Suffer Love (29 page)

Livy comes in a few minutes later. She throws herself onto the bed and lays her head on my shoulder. She puts a tentative yet steady hand on Mom's. We huddle together, all of our eyes stinging, a cracked unit trying to feel whole. Trying to act whole.

I breathe in, breathe out.

Feels a little better.

A week later, I'm on the hill at Love Circle after sundown with Ajay. It's cold, the kind you can smell and taste on the back of your tongue. We're bundled into coats and sprawled out on the grass under a clear, star-packed sky, a faded blue Frisbee resting on my chest.

“You know,” he says, “I was going to bring Kat here later tonight, but when I got to your house, you looked so desperately pathetic, I knew you needed a romantic evening. I am your one true love, after all.”

My eyes glaze on all the stars so they almost bleed into one spread of light. “Bros before beautiful girls . . .”

Ajay snorts. “No. Kat's mom dragged her to some self- concept seminar.” He checks his phone. “I'm meeting her in T-minus sixty-three minutes.”

I swing the Frisbee around and connect with Ajay's gut. He lets out an exaggerated
oof.

“Why did you want to come here, anyway?” he asks, rubbing his belly.

“I come here to think. I like it here.” I only brought Ajay along because he showed up as I was leaving. I don't mention that coming here is my own version of self-flagellation. Punishment, as I remember the first time Hadley knelt in front of me, her fingertips and her eyes skimming my face like she was discovering something brand-new and intriguing. Something she wanted.

“I take it you haven't talked to her,” Ajay says.

“Nope.”

“Have you tried?”

“Nope.”

“Should you?”

“Nope.”

“Samuel, man up. Admit it, you're miserable.”

I sit up and toss the Frisbee at his face, the closest version I can get to
manning
up,
whatever the hell that means.

He bats it away and smirks. “Exactly.”

“Age, I know you're trying to help, but just stop. Hadley doesn't want to talk to me, nor should she. I fucked up. Messed with her life, her family, her heart. Just leave it alone and go enjoy your own little romance, all right?”

I expect a snarky response, but none comes. He just looks at me, his brows furrowed in deep thought. He was ecstatic when I told him my parents knew the truth about the notes on Hadley's door, because, of course, Ajay's known all along.

“Finally!” he had shouted through the phone. “God, I've been so tired of carrying that around. Don't you feel better? Is Livy okay?”

“Yeah, she's good,” I said, purposely ignoring his former question. The truth was, I did feel better about my family. Hopeful. But it wasn't enough. The whole Hadley thing had really screwed with my head and, if I was being honest, my heart. It was going to take more than Mom's apologies and Dad's assertions of love and commitment to me and Livy to heal up the bloody mess in my chest.

“Samuel,” Ajay says now, “you're my best friend, and normally I cherish your idiotic, self-deprecating ways, but both you and Hadley need to get the hell over yourselves. You guys are like a pair of tragic lovers out of a Tolstoy novel.”

“I don't see either one of our bodies mangled under a train.”

“Close enough.”

Before I can offer a pointless rebuttal, a branch snaps behind us and we both swivel around. I suck in a breath and blink a few hundred times before what I'm seeing registers.

Hadley.

“Hey,” I say automatically, standing.

“Hey,” she says. God, she looks amazing. Moonlight streaks across her face, paling her already ivory skin. Her hair is long and loose and spilling over a fitted gray pea coat, buttoned up against the chilly wind.

“What . . . what are you doing here?” I ask.

“She's here to see me, man,” Ajay quips, elbowing me.

Neither Hadley nor I respond, our eyes locked on each other.

“Damn. Not even an obligatory smile. Okay. Too soon for humor.” He slaps my back after snagging my keys from the grass. “I'll just go attend to my own little romance . . .” His voice trails off as he disappears over the side of the hill. I barely register the sound of my own car starting up and driving off, leaving me stranded on a hilltop with a girl whose expression I'm finding impossible to read at the moment.

