Page 58 of Easy Reunion
He nods. “We are. I’d do anything for her, Kels.” There’s something profound in that statement, but I don’t touch it right now. Turning, I place down the frame and continue my turn around the room until I stop dead.
“The worst thing that’s happening to you is the best thing that will ever happen to someone else. All you can do is move past it. After all, if life were meant to be easy, I’d have already won the game.” I read my own words aloud. Words etched on a piece of glass sitting in Ry’s study. Words I used in my first book,Betrayal.
“I thought you didn’t know who I was?” I turn to him accusingly, my lips trembling.
“What do you mean?” Ry’s long stride brings him to me. He runs a finger down my cheek.
“I used these exact words in my first book.”
“And you also gave them to me the first time you helped tutor me. Did you think I’d forgotten?” His deep voice holds a note of poignancy I’m not sure I can handle.
I begin to shake my head back and forth. No, there’s no way he’d remember that. “How?” I whisper helplessly. I was sure he’d forgotten about all of the times we spent talking, all of the moments after he’d be done with practice and he’d come to me smelling like chlorine with his hair slicked back. After I’d finished helping him with writing, Ry would open up to me. At first, I thought it was some trick, but he never asked me anything about myself. Eventually, we’d talked about everything and nothing, our hopes and our dreams.
We’d become friends.
“I didn’t forget a thing. I cherished the time we spent together. And I sacrificed more than you know to hurt you that day.” The look on his face is terrible as if he’s reliving every horrible moment of graduation day along with me.
“Did you?” I whisper, turning away from him and staring into words that I wrote when I was sitting alone on a Saturday night in the sweltering heat of the Georgia summer, imagining what it would be like if I were an average teenager, not an obese one who had lost all semblance of her self-esteem due to the systematic hell she was put through for so many school days. “Did I really mean so much to you back then? How could that be when for all those years, my memories were of you doing this to my heart?”
Lifting the delicate glass, I hold it in my hands. It’s as fragile as my hopes once were. And then, I smash it downward against the floor—just like he broke my heart into bits on graduation day—before I run for the open door with tears flooding my eyes.
I don’t make it that far.
His strong arms wrap around me, holding me. His voice is broken in my ear when he grates out, “They threatened Lisa. It’s the only reason I hurt you. I went to tell you the next day, but you were gone.”
I struggle against him, wrenching out of his arms. Moving away from him, I back up against his desk until I can’t move any further. “What the fuck could they have threatened her with that would be so damn awful you would do that to me?” I lash out at him.
The sun from the square transom windows over the built-in bookcases pours down on him, beaming in warmth where I feel none. Ry slowly approaches me until his body fits itself against mine. His head drops down until his mouth is against my ear.
“I had to hurt you that day because they promised me they would take turns raping my baby sister as part of her soccer hazing when she played varsity for Forsyth. That’s what I traded shattering your heart for.” His breath is jagged against my ear. “And you know what, Kels? I’m sorry, but I’d make the same decision again tomorrow. And the next day.” His lips brush my cheek, gentle in its apology for hurting me and unabashedly proud.
I yank my head back in shock. My lips begin to tremble when he lifts his hand to my face. Now I understand. And he’s right. He did the only thing he could because I know they would have done it without blinking an eye. After all, look at what they did to me? “Dear God in heaven. What kind of monsters lived inside the walls of that school?” But then, I already know that answer. I just thought they were only hurting me.
My hands, which had been resting lightly against Ry’s chest, slide up around his neck. I lean in and let out the first sob.
For his sister.
For him.
And for me.
