Page 96 of Our Secrets and Scars

My legs are burning already from the exertion, but I don’t lessen my pace. I have a ten-minute run ahead of me to the café, with only three minutes to get there in time. I’m not a runner, not by any stretch, but I eat up the sidewalk with each long stride, my heart beating so wildly I can taste blood in my mouth.

Just keep going.

I repeat it over and over as I weave through pedestrians and a few student stragglers who stayed in the city for the holidays. They give me shitty looks as I hurtle past them, but I don’t stop to apologize, even when I bump into a guy in a hockey jersey, causing him to stumble to the side.

My focus is on one thing. And one thing only.

Getting to Holden in time.

I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to say to him or even if I’m ready to forgive him yet. But the moment my door closed behind his uncle, the urge to go to him was so great I couldn’t ignore it.

Goddamn Uncle Mack. Damn him for somehow managing to break through the walls I’ve constructed around my heart since the night of the party. And damn him, especially for making me realize that my love for Holden runs thicker in my veins than the anger I feel at him for keeping his secrets.

If it weren’t for that man and his words of fucking wisdom, I’d be holed up in bed, pretending that I don’t exist. I wouldn’t be hyperventilating as I sprint the streets of Salt Lake City, desperate to reach the man who broke my fucking heart in time before he gives up on us forever. I wouldn’t be fighting back tears at the thought of what it will mean if I don’t make it in time.

I might not be ready to forgive him, but I’m not ready to lose him either.

It feels like an age before the red-tiled roof of the campus coffee shop finally appears ahead of me. And though my body is begging me to slow down, I don’t. My steps don’t falter until I’m rounding the corner and finally see the wall where Holden usually stands with my coffee in hand as he waits for me in the mornings.

Except, unlike all those times before, he’s not there.

He’s not waiting with his foot resting on the wall behind him or even sitting in a booth inside the café or ordering a drink. He’s not waiting for me on the bench opposite the shop or standing beneath a tree to shelter from the frigid wind.

He’s not anywhere.

I look at the time on my phone. Eight minutes past seven.

I’m late.

And he’s gone.

It’s a fact as stark as the white-tipped mountains surrounding the city. I didn’t make it in time, and now it’s over.

The sense of loss I feel at that winds me, making me hunch over my knees as I suck in breath after breath. I’m panting as I fight for air. The exhaustion from uselessly pushing myself so hard to get here, mixed with the ache in my heart for being too late, is more than I can handle.

It’s all too much.

If possible, loving Holden only to lose him before I’m truly ready is worse than thinking he’d been the man responsible for killing my sister. The splintering I feel in my heart is more painful, the ache in my soul even more life-changing.

Before, I was so mad at him for keeping who he was a secret that I thought a life without him was what I wanted. But now… now that I’m having to face the reality of that actually happening, I can’t believe how wrong I was.

He might have lied to me, and yeah, it was a fucking shitty thing to do. But he’s also the person who I told my darkest secrets to, who I’ve thought about every second of every day since I was fourteen years old, who I gave my heart to when I was just a girl dealing with the fallout of a car accident that killed her twin sister and left her in a hospital for months.

He’s the person who taught me that I’m more than just what I look like on the outside. He taught me how to stand up for myself, how to celebrate who I am instead of criticizing myself, and he’s the one who gave me the confidence to finally uncover my scars.

Without Holden, I’d be a different person entirely.

So, yeah, he might have fucked up pretty badly, but it doesn’t erase the last several years of goodness that he’s given me. It just took me too long to realize it.

“You came.”

My heart stops. The sound of his deep voice behind me is so ethereal that I’m not even sure I trust that it’s real. It’s as chocolatey-smooth as usual but raw with emotion and thick with a sort of awed sentiment.

I almost don’t want to turn around.

But I do because I simply can’t help myself. I spin on my heels, needing to see him more than I need air to breathe. And when I finally do, I almost wish that I hadn’t. Because my heart breaks at what I find.

His face is a little thinner since I saw him last, his cheekbones more pronounced, and that tiny tattoo beneath his eye looks more like a teardrop right now than a crescent moon. He has his hands stuffed into the pockets of his coat; his chin tucked into his chest as the cold air bites at his skin. But what kills me the most is how his silver eyes that used to sparkle with such brilliance are now dull and framed with dark bruises, as if he hasn’t slept a minute since the night that I told him I hated him.

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