Page 80

"No, you're right," I say, moving closer. "You faded—slowly. Fucking painfully. You just vanished little by little. Your nightly calls started coming every few days, then once a week. Until they stopped altogether. Your texts back were short, always filled with excuses why you couldn't respond, couldn't pick up the phone. Why you stopped visiting after that first Christmas break."

She takes half a step in. "You think it was that simple?" she asks, her voice lower and dripping with an anger meant to meet mine. "You think I just woke up one day and decided to blow up our relationship—all our future plans? My whole life?"

"I don't know," I snap. "You didn't exactly give me a lot to work with."

"I tried—to leave. To tell you when I knew I couldn't."

I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "From where I was standing, it didn't look that way."

She nods. "You're right. I could have been more blunt. I should have told you flat out that I didn't think I could do it. But I was eighteen."

My jaw ticks. "And I was nineteen and knew exactly what I wanted."

"That's easy for you to say, Jace. My future didn't look anything like yours. My plan was to leave everything I knew and follow you."

"Right," I spit back. "That was your plan. Nobody forced that on you."

She swallows. "You know what I mean."

"No." I step closer again without thinking. "I don't know what you mean, Lenny. Because from my end, it just looked a hell of a lot like you didn't love me enough to try."

Her breath stutters. "I did love you," she says sternly. "I loved you so much."

"Could've fooled me."

Tears well in her eyes, but they don't fall. She's holding them back the same way she's holding back the rest of it.

"I knew if I left," she starts, "if I followed you… there was no coming back. Not really. Not to my family. Not to Mage. And I—" Her voice splits. "I didn't know how to be that person yet. The one that leaves."

That does it for me.

"But you did leave!" I shout. "You've apparently been everywhere but with me for these last six years."

"Yeah, I did," she says, her eyes still glossy. "After—after everything happened. You know why? Because I may not have been with you but you… you were still everywhere to me. Everywhere, Jace. I had to leave the town I thought I could never move away from just to try to move on from you."

My heart skips a beat. Because that—that I get.

The wind kicks up again, reminding me to remember what's important now. "You wouldn't have had to move on if you didn't pick that place over everything else."

She closes what's left of the gap between us, our toes nearly touching.

"I thought I was letting you go," she says weakly. "Freeing you of the chains I still had tied around my feet. You had…" She gestures around, arms wide like she's searching for more than what's on this back deck. "This whole future ahead of you—baseball, college, everything. I didn't want to ruin that. Or worse—be the reason you didn't go for it all."

"Jesus, Lenny." I drag a hand through my hair, pacing a step away before turning back to her. "You don't get to decide that for me. You don't get to rewrite it into something noble so you can sleep at night."

Because I don't.

Her shoulders drop slightly as the weight of my words settle there.

"I know," she whispers. "I know that now."

"You know why I saved your number, Lenny? It wasn't because I was ever gonna call again. That, I was done with. It was because deleting it felt like admitting you weren't ever coming back to me. But that's the funny thing, isn't it?" I drag my hand over my mouth. "Because you never did anyway."

Her flinch is instant. Subtle—but I catch it.

Silence stretches between us that's as devastating as this conversation.

The music from inside pulses faintly through the walls as the bass becomes a dull thud hammering away at what's still unsaid.