduate school, teaching, publishing, or trying to finish a book of my own.
I could dwell on it. Consult my books for answers. Instead, I decide to text Dylan.
Can we talk?
Waiting feels almost unbearable.
When my phone finally buzzes, I jump as his name lights up the screen. He’s calling.
“Hey, Luce,” he says when I answer. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I lie softly, then exhale. “I just… needed to talk.”
“I figured,” he says gently. “What’s on your mind?”
I hesitate, staring at the ceiling as if the answers might be written there. “Thanksgiving,” I say finally. “And everything after.”
He’s quiet, listening. Giving me space.
“I’m excited I’m going with you,” I say. “But I’m scared, too. Not about meeting your mom. About what happens after college. If football takes you somewhere else, I don’t know where that leaves us.”
Dylan is quiet for a moment. “I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
“You have?”
“More than I should.” He exhales. “I don’t know where I’ll be next year, Lucy. And I don’t know what you’ll want after graduation. But I don’t want either of us making promises now that we might resent later.”
I trace a loose thread along the blanket. “I can’t promise to follow you wherever you go.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
The answer comes so quickly that I stop moving.
“I want you in my future,” he continues. “But I don’t expect you to erase your own plans to fit inside mine.”
“I don’t even know what my plans are.”
“Then we start there.”
A tear slips down my cheek before I can stop it.
“What would you choose if football wasn’t part of the question?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Writing, maybe. Graduate school. Teaching. I haven’t figured it out.”
“That’s okay. You don’t have to figure it out tonight.”
“What happens if what I need and what you need aren’t the same?”
“Then we tell each other the truth.” His voice is steady. “I can’t promise it’ll be easy, but I can promise I won’t make decisions about us without you.”
Suddenly, the unknown feels like something we are holding together instead of something I have to carry alone.
“I want that,” I whisper.
“So do I.”
“I love you,” I say, the words landing with both comfort and weight.
“I love you, too, Lucy,” he says.
There’s a beat of silence, then his tone shifts, mischief and affection threading through it. “You know,” he adds, “I keep thinking about the last time we were alone together.”
Heat rises to my cheeks before I can stop it. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah,” he says. “And I keep thinking about having you to myself again. Just us. No interruptions. No pressure.”
The memory sends an electric flutter through me. The closeness. The trust. The way everything else faded when it was just us.
“Soon,” I promise, smiling despite myself.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he says with a quiet laugh, affection woven into every word.
“Deal,” I whisper into the phone, feeling hopeful.