“How'd you know I was here?” I ask. Then I realize that maybe she's not here for me at all. Maybe she's here in search of her own peace and solitude and is revolted to find me here, polluting her air once again. My gut clenches and I think through options about how the hell I'm going to get home, mentally tracking to the nearest bus stop.

“Livy told me. When I stopped by your house.”

I exhale loudly as she steps closer. Closer. Closer, until we're only an arm's width apart.

“You went to my house?”

She nods.

“Why?”

She shrugs, hands in her coat pockets. “I guess I wanted to talk to you.”

“Why, Hadley?”

She looks up, her lashes fluttering heavily as she blinks at me. “Livy told me everything. You know that, don't you?”

I literally stumble backwards, feeling like I've been punched. Of course Livy told her. Hell, she probably told her a week ago, before she even told Mom.

“Sam.”

I take another step back, needing more space between us, because I'm either about to crumble to my knees or gulp her into my arms, neither of which is a good idea.

“I'm sorry . . .” I say. I should add more, explain every little crazy tick in my thought process from the first day I met her, but my throat closes up as she pushes through the distance between us.

“You could've told me the truth,” she says softly. “I could've handled it.”

“Maybe I couldn't. And it would've changed everything. You know it would. It
has
changed everything.”

“You lied to me, Sam. You were one of the only people I trusted and you broke that. You broke us.” Her voice cracks and I fist my hands, aching to hold her.

“I'm sorry. I am. I don't know why—” I snap my mouth shut. Because I do know why. I've always known why.

“Sorry doesn't change anything.” Tears spill down her face. “You know how I felt about lying and you kept doing it, every day, over and over. I don't understand why you didn't—”

“Because I wanted to be with you, all right?” I yell it, my voice raspy. Her eyes widen and cloud up. “You're all I think about and I knew if I told you, you'd disappear. You'd hate me. That's why, okay? I know it's not right. I know I screwed everything up, but I
physically
couldn't tell you. I didn't care about your last name or what our parents did. I wanted you. I wanted us. You made all of this . . . I don't know. It sounds crazy, but you, in my life—knowing you almost made everything worth it.”

I can't look at her. I shove my hands through my hair and pace in circles.

“Sam—”

“I want to be with you, Hadley, and I don't care what our families have to say about it. It's not about them. Our parents have nothing to do with us.”

“But they do. My dad's a part of me. Your mom's a part of you. Nothing will ever change that.”

“We don't have to disown our families or our own stories. We just have to . . . I don't know.” I hang both hands around my neck. “Move forward.”

“How? How would an
us
work? You really expect us to pose for prom pictures in my foyer with my dad behind the camera? Will our moms shake hands at graduation? Will we head off to college and stay together? Will we get married and turn our ex-lover parents into in-laws and co-grandparents?” She snorts a laugh, but then her eyes fill as she slides them up to mine. “How, Sam?”

I realize she wants a real answer. She wants to know how. She wants an
us
just as much as I do, despite everything. I bridge the gap between us and slide my hands up her arms to cup her face, relieved as hell when she lets me. “We'll figure it out. If you can forgive me, we'll figure this out.”

“Sam.” She puts her hands on my chest. “This is about more than just you and me. What about Livy? What about my mom and your dad?”

“I don't know.” I pull her closer, inhaling her scent. God, she's like a drug. “I know I should care about all of that, but I just don't right now.”

She presses her forehead to mine. “You will. I know you, Sam. You will care, and then where will we be?”

I don't answer. I can't. Our breath mingles as the night air hems us in against the rest of world. She's so close that I can feel her heart pounding against my chest. I slip a finger down her chin to the hollow of her throat, feeling the
thrum, thrum
of her pulse under my touch. She sighs, a shaky, desperate sound.

And then we're kissing, a mad scramble to gather up everything we both fear we've lost. There's nothing but lips and tongues and hands. Hadley trembling in my arms, her tears mingling with mine, my name falling from her mouth again, just like that first time we kissed in this very spot. The first time I went over the edge.

