Page 79 of The Heartbreak Hotel
For a second I let myself imagine not opening it. Turning the car back on, rolling away from Henry, leaving him standing inthe field like the exact kind of idiot he’s turned me into. But I make the mistake of meeting his eyes, and it’s excruciatingly clear. I can’t drive away from Henry—not from the worried line between his brows, not from his infuriatingly beautiful face.
I open the door, and he takes a step backward. I lean against it as soon as it’s closed, putting as much space between us as possible, tears rising in my throat like a threat. I swallow.
“Louisa,” Henry says. He takes a deep breath and sets his shoulders like he’s bracing for me. Already, his cheeks are pink from the cold. It’s unbearable, the way he wears every feeling so honestly on his face. “That’s not the way I wanted you to find out about Joss and me.”
Joss and me. I feel it like a slap.
“You lied,” I say. Wind blows across the meadow, rustling the snow-laced grass, and I hunch into myself. I left in a rush; all I’m wearing is a long-sleeve T-shirt. Henry starts to shoulder out of his coat. “When I asked about her. You said she was long gone.”
“That wasn’t a lie.” Henry steps forward to wrap the coat around me, and I shrink away from him. He freezes, eyes tracking over me, before stepping backward and holding the coat in the space between us. On principle, I don’t want it—but I’m already shaking, and I also don’t want to have this conversation while trembling like a pathetic damsel. I take it, hunching into its borrowed warmth. “My romantic relationship with Jossislong gone. It’s been more than five years since the divorce. Longer since it was over between us.”
“That’s not the same, and you know it.” The coat smells like Henry. Citrus soap, aftershave, everything good. My body betrays me by wrapping it even further around my shoulders, burrowinginto him. “Joss isn’tgone—she’s right here. I thought she was my friend.”
“She is your friend,” Henry says, and I let out a sharp exhale. It’s so patronizing—like I’m a child.
“Friends don’t keep things like this from each other.”
Henry’s wearing a button-down, and I wonder if he came from work. Wind teases through his hair and I watch goose bumps rise on his neck, the dip in his collarbone. I make myself look away as he says, “Our relationship to the house is complicated. She takes care of the garden because it makes her feel close to Molly. I manage the rentals because I can’t bear to sell it.” He takes a step closer to me, eyes serious and searching on mine. “But our relationship to each other is simple, Louisa. We were partners once. We went through something incomprehensible together. Now we take care of the house. That’s it.”
“Then what were you fighting about, in the garden?”
He blinks. His nose is turning pink. “Nothing,” he says, and I shake my head.
“I can’t be with someone who keeps secrets from me.” It’s out before I’ve thought it through; before I’ve even realized that it’s true. Nate had an entire life I didn’t know about. Now Henry does, too—after I sat, shaking with panicked adrenaline, on his couch. After I told him all of it.
“It wasn’t a secret,” Henry says, taking a half step closer. “I would have told you, I—”
“When?” I angle my chin upward, don’t move my gaze from his. “Why should I believe that?”
“You really think I’m lying?” Henry asks, his voice rising. It’s the loudest I’ve heard him since that day in my kitchen, whentheDenver Postarticle came out and I caught the very first glimpse of his jagged, broken heart.
“Maybe!” I cry, throwing my hands up. “I don’t know what to believe now, Henry, I—”
“Believe this,” he says, and reaches for me. His hands are cold, framing my face. “The past few months with you have torn my life apart.” His eyes track over mine—sharp, paralyzing blue in the afternoon light. “There were years when I didn’t want anything at all. Not to remember any of it, not to feel anything, not to imagine a future. The rest of my life, without her.”
I bite my lip, and Henry’s eyes flick to my mouth. He lowers his hands so they’re on my neck, thumbs tracing my jaw. “But you—” He breaks off. His eyes search mine, and I wait. Henry draws a shaking breath. “I imagine it, with you. I want—” He stops again, dropping his hands and shrugging helplessly. He takes half a step backward, giving me space. When he speaks again, his voice is so soft I hardly hear it. “I want.”
Me, too, I think. I want Henry so badly it leaves me breathless—the defeated slope of his shoulders, and the earnestness of his gaze on mine, and the flush creeping up his neck. I want to touch him there. I want to hear him say my name like he did that night at his house, wrecked and breathless. I’ve imagined it, too. I’ve imagined all of it.
But I force myself to speak. “Then why did you keep this from me?”
Henry exhales, looking out over the open space. He licks his lower lip and then rubs his palm over his mouth, covers it with his hand, gathers himself. “Because it’s hard,” he says finally. “Because there’s so much pain in that house, and between Jossand me, and I didn’t want to—I wasn’t ready to bring that to you.”
I feel my eyebrows pull together. Wave a hand half-heartedly into the space between us. “I’ve shown you my whole mess, Henry. Nate, my mom.”
“I know,” he says, taking a step toward me. I’m so cold, even in his coat—he must be freezing. “And then you disappeared.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“You think I haven’t noticed you distancing yourself from me since Thanksgiving?” His eyes move back and forth over mine. “You happen to be at my house when your mom calls, so, okay, you feel like you have to tell me. You let me into this part of your life, basically by accident, and then you shut me out. What am I supposed to think, Louisa?” His dark eyebrows rise. “That I should make thingsmorecomplicated? Tell you about Joss?”
“That’s not—” I shake my head, trying to clear it. Why is this conversation turning onto me? “That’s not fair.”
“No?” Henry doesn’t blink. “Then where have you been the past few days?”
Licking my wounds, I think.Trying to see past how desperately I care about you.
“I meant what I said,” he continues when I still haven’t responded. “You scare me shitless.” A car whips past us on the road, and Henry turns to watch it over one shoulder. I stare at his face in profile: flushed in the bitter chill, dark and severe and familiar. He turns back to me. “I knew about you for years, but to actually know you—” His jaw clenches, lets go. “How incredible you are. How you have this way of making every room you walk into feel better, and warmer, and safe. How I want you sobadly I can’t even sleep.” My eyes film over with tears, blurring him as he takes a step closer. This hurts too much; more than I have room for in my body. “Now that I know you, I can’t—” Henry’s eyes trace back and forth over mine. Then he swallows, his voice going soft. “Please don’t cry.”
