Page 90 of The Heartbreak Hotel
“Or explain it away.” His voice is soft, and the terminal is loud, but my whole body is tuned to him: to every dip of his words, every brush of his fingertips under my coat at the small of my back. “All I’ve wanted, all this time, is to explain it away. To force some kind of logic into what happened, to train my feelings into some other shape that hurts less.” Henry’s hands slide upward, framing my ribs, and ease me even closer. “That doesn’t end in you in bed without me.”
I imagine him, that night: the fevered heat of his skin, the shudder of his breathing under my palm. The way he pulled me into him, after, and pressed me to the hurt.
“You saw me as I am,” Henry says simply. “And you told me it was okay, and for the first time, I believed it.” I brush my thumb over his cheek and he tilts into the touch, the slightest tip of his chin into my palm. “You have this way of seeing people, Louisa. It feels like cheating, how lucky I am when you turn your gaze on me.”
I pull his face to mine, rising to my toes as his fingers spread to steady me. Our mouths meet, and his soft exhale is a whisper in the clamor of the terminal, and I want to tell him that I could spend my whole life learning him. My whole life seeing only him, and it wouldn’t be enough.
“I’m sorry I made you feel isolated about Molly,” Henry saysinto the space between our lips. “And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, sooner, about Joss.” He dips his chin, pressing his mouth to mine again—like he’s reminding himself that he can, like he can’t quite help it. “That was wrong. I want to share everything with you, too—I’m just a little out of practice.”
“We have time,” I tell him. It’s a gift. It’s the truth. All this time that’s spread before us—it aches right at the center of my rib cage, imagining it. The longing for something already held in my hands. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
Henry makes a sound that’s not quite an exhale, not quite a word. He carries it to my lips and it tastes like relief.
“Joss told me about the tree,” I say, quietly, as we pull apart. Henry’s fingers splay over my lower back, rooting me to him. “That you thought it wasn’t the right time. Why?”
When he lifts one shoulder in half a shrug, it’s sad and vulnerable. Softly, he says, “Because the house is yours, now.”
“It’llalwaysbe hers, too.” I tuck my fingers around the back of his neck. Smooth my thumb over one clean-shaven cheek. “You don’t have to erase any of yourself to have a life with me.”
Henry tips forward, forehead coming to rest on mine, and closes his eyes. “I worried,” he says quietly, “that if I showed you my past, it would scare you away.”
I shake my head, our noses brushing. Lower my palms to his chest and pull away so he has to look me in the eyes. “You can give me anything, Henry. Any part of you. I’ll take care of it.”
“And you,” he says. One hand rises from my waist to my cheek. “You don’t know how it killed me not to be with you, these last couple days. To be stuck here, imagining you—” He shakes his head, just barely, his eyes like sunlight on mine. Like the single point that illuminates everything else, that makes mereal and visible at all. “Imagining what you were going through, and being so far away. Your mom—?”
“She’s okay,” I tell him, barely a whisper. His fingertips curl around the base of my skull, tipping my face to his as his eyes cast over me.
“And you?”
I feel weightless, is the truth. With my hip in the crook of Henry’s elbow and his gaze on me like this—perceptive, protective—I feel like I could trust the world to carry me. Trust myself, too.
“I’m okay.”
He exhales, long and slow, through his nose. “That’s the most important.”
“Not themost,” I say, and Henry dips his mouth to mine.
“It’s the most important,” he murmurs, “to me.”
I part my lips and he meets me there without hesitation, the warm slide of his tongue and the pressure of all five of his fingertips holding me steady. I forget we’re in the middle of an airport; I forget the day’s hardly begun at all—that the sun hasn’t risen, that the rest of the world isn’t as illuminated as I feel, right in this moment.
“Louisa,” Henry says, soft, at the corner of my mouth. The three rumbled syllables of my name, my favorite sound. “It’s only ever been the fear of losing you that’s made me keep things from you. That it would be too complicated, or too painful, or you wouldn’t want to be with someone as brokenhearted as me.” He pulls back just the smallest distance, half a breath, so he can meet my eyes. “I’d have done anything to keep you close. Anything not to lose you again.”
“You won’t.” We look at each other, the crowd moving aroundus, holiday music playing low and soft from somewhere across the terminal. I have the sudden thought that I want to do every good and bad and human thing with Henry Rhodes.
“And besides,” I say. Henry’s eyebrows rise. “I’m good with heartbreak, remember?”
Thirty-Seven
Six months later
There’s a lot to learnabout someone, in the beginning. That Henry drinks tea, not coffee. That the espresso machine was a gift from a client whose puppy he saved from parvo. That he always keeps music on in the house. That he can’t hold a conversation while he’s cooking, and that there’s a spot just behind his ear—soft and secret—that makes his whole body relax when I press my lips to it.
Each Henry I meet is my favorite Henry. Henry sleeping over, for the first time, at the house—his steady breathing in my dark bedroom, the way he tucked my body into his like armor. Henry in snow pants, taking me skiing on my twenty-seventh birthday. Henry in New York, holding my hand at Quinn’s preschool graduation. Henry in the quiet at the end of the day—his low voice, his warm hands, our past lives falling away like ghosts.
And now, Henry sitting barefoot on the floor of our newhouse. Henry in worn jeans and a T-shirt. Henry passing me a carton of pad thai.
“I picked out the bean sprouts,” he says.
