Page 85 of The Pumpkin Spice Spell
That night I watched him and my mom fight. She didn’t want him to go out on that trip, either. But she never wanted him to go out on trips. She screamed at him when he left and told him to not even bother coming back.
And I’ve carried that ever since. I’ve carriedhim.For a while I thought maybe she carried guilt for her words. But now, looking back, I don’t think she ever did.
Every decision I’ve made since he went missing has been a half-hearted apology. Some punishment I thought I deserved for living when he didn’t. I sometimes wished I’d gone out with him. Even when I joined that Pacific crew with the rough waters and hard runs, I told myself I was just doing what I had to. I never feared being out on the water, because I know what the water is capable of. I know the risks.
But there was always guilt. And now I’m drowning in it again. I shouldn’t have left, and if I hadn’t, I’d have had those years I was gone with Pete. Now who knows how much time we have with him.
I don’t hear the Jeep pull up beside the cabin until Willa steps out into the storm and walks around towards the front of the cabin.
She’s soaked in seconds. Wet hair clinging to her cheeks. Her eyes are wild and shining, and she’s never looked more like every dream I’m too scared to want.
“What are youdoing?” she yells over the rain.
I stare at her, blinking water from my eyes. “I could ask you the same thing.”
She moves closer. Angry, fragile, and fierce. “Why are you pulling away? Why are you shutting me out?”
“Because I’m losing everything,” I snap. “My mom’s pushing me out. I’ve got no savings, no backup, and the only good thing in my life just told me to leave.”
I don’t tell her about Pete yet, because honestly, I’m not sure he wants me to, and I know it will gut her.
“I told you to leave because you even considered it in the first place!” she shouts, voice cracking. “You won’t let yourself be happy! Do you know what that feels like? To want this and wonder if it will work out?”
I look at her, chest heaving. “I don’t know how to stay, Willa. I don’t know how to believe something good that I have won’t vanish like everything else.”
Her face crumples. “So you don’t believe in us.”
“It’s notyou.It’s just…” I cut myself off, the words twisting sharp in my throat. “It’s everything.”
The wind howls around us. Rain pelts the porch.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I tell her. “But Iwill.That’s what I do. That’s what happens.”
She steps back as if I slapped her.
“You said you’d build a life with me,” she says, voice quiet and shaking. “You left messages in bottles. You kissed me like I was it for you. And I wanted to be your home. I want you. And now you’re what, scared of being loved?”
“I’m scared of losing you,” I rasp. “And if I stay and mess it up, that’s exactly what will happen.”
She shakes her head. “You don’t get to sabotage things because you’re afraid.”
I look away. The storm crashes harder.
And then she turns and goes back her Jeep.
Idon’tfollow her. Because I don’t deserve to.
My hand trembles slightly as I reach for the empty bottle on the shelf. It’s the same kind I’ve used for weeks now, tiny, curved glass with a cork top.
But it’s also the only way I’ve ever been able to say the things that terrify me and don’t know how to speak out loud. Things I couldn’t say to her when she was looking at me with those angry and betrayed eyes.
I uncork the top. Slide the bottle closer. Then I take a breath and grab my pen and paper. And start to write.
Willa,
I told myself I wasn’t going to write to you again. Not like this. Not in a way you might never read.
But the truth is, I don’t know how to say what I need to your face without breaking apart. So here it is. All of it. The real truth. What I couldn’t say out loud.
