Page 83 of Never Really Over

“Here you go. It’ll be big, but will do the trick.”

Rather than handing it to me, he slips it over my head. I push my arms through the sleeves and he slides a hand behind my neck to pull my hair out. But he doesn’t remove his hand.

Our eyes lock and he moves impossibly closer. “Like you here, Layla. Don’t know what that says about me since we have a lot of history to unfold and work through, but it doesn’t change the fact that I like you in my home, in my hoodie, playing with Poppy.”

I wrap my arms around his waist. “I like it here, too, in your clothes and playing with Poppy. Eating dinner at your table. But I feel like I’m trying to speed through the steps because I missed so much.”

“Remember how I said maybe we were just on a long pause?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we need to rush anything, right?”

He kisses me, it’s sweet and promising but over far too soon.

“Forget what I just said. Rushing the steps sounds like a better plan.”

He gives me a grin. “Let’s go outside, we’ll keep talking.”

He holds my hand as we walk through the sliding glass door to sit on the covered deck. There’s a large table surrounded by six thick cushioned chairs. He lights a citronella candle to keep the bugs away, but aside from the flicker of glowing orange, we’re covered in darkness.

“It’s so peaceful,” I say, closing my eyes. Crickets are chirping but that’s the only sound out here.

“It’s one of my favorite places. Natalie was planning to string those big bulb lights up around the roof here,” he says, pointing above the deck, “but it never happened. She’d use my house as her own interior decorating outlet.” The sound of his voice is melancholy and makes me want to wrap him in my arms. “I spend a lot of time sitting out here, thinking and reflecting.”

I tuck my legs under my butt and lean on the arm of the chair. “It’s a good place to be.”

“Yeah.” He leans back in his chair and stares at me. “Sat here last night. Thought a lot.”

I swallow hard. I don’t have a sinking feeling in my stomach, but that doesn’t mean I’m not misreading his signals. “Did you?”

He takes a while to answer and when he does, it isn’t what I was expecting him to say. “Want you to know, I talked to your mom about the accident. She cried, which I understand. She said if she wouldn’t have been on that road, maybe the accident never would have happened. I agreed with her but assured her that I don’t fault her. If she was at fault, she would have been charged by the police, which she wasn’t. An accident is just that. An accident. It sucks and it was so unfortunate, but I’m a believer and know that when it’s someone’s time to go, they’re going to go. No one could have prevented that accident from occurring, including your mom. That made her cry a little harder, but she eventually understood. I tried to offer her comfort in knowing that Poppy and I are doing better than I could have ever expected, and she seemed to accept that, too.

“She’s going to need to keep talking it out, though. And it might be good to have her talk to a therapist or someone at the church because shit like that can get in deep and it’s hard to dig it out on your own. She’s tough, but she was involved in a fatal accident and neither of us can begin to understand the grief she’s feeling right now.”

I look out over Colt’s backyard, seeing the shadow of trees and thinking about their strength. Mom always talked to me about how their roots give them life. How without a strong foundation and those roots growing deeper, the tree wouldn’t survive.

“Her roots run deep,” I tell him quietly. “She’s strong because she’s taken the time to grow within herself.”

“Yes,” Colt agrees, understanding my meaning. “She’ll be okay. Give her time. Help her through it, and I’ll do the same, but she’s sad, Layla. And I think she needs to address that before it eats away at her.”

Nodding my head, I sigh. “Yeah. I think I was so focused on her not feeling guilt, that I forgot that she was grieving as well.”

“We also talked about you,” he says suddenly.

“Yeah? What about me?”

“I told her that when you first came back, I didn’t know what to think. I was skeptical and didn’t want to give you my trust. I wasn’t sure if I could believe that you were still the same Layla that I once knew because you seemed to have these guards up, which made me put up my own. You’d seemed to change, which made it easier to keep my distance. Not to mention, I felt like I couldn’t give anything to anyone else, because I needed to give my all to Poppy. I had a lot of anger and resentment stored away and it might hurt to hear this, but it was aimed at you.”

“Rightfully so.”

“Not really,” he disagrees. Still leaning back in his chair, he folds his hands behind his head. The picture of casual, but the conversation is anything but. “I was angry that the timing wasn’t to my liking. I was angry that it seemed like you’d changed so much. I was bitter that you and I lived different lives for a dozen years. I was letting that all fester and the anger over what I thought I was cheated out of until it felt like a blanket covering me. I was comfortable there.”

He sits up and rests his elbows on the table. While he’s been talking, saying things that I already knew but are hard to hear, my stomach has started churning.

“And now?”

He shakes his head, chuckling lowly. “Now? I don’t know what to think. All those cynical thoughts I’d been glad to hold onto are starting to taste a little acidic. I thought you’d become this uppity snob who saw me as someone who was beneath you. It was easy to hold onto that because it made you leaving easier for me. I had it in my head that you’d changed so it was a good thing you were gone. We weren’t compatible anymore and eventually I told myself that you’d done us both a favor. Like I said, it was easier on my heart to keep thinking that. In fact, it was easier on all of us to think that. Except Missy.”

“Missy?”

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