Page 130 of Ghosts Don't Cry

I turn my head, pressing a kiss to his chest, right over the tattoo covering his heart. His hand finds mine in the sheets, threading our fingers together. My pulse is still hammering, andI’m not really in full control of my thoughts, so I’m as surprised as he is when I speak.

“Why did you go back there?”

Chapter Fifty-Three

RONAN

My body reactsbefore I can stop it, every muscle locking. Her question isn’t unexpected. Not really. It’s one anyone would ask. I just didn’t think it would benow, while I’m lying here with her skin warm against mine and my heart still racing from what we’ve just done.

The silence builds, and with every second that passes, it gets harder to find the right words. Lily doesn’t say a word, she just lies beside me, fingers still laced with mine, while her thumb traces small circles over my knuckles, seemingly willing to wait however long it takes.

I suck in a breath, and force myself to speak. “I needed …” The words stick in my throat. I clear it and try again. “Those walls held everything I was. All the things I tried to kill inside myself.” I force myself to look at her. “I thought that maybe if I could find what I left behind … the books, my notes … it was all I had.”

I don’t even know if I’m making sense.

“The box.” Lily’s voice is quiet. “You mean the box you kept everything in.”

I nod, throat too tight to speak. That box was the only thing I owned. My whole world was inside it. Scraps of paper, stolen pens, words I wrote to remind myself that I existed and wasn’t a ghost stuck in time. Proof that I was more than what everyone in this town saw … ordidn’tsee.

She’s still for a moment, then rolls onto her side and sits up. I watch as she walks over to her closet, completely unselfconscious in her nakedness. She reaches up to the top shelf and pulls something down.

A box I recognize.

I sit up. She carries it back to the bed, and places it carefully on my lap. Her fingers linger on the lid for a moment before she pulls away.

I stare at it. The edges are worn, the lid slightly frayed. A part of me is afraid to open it, and what I might feel when I see inside. My hands are shaking when I reach for the lid. My breath stays trapped in my lungs as I lift it.

Pages. Dozens of them. My handwriting stares back at me, jagged and uneven from writing by the dim glow of the lamp or moonlight through the windows. Some pages are crumpled, some smeared from water damage, or sweat, or tears. But they’re all there.

I pick up one of them. It’s a poem I wrote about her. Another is a list of every book I’d ever read. A third is just her name, written over and over in different ways.

“You kept all of this?” My voice comes out hoarse.

“Of course I did.” She sits beside me on the bed, close but not touching. “I couldn’t let it disappear. I couldn’t letyoudisappear.” She turns and reaches into her nightstand drawer, and takes out a stack of envelopes bound together with string. She hands them to me without a word.

My heart stumbles when I recognize her handwriting on the first envelope. Letters. Dozens of them. Some addressed to me, care of the prison. Some with no address at all, just my name.

I pull the first one from the stack and unfold it. The date at the top is two weeks after I was released from prison.

Dear Ronan,

I know you won’t ever read this, but I have to believe you’re out there somewhere. I have to believe you survived and are doing well. The alternative is too much to bear.

Cassidy knows I’ve been thinking about you. She always knows. She asks me if I’m okay, and I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t admit to her that I think about you every single day. That I wonder where you are, if you’re okay, and if you ever think about me.

I hope you’re safe. I hope you’re finding a way to live instead of just surviving.

I glance over at her, but she’s looking down at her hands and not at me. I pick another at random. This one doesn’t have a date on it.

I started teaching today. The kids are so small and full of hope. I keep thinking about what you said once. That kids believe the world is good until someone teachesthem otherwise. I want to be the person who helps them keep believing.

“How many?” Two words is all I can force out.

“Every week for the first year you were gone,” she whispers. “Then, whenever I had news to share, or I was sad … or I missed you.”

I flip through them. “You knew where I was. You could have sent them.”

“I know. But I didn’t think you wanted to hear from me.”