Hear Me Now (25 page)

“Remember what happened last fall
? I didn’t do the right thing that night and we both know it, but tonight, I am. Amy, Tim, Charlotte and Eve, they’re planning on doing something when you announce the prom court. I’m letting you know so you can stop it.”

He looks me over like he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying and while I know for a fact that Cadence won’t be stepping on that stage tonight, there’s no stopping whoever does take her spot and I don’t want it happening to anyone else. I need to make him believe me.

“Get someone up in the rafters. You’ll see a bucket of ice water. They’re planning on dumping it on the queen’s head. I know I’ve screwed up a lot and you don’t believe shit that comes out my mouth, but you’re gonna want to believe this.”

Giving him the facts seems to be all it takes. He nods his head and right before my eyes, he walks away, heading not only for Coach on the other side of the room, but also to where Cadence’s mom is standing.  When she looks a
cross the room, catching my eye, she nods her head and smiles and that’s all I need.

She’s letting me know that even though she doesn’t know what’s going on, she knows I did the right thing this time.

There’s only one thing left to do now.

It’s time to go back to the beginning and this time, do it right. It’s time to make Cadence Taylor mine.

Epilogue

Cadence

When he asked me to dance, the way it felt in his arms, even though I couldn’t hear the music and he was the one leading me, holding me as close as possible as we swayed around the gym, it was pivotal. It was a turning point for us; at least I thought it was.

The dancing is over, the prom court about to be announced and I’m on the sidelines, Dillon nowhere to be found. It’s obvious that the moment I thought we shared, the way it fe
lt being in his arms again was all in my head. Nothing’s changed. We’re right back where we were on Monday.

Feeling a body brush against mine, I turn, looking up and hoping to see a particular pair of brown eyes looking back at me, disappointed when I see that it’s a pair of dark eyes alright, but not the ones I’d been desperate for.

It’s Eric and despite the smile on his face, I still feel destroyed inside. After everything I’ve been through with Dillon, knowing what his life is like and the darkness that surrounds him, I should be with someone like the boy standing beside me now. I should be allowing myself to fall for that smile, the softness in his eyes and instead I’m standing here missing someone that’s his complete opposite.

He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a tiny envelope and looking at me, his smile never wavering, he passes it to me and takes a step back. Whatever this is that he’s handed me now, it’s obviously not from him or he wouldn’t feel the need to step back and give me privacy to read it.

My heart jumps at the thought of what is waiting for me on the inside of the envelope. As I slide the paper out and look at the scrawl on the note card, my heart drops again. It’s not from him, I’d be able to tell his writing anywhere. 

Take a walk with me?

Looking back over at Eric, again being hit with a smile that seems somehow brighter than before, I smile weakly and motion toward the door, giving him my answer at the same time.

It’s only when we’ve made our way out of the school and down through the trees that will take me back to the one spot that means something to me that I stop. I’m pretty sure he has no idea what the place he’s taking me means, but I think before he does it I should tell him.  I’m not sure how right I feel about going to the ravine knowing it’s the place I had my first kiss and gained my first boyfriend.

Going here with Eric now would be unfair to him and also to Dillon. I can’t do it.

Shaking my head and pointing toward the ravine, I take a step back, fully prepared to turn back and head inside again.

Before I can turn, he reaches out to me and pulls me back toward him and the place that I really don’t want to go. Pulling another envelope from his pocket, he hands it over to me and just like before, I slip the small card out and read it, completely confused as to what’s going on. He can talk to me, so using note cards is throwing me off.

Trust me. I swear it’s not what you think.

There’s a happy face emoticon at the end of the sentence and for some reason, the same way it did when Isabelle sent them to me, it lightens the mood. I do trust Eric and I know he would never do something that would hurt me. He just doesn’t realize what the ravine means to me.

I can’t go there.
I sign to him, hoping that he’ll get the hint so I can stop whatever is about to come next.

“Yes you can, Caddy. You need to.”

What does he mean I need to? I don’t need to do anything. Right now he’s reminding me of the way Dillon was in my kitchen. I don’t like being told what I need to do.

