Page 63

Thirty-two
Henley
I know he didn’t buy the flowers for me and so does his mother, but I take them anyway because I don’t want to be rude and I don’t want to upset her like the last time I was here.
Looking down at the bouquet of flowers between us, I expect roses or maybe daisies.
Spider mums. Googly eyes. A cheap, glittery black plastic floral pick with the words Happy Halloween stamped on it in shiny red paint.
I laugh because I think they’re funny. I think they’re perfect and I love them, even if they weren’t meant for me. When I look up, he’s looking down at me, his jawline tight, gaze aimed at my chin. It takes me a second to understand what I’m seeing.
He’s embarrassed.
“They’re lovely,” I tell him and suddenly he doesn’t look embarrassed anymore. He looks angry. Like he’s seconds away from ripping the flowers out of my hands and throwing them in the trash.
I don’t think about what I’m doing. Like before, when I followed him into Benny’s, I just do it. I don’t worry about who might see me or what they might think. What they see when they look at us. If they wonder what someone who looks like him is doing with someone like me.
I push myself onto the balls of my feet and press my lips against his mouth, soft and sweet. Lifting a hand, I cup his jaw, sweeping my thumb over his cheekbone until I feel the tension between us bleed away.
When I pull back, he smiles at me and he’s Conner again. Careful. Gentle.
Mine.
He’s not yours.
Don’t take something you can’t have.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.
You can’t stay.
You can’t give him what he wants.
You never could.
It’s all true. Every word.
And right now, I don’t care about any of it because I kissed him in front of his mother and he’s still smiling at me.
Still loves me.
“I love them.” Pressing my feet flat to the floor, I look up at him. “Thank you.”
“They’re terrible.” He grimaces slightly, like he thinks it’s a lame thing to say. Like he meant to say something else.
“Alright you two,” his mom says, drawing our attention. She’s standing a few feet away, transferring warm cookies from the baking sheet in front of her to a wire cooling rack. “Break it up. I’ve got chicken to fry and my oil still isn’t going to change itself.” Despite the sarcasm, I can hear it in her voice. See it on her face. She’s on the verge of tears.
Conner doesn’t notice. He gives me a quick, lopsided grin before shooting around me to lift a cookie from the rack. “No way.” His mom smacks the back of his hand with her spatula and laughs. “After my oil.”
He laughs and stoops to drop a quick kiss on her cheek. “I’m goin’… I’m goin’...” He leans into me on his way out the backdoor. “Bring me cookies,” he says in a loud stage whisper that has his mom shooing him out the door with her dish towel.
The door bangs closed, and I hear his boots stomp across the back porch and down the steps. The rusty slide of the detached garage door at the end of the drive being raised on its tracks.
“He’s never slept well.” I look away from the door Conner disappeared behind to find his mother beside me. “Even as a baby. He never cried. Never fussed. But he was never still. Never quiet… if he closed his eyes at all, I counted myself lucky.” She shakes her head, scooping and dropping the last of the cookie dough onto the tray I started. “You could see his mind working. Moving. How fast he absorbed everything around him… how frustrated he was that he body couldn’t keep up with his brain.” She sets the spoon down and lifts the baking sheet. “We knew right away he was different, but we were young and stubborn.” She keeps talking, even though her back is turned and bent to put the last of the cookies into the oven. “We thought if we treated him like a normal kid, that’s what he’d eventually become.” The oven door shuts with a snap and she turns. “He wanted it more than anything—to be like his brother. To go to school and struggle. To make friends andfit in.” Her voice cracks and I realize she’s on the verge of tears again. “To feel and see things the way he thought he was supposed to.” She sits down at the table and stares at her hands. “When you showed up on our doorstep to tutor him, I thought you were just another way for him to pretend to be normal.” She looks up at me and smiles. “I was wrong.”
I cross the kitchen. Feel like I’m floating toward her. Sinking into the chair across from her I grip the edge of the table to keep myself from blowing away. “What changed your mind?”
“When I came up to get you two for dinner. You were sitting on the floor, surrounded by books and he was as far away from you as he could get, head resting on the edge of his bed, watching you read, and he looked so… still. It’s like his world didn’t spin as fast with you in it.” She smiles again but the warmth of dies quickly. “Before I understood, I told him don’t you hurt that girl. She has it hard enough… but I had it wrong. Backwards.” She reaches out to pry my fingers free of the table’s edge and holds them between her own, squeezing hard enough to hurt. “I love you, God knows I do. You’re like a daughter to me, but please don’t hurt my son.” She looks me in the eye and I notice for the first time that they’re her son’s eyes. Not Conner’s. They’re deep and blue, like Declan’s. “Not again, Henley—because you’re the only one who ever has, and I don’t think he can survive you twice.”