Page 91 of The Season
She gasps, dropping her hands to stare up at me with wide eyes. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before,” she comments.
I roll my eyes. “I swear,” I say, almost defensively. “Sometimes.”
Mainly when I’m riled up. Like I am right now. I probably need to go along to the gym and let some tension out.
“No, you don’t.” She shakes her head, eyes crinkling at the corners as she grins up at me. “You’re too polite.”
I drop my forehead to her own, my stomach tightening at her words.
If she knew how hard it is some days—the way I feel like I’m walking on a knife’s edge. Like I’m putting on a mask, just to keep the monster within from rearing its ugly head. Like I’m shining as much light as I can out in the world, just so people don’t see my darkness.
Would she still like me if she saw my darkness?
“Not always,” I croak out. She squirms beneath me, and I lift up with a grimace. “Sorry. I was squishing you, wasn’t I?”
She grins up at me. “Only a little. You’re not exactly light.”
I huff out a laugh, then sit up, hauling her onto my lap, holding her against me. Already, just having her near me, in my arms, hearing her voice, I feel calmer.
“I can teach you how to drive in the snow,” I tell her. “I grew up in Canada, remember? Driving in snow is my birthright.”
She gives me a wan smile. “Maybe.” Her eyes drop to her lap. “I’m not sure there’s much of a point though.” She shrugs. “It’s only one season, right? Then I’ll be back in Hawai’i.”
My stomach bottoms out at her words, a sinking feeling of dread threatening to pull me through the already sagging couch cushions. “What do you mean?” My voice is thready, edged with panic. “You only just got your instructor’s cert. What about next season…”
What about me?I want to say.What about all of us?
She pulls back, giving me a look that I can’t quite read. Only now, her hazel eyes seem more green than gold, watery and sad, like she’s already looking toward the ocean-drenched world she grew up in.
I feel all the dreams I’ve built up in my head start to fragment, pieces scattering like that baking dish against the kitchen floor.
Lily in Canada with me, meeting the twins and my parents. Me and Lily and Antoine—and maybe even Liam—finding a place, getting ready for another winter season together. Summer hikes surrounded by pines and whispering aspen trees. Sleeping bags under the open stars. Lily on my lap as we roast marshmallows over a fire. A dog. Because, of course we’d have a dog…
“I don’t know.” Lily worries her lower lip, and I barely resist the urge to reach up and tug her lip from her teeth. “I only ever meant to come here for the season. This was just meant to be a break. A breather from… things. I’m supposed to go back to UH, finish my degree, take the LSAT…”
“Oh.” I stare down at her thighs stretched across my own, her hands clasped in her lap.
Starlight and campfire embers I’ve conjured in my imagination scatter on the wind, caught up in the snowflakes fluttering against the window, until it’s only us. Me and Lily in this living room, the only sound the storm outside and the oven humming in the kitchen and the corner lamp buzzing softly.
I dare a glance up at her, my heart stuttering when I see she’s staring right back at me, her gaze open and full of vulnerability.She’s not sure about leaving, I realize.She’s not sure about going back.
My shoulders straighten. Maybe she sees a future with me too—a future withus. Maybe she does feel this thing that’s been building between us for weeks now.
“Is that what you want to do?” I ask her, my voice low, cautious. “Is that what you really want?”
She gives me a wry smile. “You ask that a lot, don’t you?”
My brow dips, because I’m not quite sure what she means.
“What I want,” she clarifies, her cheeks pinkening slightly, though I can’t imagine why. “That really matters to you, doesn’t it?”
I blink, confused and a little taken aback. “Of course it matters to me.”Shematters to me. “Doesn’t it matter to you?”
Her eyes widen slightly, lips parting in surprise, then closing.
“Because it should,” I continue, and I don’t sound nearly as polite as I ought to. Not nearly as nice. No, there’s definitely some of the darkness bleeding through the cracks now. “You get one life, Lily. Some people think you get more, and that’s fine, whatever, but as far as I’m concerned, this is it. You get today, now. Maybe you get tomorrow. Maybe you get ten years from now, fifty years from now. And you know what? There’s always going to be people who want something from you, who want you to be something or do something for them, or be the version of you that they’ve created in their heads…”
I give a mirthless laugh, because I could be speaking to the twelve-year-old version of myself right now. The little boy who stepped up and looked after two gorgeous babies when his parents couldn’t. The little boy who gave up his childhood to be the person he thought he should be.
