Page 80 of The Heartbreak Hotel
It only tightens the vise on my throat, and when I bite my lip to try to swallow my tears Henry reaches for me. He tucks me in against him, his cheek on my hair, and I let him.
“Sweetheart,” he murmurs. It blooms in my chest like a bruise.I don’t want to call you what everyone else calls you.“Please. I’ve been so terrified to get attached to anything, terrified I’ll lose it, especially you.” His lungs rise against my cheek. I can feel his heart beating—even through the coat, even through the cold—quick and hard. “So why would I, after feeling you push away from me, tell you something that I know is complicated? That I know is going to be hard for you to hear?”
I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to move away from him. He doesn’t fight it; his arms drop to his sides, his eyes scanning my face as I wipe my cheeks dry. “That’s not how it works,” I say. “You can’t pick and choose which parts of yourself to give me, Henry, it has to be all of it. I can’t have you halfway.”
“No,” he says, urgent, one hand reaching for mine. “That’s not what I mean.”
“It is.” I cut him off. Detangle my fingers from his and jam them into his coat pocket. I can’t be this person: giving all of myself to someone who’s holding back. “I can’t.”
Henry blinks. When he takes a step backward his eyes sweep over me, like he’s assessing damage or looking for someone he recognizes. “Can’t what?”
I bite my lip to hold back my tears, and it doesn’t work.When they leak onto my cheeks the wind chills them to ice. “Can’t do this. You lied.”
“Louisa,” he says, reaching for me and then dropping his hands. He looks scared, wrecked. It hurts like a bone bruise, like something under the skin. “Please. I didn’t.”
“Henry, you did.”
“Well, what about you?” His arms lift as his voice goes rough, uncontrolled. “I Googled you.”
My mind blurs, all the things he could find: “Purple Girl,” Nate cheating, every unflattering photograph from Say It Now shows in college. But it doesn’t occur to me what Henry’s talking about. What he means. What of course, of course, ofcoursehe means.
“You aren’t a therapist,” he says, and it hangs in the cold air between us. “I know you aren’t licensed here. You lied to me, too.”
I blink the tears out of my eyes, trying to see him clearly. How long has he been sitting on this? Why hasn’t it mattered until now?
“That’s not the same,” I say thinly.
“No?” Henry sounds ruined—like something’s snapped inside of him. I want to cover my face so I don’t have to see him like this, anguished because of something I’ve done. “Why not?”
“I just wanted you to believe in me,” I say. I sniff against the wind, wipe a hand roughly over my eyes. “I just wanted you to trust me, Henry.”
“Me, too,” he says. “That’s exactly what I wanted, too.”
I look up at him. The intensity of his gaze, the pain on his face—clear, consuming. I can’t think of a single thing to say, a single way to fix this. I have the distinct, saw-toothed thoughtthat I’m hurting him. That if I’d just left Henry alone, we’d both be better off.
“I’m going to go,” I say, and reach for my car door.
“Please.” His hand lands on my arm, but when I look over my shoulder, he lets go. “Louisa, I don’t want you to leave like this.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave at all.”
It tugs me open, loosening a stitch that unravels everything I’ve been trying to hold together. I feel my nose scrunch, my body’s very last-ditch attempt not to cry. “I’m sorry,” I manage—and then I’m in my car, and I’m closing the door, and I’m driving away. When I glance up, just once, Henry’s standing on the shoulder in the rearview.
I’m halfway home before I realize I’m still wearing his coat.
Thirty-Two
The first thing I seewhen I get back to the house is Joss’s car. I think about turning right back around and driving clear on to Nebraska, but make myself put the car in park. This is still my house—though for how much longer, I’m not sure.
The door to the garden is propped open. I move toward it like a ghost, half-real. Joss has her back to me, crouched over a bed of ivy in a down jacket; she’s trimming it back, piling snow-dusted leaves into a bag. When my sneakers land on the path next to her knee, she looks up at me.
“Hey, Lou.”
She looks more beautiful than ever: that Nordic blond hair, the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose. I picture her and Henry getting married, having Molly, sitting with her in a hospital room while their lives fall apart. I’m not mad at her—I’m devastated.
“I know about you and Henry,” I say. “There was an article in the paper.”
Joss is silent. She doesn’t even blink. But then she looksdown at the bed, surveying her progress, and stands. She pulls her gloves off and puts them on top of her bag.
“I wish you’d told me.”