She breaks our kiss and dips her head onto my chest, heaving giant breaths.

“Hadley.” I smooth her hair, but she doesn't respond. “Had.”

She lifts her head and I search her face—her eyes, her mouth, the crease between her eyebrows—searching for any sign that she's ready to try this, that I haven't destroyed everything all over again.

“What does this mean?” I ask.

Her expression tightens, but she keeps her hands on my chest, my jacket balled into her fists. “I don't know, but I . . . I don't think I'm ready for this, Sam. Maybe we can try to be—”

“Don't. Don't say we can be friends.” I put my hands over hers, pressing them deeper into my chest. “I can't live in that in-between hell with you. Not you.”

“Why not? If we try being friends, at least we'll see each other.”

I shake my head. “I'm sorry. I can't. I'm done pretending. Seeing you and not being with you . . . it would be torture. It's too uncertain—”

“That's living, Sam. It's always uncertain.”

I close my eyes, squeeze them until I see bursts of color in the blackness. “Hadley, please . . .”

Her hands tighten on mine. “So maybe we don't call it
friends,
or the middle, or that scary, gray in-between place. But I need time, Sam. I need time to figure this out for myself. To get to know my parents again. To figure out where I am in my own life.”

I nod, biting my lip to keep from saying anything else. I know she's right. Same as Hadley, I need to get used to my family the way it is now, not the way it's been or the way I hoped it would be. I need time too.

But I don't want time. I want to do all that
with
Hadley.

I meet her gaze, watch her search mine, imploring me to understand why she's asking this of me, of herself. I let my eyes have their fill of her features, not knowing the next time I'll get to look at her like this, so close and soft and beautiful.

I breathe in, breathe out, searching for
Better
—or at least the belief in it. Looking at Hadley, I can tell something has changed in her. It's in the gentle set of her shoulders and clear glance of her eyes. She believes in
Better.

“Sam.”

I close my eyes and pull her arms around my neck. I let her voice, wrapped in my name, fill me up. I let the feel of her fingers curling into my hair transfer some of the hope I see in her eyes. I let Hadley hurtle me forward, even as I feel her pulling back.

“Don't,” I say, tightening my grip on her. “We don't have to do this.”

“Do what?”

“Say goodbye.” She sighs and sort of sinks against me, so I keep talking. Anything to keep her here as long as I can. “This is just you and me, remember? You said that to me, right here on this hill. Hadley and Sam. No last names. We can just be here. We can just be
us.
”

Infinite images, poetry and light, flood my mind with Sam's plea. I'm drowning in them. Or maybe they're drowning in me. Like Livy's photographs of us, all soft lines and possibility.

Two days ago, my parents and I dug out some old kites and flew them at Percy Warner Park in Nashville. Now, holding on to Sam, the breeze circling us like a blanket, I think about the way the lines felt both loose and taut in my hands, the way the wind picked up the kite and flung it here and there, how only my grip kept it from disappearing into the horizon.

Letting go.

And holding on.

Sam and me—star-crossed and still entangled up on a hill overlooking the city. On top of the world. I almost laugh at how ridiculous it is. How silly it is that we found each other, that we grounded each other, that we gave each other a sense of freedom and a home. Now I fear we're stuck in doubts and our heavy pasts and tenuous futures.

But we're here. Together.

“This shouldn't make sense,” I say.

“What?”

“Us. You and me.”

He presses his forehead to mine. “But we do. Maybe it's crazy, yeah, but it makes sense.
We
make sense.”

I lace my hands into his silky hair, holding him so the moonlight spills across his face and I can see him. I kiss him. Softly, and just once. He pulls back far enough to look at me and he smiles. A sad but hopeful thing.

I smile back.

Any writer will tell you that writing a book is a strange process. While working on
Suffer Love,
I vacillated daily between self-confidence and complete self-loathing and every neurotic shade of gray in between. It's isolating and scary and exhilarating, and I would not have made it to this point without the support of so many lovely people.