Page 151 of Never Forever

She was helping, but it didn’t matter.

For a moment, I imagined ramming her car with my truck. Breaking the glass and crushing the metal. Destroying it.

I imagined screaming as I did it. Fuck you. Fuck you!

I imagined screaming until my voice was gone and the pain I felt in my chest was spread all over my body. So it was a weight I could carry and survive.

I pulled into the driveway and turned off the lights, the ignition.

I walked in the front door of my house and she stood up. I couldn’t look at her. The worry on her face.

“My dad,” I whispered, my eyes on her shoes.

“He’s finally asleep. He was…agitated earlier, but now he’s resting.”

I tossed the keys down on the table by the door.

“Carrie?” she asked.

“Gone.” The word ripped through me. “I made sure she got on the train. She won’t be back, I don’t think. Not for a long time.”

She sighed and nodded. “I know how hard this was for you, Matt. But you did the right thing.”

The right thing? The right thing shouldn’t hurt so much. Now I just wanted to take care of my dad and try to live without my heart.

“You can go, Mrs. Piedmont.”

She walked past me toward the door. Stopped when she was close.

I wanted to rail on her that this was all her fault, but it wasn’t. I knew that.

“I really am sorry, Matt. I know what it’s like to love someone and then lose them. Heartbreak is never easy.”

I huffed out a humorless laugh. “Is this the part where you tell me I’m just a kid and I’ll get over it?”

“No,” she said softly, sadly. “No, because I was just a kid and I never got over it either.”

34

Present

Matt

She was sleeping in my bed. The blue comforter pulled up around her ears. Red hair spilled out across the pillowcase like fire.

I couldn’t stop watching her. The first night she was here, I barely slept, so sure this was a dream and I would wake up alone like I had for so many years. Feeling her against my skin like a ghost.

Now, days later, I felt like I was winning something precious.

She was starting to trust me. Starting maybe…to love me again?

She wouldn’t say it and I got that. Some piece of her was still held back, because she sensed I was still holding something back. She wasn’t wrong. I just felt like we weren’t quite ready for the bare truth and all the pain and hurt that would come with it.

My story might blow up the last of her relationship with her mother. It might tear her whole family in two.

“This is getting creepy,” she mumbled, her lips curving into a smile, but her eyes stayed closed. “You can’t keep watching me sleep.”

“I can’t stop,” I said, and leaned in and kissed her. “I like seeing you next to me.”

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