CHAPTER FIVE #3
My feet froze on the spot the moment the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen turned to face me, her dark eyes meeting mine for a fraction of a second before that smile fell to the ground at her feet.
Brows as dark as her hair drew together as she stopped talking to the person she was with—another woman about her age—and she tipped her head, a question written clearly on her face, waiting to fall from her full, parted lips.
"Lisey?" the other woman asked, brushing her hand against the black-haired woman's elbow.
Lisey.
Not Anna. Lisey.
The disappointment fell upon my head in quick doses before dumping its weight altogether, holding me down beneath the sea of despair. I’d thought it was her. I was so sure, so certain for a fraction of a second, and now I had to wonder if I'd recognize her at all if I were to ever see her again.
I’m never going to see her again.
I’m never going to know if she’s all right.
Just let it go.
"I’m sorry. Do I know you?" the black-haired woman—Lisey—asked, her deep brown eyes narrowing with question, like she was trying to place me … but she never would.
I shook my head apologetically. "No," I replied, my voice gruff as it scraped against my throat. "Sorry."
God, I was so fucking stupid.
Spinning around quickly, not allowing her to say anything else, I hurried back to the truck, where Shawn waited with his mouth agape. I climbed back in, slamming the door shut.
"What the fuck was that?!" he demanded as I peeled away from the curb without buckling in.
I had to leave, and I had to do it quickly.
I needed to put distance between myself and that humiliating scene.
"Nothing," I answered.
"Seriously?! Because that didn't—"
"I really need you to shut the fuck up, Shawn."
I didn’t need to look at him to know he was staring at me, probably trying to peer through my thick skull and into the dysfunctional brain within.
“Why—"
My palm smacked against the steering wheel. “Dammit, Shawn! I said, shut the fuck up! Please!”
Then he finally listened. But he didn’t shrivel up and sink into the seat beneath the heft of my anger and embarrassment. No. Instead, he glared at me from across the cab the whole way back home, and it was me who struggled not to slink away with my tail between my legs for losing my shit on him.
But, holy fuck, I hated this! The realization that I wouldn’t recognize Anna if I ever managed to find her again was killing me.
Too much time had passed; too much had changed.
She would be a woman now, someone completely different from who she’d been at eight years old, just like I was now a man and worlds away from who I’d been at twelve.
She probably doesn’t remember me either.
We’d loved each other once. It was platonic, of course; we were children.
But she needed me, and I protected her, and over the year we’d lived together, we had grown attached by more than mere affection.
There was something deeper that held me to her.
An old, soul-deep connection. Something ancient that stretched the length of lifetimes and into an eternity we’d never share.
It was special and sacred. The dearest thing I’d ever experienced in all my life.
But time had severed that bond, turning something I’d cherished into nothing more than a hazy dream.
It hurt.
Dammit, it hurt so much.
My shoulders sagged as I turned into the funeral home parking lot and pulled into our usual spot, trying to force my mind to conjure the memory of her childish, gap-toothed smile to light up my world once again, but it was too faded to do anything more than leave me desperate and frustrated and wanting.
“You thought she was Anna, didn’t you?”
I lifted my eyes to Shawn to find him staring at me with a knowing look in his eyes.
I could yell at him again, but what would be the point in that? He already knew.
So, I nodded, then hung my head.
“I didn’t know you were still so hung up on that.”
“I’m not,” I insisted, but who was I kidding?
I wished I could see her once more. Just long enough to know she ended up all right. To know she was okay … despite everything.
And maybe, if she wanted to, we could be friends again.
Maybe I could give back what was rightfully hers.
Shawn grunted, then opened the door. He swung his legs over, ready to get out, then stopped to look back at me and said, “Listen, you do you, man. I’m not gonna pressure you to do anything you don’t wanna do.
But if you’re not letting yourself open up to someone else because of …
I dunno … some shit in the past or whatever, then I think you need to let it go and move on.
It’s stupid to punish yourself for something that happened fifteen years ago—"
“Fourteen,” I corrected him from between gritted teeth.
“Whatever,” he replied. “You know what happened to her wasn’t your fault. What happened to you wasn’t your fault either.”
I turned away, unable to face him at the mention of what Jim had done to us—me and Anna—and suddenly, I wished I’d never told him in the first place.
“She knew it wasn’t your fault, Bram. Don’t waste your life being alone because you think you deserve it. Because you don’t.”
Then he jumped out of the cab and slammed the door shut behind him, leaving me to sit in the silence, thinking about her. Remembering what had happened on that night years ago, just to grasp through the recesses of my mind for the faded image of her face.
Alone.