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I turned on my side to face him. “Maybe she didn’t know, though. Maybe she thinks you were safe and living here with your father and brother. I know she left, but whatever her reasons were, she knew you were with your dad. Maybe she’s afraid to come back because she thinks you won’t ever forgive her for what she did.”

“Do you forgive your father for abandoning you? Do you want to seek him out? What about you?”

His tone was cold and I flinched back from it.

Kyland rolled toward me and squeezed his eyes shut briefly, putting his hand on my cheek. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”

I took a deep breath. “No, it’s a fair question. The difference is, I never knew my father. I think…I think I do forgive him. But to me, he’d be a stranger. Your mama, though, you loved her, and she loved you.”

“I thought she did.” Pain moved over his face. “But that’s not even the worst part—do you want to hear the worst part?”

I nodded slowly. Yes. I want to hear everything you have to tell me—good, bad, and in-between.

“The worst part is that as hard as I try, as hurt as I am, I can’t stop loving her. Even though I know she doesn’t deserve it. She abandoned me and didn’t look back, and I still love her. What kind of stupid fool am I?”

“You’re not a fool,” I said softly. I reached over and held him. There was nothing else I could do.

And as I held him, I thought about how strong and tenacious he was, moving forward, never stopping, never giving up, even though he had all the reason in the world to do just that. I thought about how intelligent he was, how caring, how selfless, how filled with love. “You’re going to be just fine. You’re so strong,” I whispered. “In every way. You’re as strong as a bull and twice as stubborn.” I smiled and I felt him smile too. “You’ve kept that fire burning all this time, despite all you’ve lost. There’s nothing stronger than that. Nothing,” I added softly.

We didn’t get out of bed that day until the noontime sun was beaming through his window.

When we went back to school two weeks later, I grieved the loss of being in his bed, but it simply wasn’t practical. The pressure was on now to start the final semester off right—this was it. This was our last chance to do well enough to win that scholarship. The problem was, for me, suddenly that scholarship was the very thing that was going to take him away from me, or me away from him. I’d been focused on winning for almost four years, and suddenly, I didn’t know how I felt about it. I didn’t even know if I wanted it anymore. After everything Kyland had been through and as strong as my feelings were for him, how could I hope to take his dream away, even if it meant achieving my own? How could I? He was giving it his all, everything he had, to accomplish the one thing that had kept him going for so many hard, lonely, hungry years.

But Kyland had told me that whether he won it or not, he was going to leave Dennville. And so he had a plan either way. But could I really hope that he would have to walk out of here with not much more than the shirt on his back? Could I really hope that he would have to suffer even more hardship than he already had? Just that thought alone filled me with fear for him and an aching loneliness.

You worry about your own self, Tenleigh Falyn, I thought, admonishing myself. Lord knew no one else was. I wondered, though, if Kyland thought about that scholarship differently too. If he did, he didn’t share it with me. It seemed neither one of us wanted to discuss it.

I saw him in school and he grabbed my hand as we passed in the hallway, but we had assigned seating in the classes we shared and ate during different lunch periods, so we didn’t spend much time together there. I was filled with turmoil though. I snuck glances at him in class, watching as he concentrated so hard on his assignments. I saw him out the widow of my classes, sitting in the courtyard cramming before a test.

But we quizzed each other as we walked up our mountain back home, and we studied together in the evenings, among other more pleasurable things.

One day in mid-January when I finally got around to checking out a new book in the library, I noticed a small white piece of paper sticking out of the one I had returned several weeks before.

I pulled The Catcher in the Rye off the shelf.