Page 115 of His Heart

Of all the toys I’d ever owned—there hadn’t been many—this one had been my favorite. It had meant the most. I’d slept with it every night. Set it carefully on my pillow each morning. I’d sat in my room and held it, telling it stories. Whispering prayers and wishes. Cried with it clutched tightly in my arms.

By the time it had gone missing, I’d outgrown it. But I’d still been sad to realize it had gone. I hadn’t been sleeping with it anymore, but it had still meant something to me. It had been a memory of a good day with her. A day that had stood out in its goodness because there had been so few.

A tear broke free from the corner of my eye and slid down my cheek. She’d kept it. I didn’t know when she’d taken it and added it to her box, but at some point, she’d decided to save it. Had she done it for herself? Had she remembered that day like I had?

Maybe it had represented the same thing for her that it had for me. A memory of something good between us. A dream of what could have been, if things had been different.

One thing I knew without a shred of doubt. It meant she’d loved me.

I touched its face, biting my lip to keep from crying too hard. Although I wished I’d had the chance to see her again, in some ways this was better. It whispered the words I’d needed to hear so badly, said them directly into my heart: I love you, Brooke.

With a trembling breath, I sniffed hard. Instead of putting it back in the box, I put it in my backpack, along with my dance picture and engagement ring. It felt like it belonged there, with the other moments that had shaped me. The good ones. The memories where love had won.

I wiped my cheeks and went into the bathroom to blow my nose. As I was tossing the tissue into the garbage, I heard a knock at my door.

It didn’t sound like Sebastian’s big fist. His knock was louder. I walked out and opened the door, my tummy full of nerves. It was Olivia.

“Hi,” she said.

I was so surprised to see her, I didn’t know what to say.

“Look, if you don’t want to see me, I get it,” she said. “But um, could you let me know one way or the other so I can either come in or get back in my car? It’s freezing out here.”

“Come in.”

“This Iowa winter shit sucks,” she said, rubbing her hands together as I shut the door behind her. She wore a thick coat and a knit hat with a little crocheted flower on one side. “So, I came over because I think I was actually the bigger asshole. Can we talk, maybe?”

“Sure,” I said.

We sat down at the little table Sebastian and I had repainted. That seemed so long ago.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” she said. “What happened to Liam wasn’t your fault. I didn’t mean that, and I never should have said it. I admitted it to Charlie, and he kind of ripped me a new one. He’s still pissed at you for slapping me, but he did tell me I was a huge jerk for saying something so awful to you.”

I nodded, but the guilt I felt was overwhelming. “It doesn’t matter what you said. I never should have hit you. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I deserved it, at least a little bit.”

“That’s what my mom would have done,” I said, my eyes on the table. “She hit me when she was angry.”

Olivia put a hand over mine. “I know. Actually, when you did that, it made me realize what that must have been like for you. A little bit, anyway. I hadn’t thought about it very much before. I kept thinking about how angry I’d been because my parents were so concerned about you all the time. But, I think it was because you needed it so much more than I did. I had this great childhood with nice parents who were still married. The worst thing that ever happened to me was when some kid pushed me off a swing when I was nine, and I broke my arm. And it wasn’t even all that bad. Mostly I remember getting ice cream after they put on the cast.”

I breathed out a soft laugh and she squeezed my hand.

“But you… you lived through things I can’t even fathom,” she said. “And you were always so alone.”

“Yeah.”

“Charlie made me realize something else,” she said. “I was lying in bed with him and it was one of those moments that’s so good it takes your breath away. Do you know what I mean?”

I nodded.

“It wasn’t sexual,” she said. “It was pure contentment. In that moment, I was so happy and so in love, I wanted to cry. And I was thinking about how lucky I am that we met. And how amazing it was that we love each other so much. There’s nothing lopsided or off balance. You don’t find that every day, and when you do, you don’t want to lose it. In fact, you’ll do anything to keep it.”

She paused and met my eyes. Took a deep breath before she continued.

“That’s when it hit me,” she said. “If I lost Charlie, I don’t know if I’d be able to live through it.”

I took a shaky breath and nodded. I wasn’t quite ready to speak.

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