Page 133 of Rewind It Back

He breathes a self-deprecating laugh. “Because I never gave you a chance to tell me. All this time, I thought if you could forgive me for leaving, then maybe we could have another shot at us. But this?” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t give me another chance either.”

“Rio, that’s not... Maybe initially, yes. I didn’t want to give you the time of day because you hurt me. But when things started to shift, when it started to feel how it used to feel between us, I knew I was going to have to tell you everything and I was terrified to. I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”

His eyes go wide. “You were afraid that my own actions would hurt my feelings? Jesus, Hallie. You should hate me, not protect me.”

“But I’ve always protected you. At least I tried to, and that hasn’t changed.”

He watches me for a moment, eyes searching my face. “For a while, I convinced myself that I had every right to feel the way I did, but before I even found out about your dad, I knew I was lying to myself. I even called you about it earlier today. I wanted to try to explain how fucked up my head was at the time, but to find out I left you with all of this? I should’ve been there.”

I shake my head to tell him no. “You don’t need to explain anything. When I’m logical about it, I know why you left. Rio, you were heartbroken over your parents.”

“Don’t make excuses for me. Your parents split up too. I’m assuming that’s what your dad meant, and I’ve spent all this time focused onmyfamily falling apart, while you were going through the same fucking thing.”

“I wasn’t though. My parents’ divorce did not affect me the same way yours did.”

His brows furrow. “What are you talking about?”

“You held your parents’ relationship on a pedestal as this ideal picture of what love should look like, but I didn’t view my parents’ relationship that way.” I take his face in my hands, making sure his attention is on me. “That’s how I viewedours.”

He stares at me, and this time he doesn’t fight the tears from welling in his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them away when they fall either. So, with my thumbs I gently clean them off.

“You have every right to hate me, Hal. You have every right to believe that I forgot about you, but I didn’t. Not one day went by that I didn’t think of you. You were everywhere. In the music I listened to. In the house I live in. I tried to compare every single person I met to you, but there was no comparison. And I will spend the rest of my life regretting leaving you behind all those years ago.”

There’s no point in telling him I forgive him or asking him to forgive himself right now. Anything I say will fall on deaf ears. He won’t be able to hear me take responsibility for my part in our breakup, or when I tell him I don’t blame him for something he didn’t know about. He’s just going to be hard on himself for a while.

Instead, I go into his closet, retrieve the black cardboard box I found last week, and set it on the nightstand.

His eyes flick to it as I open the lid.

“Rio, I know you didn’t forget about me.”

He studies the box for a minute, and I’m hoping he’s not going to be so hard on himself right now that he brushes this off. To anyone else, him keeping these might seem like no big deal, but to me, this is our everything. Not just the songs, but the moments they represent too.

“Come here,” he says, tugging at my hand to pull me onto his lap.

I go willingly, thankful that he’s open to this conversation.

“When we were in New York, you asked me why I never upgraded that old boombox. Do you remember that?”

I nod.

“This is why,” he says. “I didn’t have any other way to play the tapes and CDs, and not playing them wasn’t an option for me. For years, I’ve taken this fucking boombox everywhere with me. Held on to it, like if I could keep rewinding and replaying these moments we had, then maybe it wasn’t over.” He pulls a random cassette tape out of the box, running his thumb over the inked heart. “I don’t want it to be over, Hallie.”

Using the tip of his finger, he covers the tail of that overdrawn heart, and it makes me want to cry. Not from sadness or painful nostalgia. But from hope.

Hope that now that everything is on the table, maybe we can move forward.

I lean my head on his shoulder. “I can’t believe you kept them all this time.”

“Well, I know that technically, these areyourbest memories, but they’re mine too. Meeting on that roof, listening to music. Getting the opportunity to fall in love with you ismybest memory, and all I can do is hope that one day you’ll let me do it again.”

Chapter 30

Hallie

Age 18

“Hey, Dad,” I whisper, closing the front door behind me.

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