“Eric—”

“Just come, Caddy.” He says and not giving me a chance to reply, he drags me by the hand, and pulls me the rest of the way through the trees until we make it completely through to the other side. The water comes into view automatically, and seeing it this way, at night, it warms me.

It’s beautiful. The way it looks during the day, seeing the water all brown and murky, with discarded garbage lining the sides, is enough to turn anyone’s stomach, but right now, none of that is visible, and all I can see is the lights from the street reflected as the water slowly moves in waves.

Looking up at Eric and watching as he points down the bike path, I follow his hand and that’s when I see the real reason I’m here. It wasn’t Eric wanting to bring me here at all.

Standing about fifteen feet away from me, at the rock that we sat on the first day we came here is Dillon and surrounding the area, in the trees above him and resting all around the rock are lights, so many o
f them that he’s completely lit up and glowing.

I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight in my life.

Turning back to Eric, expecting to see a look of disappointment on his face, especially after what my mom told me, all I see is his familiar smile.

“What is this?”

He opens his jacket one more time, again passing along another envelope and as I take it, he bends in and with a small squeeze of my shoulder and a kiss on my cheek he points toward Dillon.

“It’s time to go, Caddy.”

Turning away and walking back the way he came, I turn my attention back to the note in my hand and slip it out of the envelope, my heart starting to pump faster in anticipation and fear at the same time. This time, the handwriting is familiar and as I read the words and slip it back into the envelope, I turn toward the writer and make my way forward.

Hi. My name is Dillon.

Dillon

I swear to god with the amount of work I put into this, it better go down the way I want it to.

When Kayden suggested bringing Eric into it, having done the same thing when he wanted to reach out to Isabelle, I was completely against it. I know the way the guy feels about Cadence, letting him be involved in what I wanted to do for her, it would only cause more shit than I was prepared to deal with.

Despite it, Isabelle brought him in and considering what s
he was doing for me after what I did to her, I wasn’t about to argue it. She didn’t have to help me at all and I knew it, which means that Eric being involved in this was the way things had to be.

Thankfully the only thing she task
ed him with was making sure Cadence showed up when I texted Kayden to let him know I was ready. Standing here and waiting for him to show up with her though, I start wondering if he bailed out at the last minute and just took off somewhere so he could be alone with her.

I swore to myself when I put this in motion that I wouldn’t doubt myself or my worthiness anymore. For whatever reason, Cadence Taylor saw something in me that for the longest time I’d been denying and it’s for her that I would see this through. Armed with the information Kayden dropped on me at the hospital, it was the only thing left for me to do. Nothing else mattered.

Seeing her as she came through the trees behind Eric, the way she turned to him as he passed her what looked to be the last envelope, my heart stilled for the first time since I started putting this all together. He had come through and delivered her just the way he promised and watching him walk away and her even from this distance, reading my words, I’m more than ready for what’s about to come next.

My note to her, the one I left her the day before she left, it’s what has to happen now. What happened between us at schoo
l, it was preparing us for this moment right here. This is where we have our beginning with no end.

Right
here, in this moment right now. This is our forever.

Coming to a stop in front of me, her eyes never breaking from mine, I slip an envelope out of my pocket and pass it across to her.  This was a last minute decision, but one I’m feeling pretty damn confident about. I could have easily said all of this to her, but there’s a lot of it and writing was a lot easier than trying to remember everything I wanted to say.

Watching her eyes go wide as she pulls out the lined sheet of paper, I can’t help but smile. It’s obvious she was expecting another note card. It’s too bad for her that everything I want to say to her couldn’t fit on twelve of them, let alone one.  When her eyes stop flicking over the lines on the page, she folds the note back up with her free hand and passes it out toward me.

Our hands touch as I take it from her and put it back in my pocket an
d the jolt I experience, it makes all of this perfect. After spending the last three weeks attempting to navigate through the sea of confusion I felt when I walked into Ms. Taylor’s class that first day, wanting nothing more than to do the right thing by this girl that just got to me in ways no one else had been able to, I’ve been dying for things to be this right.

