Chapter 24
Rhett
I open my mouth to ask what she’s put inside this book, but she’s already gone, disappearing upstairs, leaving me down here with what feels like much more than just a book in my hands. The book she clearly, from day one, didn’t want me to read, but is adamant that I now need to read.
I’m frustrated with this whole situation. I wish she could see that by not allowing myself to get wrapped up in my feelings for her right now, I’m not trying to hurt, but to instead protect.
To protect her at all costs.
Even if the cost is me.
I stand at the bottom of the stairs and almost go after her, but her bedroom door clicks shut, and I know that going up there would probably do more damage than good.
I spin on my heels and take in the sight of the empty room. Already wishing I’d been able to pull my head out of my ass just now, instead of fueling some stupid fire with that argument.
The dinner’s still untouched on the counter.
I wrap everything up and put it in the fridge for later, just in case, then take her book to the screened-in sunroom off the kitchen.
During the day, the room overlooks the lake.
But with a full moon hanging up in the sky like it was painted there tonight, I can still make out the outline of the trees and the water reflecting right beneath it.
A few rain clouds have started opening, gently drizzling beyond the porch, but it’s still bright enough behind me with the light flooding in from the kitchen that I’ll be able to see every last word on the page.
I sink into one of the weathered, yellow chairs, grabbing a blanket off the back.
Rain hits the tin roof above, then slides off in a trickle toward the ground, already pooling in a long line from the gutters overhead that have seen better days.
I lift the book, and my head spins.
It’s almost embarrassing, cracking this open now, when I should have read one of these to the end a long time ago.
Bailey’s writing is undeniably beautiful and poetic, but so deeply vulnerable that to me, the last time I tried, it was almost like reading an open letter in Bailey’s voice, telling me about everything she’d experienced since I left.
Made to be fiction, sure, but I can’t imagine writing the way she does without experiencing any of it firsthand.
Those few chapters I’d gotten through a few years ago weren’t easy for me to read, but I should have pushed through for no other reason than to support her, and to keep getting to know her with each release as the years passed between us, but I didn’t.
I settle in, flipping the pages until I reach the prologue . . . and my next breath catches at that very first line:
For me, the lake was never about the wild-edged, waterfront town that brought us back each summer.
I swallow, heart thumping in my chest, and speed read the next few lines until I get to a spot that makes me freeze, and I backtrack, reading all the same lines twice.
Surrounded in powdered sugar sand mixed with stardust from a meteor that had deepened the lakebed there a million years ago, our lake was always one part legend and one part magic. But for me? It was always about one thing and one thing only.
Him.
He was the biggest reason I missed everything about that place when we weren’t there the remaining nine months of the year.
By the time I finish those lines again, all the air has squeezed out of my lungs.
It can’t be. But it is.
I can’t think of another reason why she wouldn’t want me to read this until now. I keep reading:
I can’t recall a single day there without remembering the way his eyes would always find mine, no matter what we were doing — crystal clear and as blue as the sky overhead.
We’d grown up sharing secrets without needing any words since the language we all used was as old as our tradition to return — just stares, glares, jokes, and laughter that echoed through the trees like the wind itself.
He was the mid-year anchor of my summers growing up, like the chorus of our favorite song breaking out halfway through.
I could have written the same thing about her.
Those green eyes of hers would always find mine, too. No matter what we were doing or where we were going, Bailey’s shadow echoed my own in every possible way each summer we were here.
I can’t believe she wrote a whole book about it.
She’d said her books were all fiction, but inspired by reality. And the reality of this one has me — it has us — written all over it.
I can hardly breathe, but I keep on reading.
I read for hours, unable to put it down. Eventually, I grab a pen, writing notes in the margins and bending the corners of pages I want to go back and read at least twice more once I’m done.
By the time I get to the end, I’ve earmarked nearly every page. Feeling gutted but full of so much more than when I started. I know I’ve never known this version of Bailey before tonight. And I’m not sure how I ever missed that it was there.