Page 115 of Ghosts Don't Cry

But she’s not a hallucination. She’s real and she’s here.

Her eyes find me on the floor, surrounded by broken glass and rotting fabric, blood on my hands. For a moment, I see myself reflected in her eyes. Not the man I’ve become, but the boy I was.

“What do you mean you were dying?”

Chapter Forty-Six

LILY

I was dying,Lily.

The words chase me as I drive away from the grocery store parking lot. I try to ignore them. I need to go home and figure out what I’m going to do about the school board meeting tomorrow. I have to focus on saving my career instead of losing myself to memories of the man who keeps shattering what’s left of my heart.

But his words won’t let me go.

I was dying, Lily.

The image of the last time I saw him before everything fell apart forms in my mind. That night in the factory when I told him I was leaving town for a week. The way he’d stood there, voice cold and cruel.

I slam on the brakes, my car squealing to a stop in the middle of the street. A car behind me honks, swerving around, the driver shouting obscenities through the window. I ignore him.

Because I’m seeing that night from a whole new angle.

The tremors in his hands he hid by shoving them into his pockets. The sweat on his forehead despite the December cold. The way he swayed slightly. How he kept his distance.

I thought he was exhausted, that he was pushing me away because he was scared. But there had been something else. A look in his eye that I couldn’t interpret back then. And now, looking back at that memory with adult eyes, I can see it clearly. He wasn’t just breaking up with me, he was saying goodbye.

The truth crashes over me in waves, each one pulling me deeper. He hadn’t been speaking metaphorically in the parking lot. He wasn’t talking about emotional pain or feeling lost. He’d been telling me the truth.

He’d literally been dying.

Cars continue to swerve around me, horns blaring. My hands are shaking on the wheel. My vision dims at the edges, and I have to blink hard to refocus.

Taking a deep breath, I ease back onto the gas, and pull over to the side of the road, before I cause an accident, while trying to stop the revelations from tearing me apart.

I sit there, engine idling, my breath coming in short, shallow gasps. The windshield fogs with each exhale.

Dying.

The word keeps repeating in my head, and each time it does, another piece clicks into place. Another memory shifts my perspective. The way he wouldn’t let me touch him that last week. The excuses for why I couldn’t visit. How he stopped showing up in the library where we used to meet.

I thought he’d grown tired of me, but now I don’t think that was it at all.

He was hiding.

All these years ... I went to college. I became a teacher. I tried to help kids who reminded me of him. And now …

Now I’m not sure I understood anything about that time at all.

What if the cruelty he showed me that night wasn’t cruelty at all, but desperation? What if he wasn’t pushing me away to hurt me, but to protect me from watching him …

My throat closes. I can’t finish the thought. I don’t want to think about what that week must have been like. What would have happened if I’d stayed, and seen through his lies?

Would it have made a difference?

How bad was it? How close did he come? And why ...whydid he think pushing me away was better than letting me help?

Anger takes me by surprise. If he thought he was protecting me, then he took away my choice. He decided for both of us what I could and couldn’t handle. He’s doing the same thing now. Still keeping secrets, and deciding what truths I’m allowed to have.