Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(64)

Laire had been so stony, so cold, that day in the hospital, he’d tried going back the following day, hoping she’d softened a little, but she’d told the nurses not to allow him to visit. They’d taken one look at his driver’s license and politely asked him to leave. With no other choice, he returned to school that following Thursday, but he called King Triton more times than he could count during the first two or three weeks back at Duke.

The first time she answered, his heart soared at the sound of her voice, and he begged her not to hang up. He could hear her breathing into the phone, ragged and shallow, as he told her he loved her. But no more than two or three seconds passed before he heard the click of the call disconnecting and the drone of the dial tone.

About a week later, she answered again, but this time she spoke first.

“Stop callin’ here.”

“Laire? Laire, darlin’, I need to talk to you. Please, just—”

“It’s over, Erik.”

“No. I can’t accept that.”

“You’re deluding yourself.”

“Tell me what I can do. Please. Please, Laire.”

“It’s over. You need to let me go.”

And the line went dead.

He couldn’t get his head around it. He didn’t understand. Yes, her father had had a heart attack, and he understood that she loved her father, and he even understood that the cold way she’d behaved in the hospital, while incredibly painful for him, made sense. Her sister was coming and going. Her father could wake up at any moment. He was still a secret. The timing was bad.

What he didn’t understand was why she hadn’t softened by now. Why did she insist that they were over? Why did she think that the love they’d shared was just a fantasy? Why was she closing him out of her life after they’d shared the most amazing summer together?

His mind had returned to that last night over and over again. Had it been a test? To see if he’d keep his word about having sex? And had he let her down—failed the test—by letting things go as far as they did? If that was true, he’d just as soon die that he’d killed their happiness by betraying her . . . except she’d stayed all night after that, waking up in his arms and telling him she loved him.

They’d had a plan in place to see each other over Thanksgiving. And perhaps what he hated the most about himself was that, while he knew, rationally, that she’d broken up with him at the hospital, part of his heart still desperately hoped she’d show.

But if she didn’t—if Thanksgiving Day came and went without her—they were really and truly over.

And if that was true, what was he supposed to do with the love he had for her? It was big and wide and real to him, this white-hot, beautiful love that saturated his heart and lived vibrantly in his memories of them. His stupid heart couldn’t let go of her. He thought about her, dreamed of her at night, looked at pictures of her on his phone. He drank too much at parties to numb the pain, couldn’t concentrate on his studies, and hit too hard against the boards in hockey because he was confused and angry. Angry? No. Furious. He was furious that she’d turned her back on the best thing he’d ever known.

He loved her.

Fuck, but he loved her more than his own miserable fucking life.

Self-destruction sounded perfect.

“Because I love you,” said Hillary gently. “Because I need you. And because if you don’t go for Thanksgivin’ and she shows up, you won’t forgive yourself if you’re not there.”

Fuck, but his sister knew him too well.

His heart clutched and he bent his head, his voice breaking when he asked, “But what if she doesn’t?”

Hillary sighed. “Then it’s time to pick up the pieces and finally move on.”

I can’t. I can’t move on without her. I’ll be stuck here in hell, loving her, forever. Tears pooled in his red, hungover eyes, slipping down his bristly cheeks.

“Fine,” he said, softly, hating himself for hoping. “I’ll be there.”

***

Laire wrote up the order she’d just taken over the phone, adjusting her perch on the stool at King Triton and stretching her neck back and forth. With the late-day sun shining through the windows and her uncle and father out making deliveries, the store was quiet, and her eyes grew heavy. She sighed, resting her elbows on the counter and her head on her elbows. This happened every afternoon lately: this drowsy, heavy feeling, like all she wanted to do was take a nap.

Fatigue. The very word scared her. She’d heard it enough times while her mother’s health was declining.

Something was wrong with her, and she’d been ignoring the symptoms for a few weeks, but today, since it was quiet, she needed to get on the internet and try to figure out what was going on. Her father had had an iron deficiency after his first heart attack—maybe that was it? She prayed there wasn’t something more serious wrong.

Opening her eyes and sitting up, she clicked on the mouse and waited for a search page to come up.

In addition to daily fatigue, the smell of certain kinds of fish, which had never bothered her before, now turned her stomach. Not to mention, she had this out-of-control appetite suddenly. As a result, she’d gotten a little liberal with the comfort food this fall, and her jeans bit into her abdomen uncomfortably. She was overweight and constantly tired and had occasional nausea.