“Do you mean it?” she asks, my heart jumping at the sound.

“Every word of it.”

“What is all of this?” she asks motioning up
toward the trees and the ground around the rock that I still think of as ours. It’s only when her eyes seem to lock on what’s resting on top of the rock that they go wide. “More spray paint?”

Despite the seriousness of the moment, the way she questions me about the spray paint reminds me of the first time we came here and she eyed the can suspiciously. Unable to hold back, I laugh and her head swivels back toward me, her eyes lighting up, catching me in the act though I’m pretty she didn’t hear me.

“Yes, more spray paint, but we’ll get to that. First, I need to say something and I really need you to hear me.”

Her eyes lower, but before she can take my words the wrong way, I reach out, resting my fingers against her chin which makes her lift them back up to me. There is nothing wrong about what I said and I’m about to show her why.

“I love you Cadence.” I say, but at the same time even though I’m painstakingly slow at it, I make my hands repeat the words. It’s only when she catches on to what I’m doing, her eyes darting from my lips down to where my hands are signing the words to her that I know I’ve hit my mark.

As the tears begin to pool in the corner of her eyes, I silent
ly thank Isabelle and whatever god I can for being able to have this moment right now. Her reaction to the small attempt I’ve made at understanding her, adapting to her needs, it’s everything.

“Why didn’t you just sign the words?”

When I decided that learning how to sign was going to be my first step in starting over with her, Isabelle asked me the same thing. I insisted on learning the individual letters and at the time, I never gave her an explanation for it because it wasn’t any of her business. The only one the explanation matters for is the girl standing here now.

“Coach told me once, when I was too busy screwing around to pay attention that the only way he could get through to me, make me hear him was to spell everything out. I wanted you to hear me.”

If I thought the growing pool of water in her eyes couldn’t get worse, I was in for a rude awakening. No sooner do I say the words then I notice the tears begin to fall from her eyes. Before I can reach out to her, make them stop she puts her hand up between us.

“Happy tears.”

Nodding, I step toward her, fully prepared to push her hand out of the way if I need to if it means I can have this girl in my arms. It feels like forever since I’ve touched her even though it’s only been a few minutes and if I don’t do something soon to end it, I’m going to go out of my mind.

“All this time I wanted you to hear me, but it was me that wasn’t listening. You’ve heard me this entire time because you heard me here.” She says as she reaches out and rests her hand over my heart. “Thank you for hearing me.”

This girl—she’s exactly the way Kayden says she is. She’s the one that helped me, the one that made me realize that I’m better than the way I’ve been for the last six years and she’s here now, thanking me when the reality is she has nothing to thank me for.

Moving my hands again and watching as her eyes lock on them, I spell the same words out again, for no other reason than I don’t want to spend another second of this moment together not letting her know how I feel. I ran from it, denied it, fought
like hell against it for three weeks and I’m done.

I’m head over heels for Cadence Taylor and I’ll repeat it as many times as I have to so that she never spends another second doubting it. I’m the person I am now, the one standing here signing because of her believing in me. I might have thought I
was the strong one, the fighter, but the truth is, it was never me at all.

It’s always been her.  She’s the real fighter.

“It’s my turn.” She says slowly, focusing my attention back on her and whatever she’s about to say next. This is the moment of truth, this is where everything changes, this time for keeps.

Her hands move first and even though it’s short, I’m pretty sure I know what she said. It’s now that what she said earlier, about me hearing her in my heart becomes true. It’s the three words she signs to me before I grab her and pull her into my arms that make every single bit of what we’ve gone through worth it.

“What was that last word?” I ask, remembering the full sign for I love you from my research on the internet and knowing that it wasn’t a part of it.

“Your name means loyal so—”

“So that means…”

She smiles at me and
I’m completely undone at the sight of it. The way she looks right now, her eyes shining under the lights above us, I wanna freeze time and keep her this way forever. Her hands lift and her lips part at the same time and just like before, she stops my heart as she signs her feelings to me, loud and clear.