Page 29 of Rewind It Back (Windy City #5)

Hallie

His light is still on. It’s the middle of the night, we’ve been back home for a couple of hours, and his bedroom light is still on.

Sure, I’m still awake too, but that’s because I got to sleep most of the drive home. But not Rio. When I offered to trade off so he could have a break from driving, he refused, assuring me he was wide awake.

He still is, judging by the glaring light coming from his bedroom that I can see from mine.

His demeanor was off as soon as he left my dad’s hospital room. He was quiet and in his head. The silence between us on the ride home felt suffocating, and I knew then that he knew everything.

I waited for him to ask some follow-up questions, for us to talk about the things he now knows, but he didn’t say a word. But whenever I looked over at him, it felt like I could physically see him attempting to wrap his head around it all.

Standing at my window, I check on his room again, willing the light to go off next door so he can get some sleep. After traveling for work all week, catching a last-minute flight to Minnesota, and driving us all the way back to Chicago, I know he’s exhausted.

I also know his mind is probably moving at a mile a minute right now.

Screw it. We can talk if he wants or I can lie down next to him so he can get some rest, but either way, I’m going over there.

I grab my keys, throw on a pair of shoes, and cross the yard to his house. It’s pitch black out. Only the light from his bedroom is on. I use it to find the latch on his gate, going through his backyard and unlocking the back door with the house key he gave me.

I don’t know why I didn’t choose the front door. I guess I’m so accustomed to sneaking around with Rio that slipping through the backyard in the middle of the night feels more on brand for us.

Locking up behind me, I quietly make my way through the first floor, up the stairs, and to his bedroom door. It’s left open for me to see Rio sitting on the edge of his bed with his back to me. He’s bent forward, elbows on his knees, and shoulders slumped.

I’m about to knock, to make my presence known, when he speaks first.

“Use the front door, Hallie.”

I stay frozen in the doorway, unable to move.

“We don’t need to sneak across rooftops and through windows anymore. We’re adults and I’m not hiding this again. Use the front door.”

Oh.

Still he doesn’t turn around to look at me, so I cross the room and round the bed. Moving to stand between his legs, I force him to sit up and look at me. It takes a second for those green eyes to make their way to mine, but when they do, the anguish in them cracks something inside of me. I think it’s the rest of that armor I’ve been trying to wear around him.

“I take it he told you everything.”

Rio’s jaw tics and he pulls his eyes away from me again. He doesn’t seem angry though. He looks like he’s on the verge of crying and trying his best not to.

I’m exhausted. Tired from today. Tired from trying to resist this, but I can’t imagine how exhausted he is. His mind has been running nonstop for at least the last six hours, but after listening to that voicemail he left me while he was visiting his mom, I’d imagine he hasn’t stopped overthinking all day.

“I’ll tell you everything you want to know, Rio. You can ask me anything.”

He’s quiet for a moment before he finally makes eye contact again. “Are you okay?” is his first question. It’s gentle and sweet, with an edge of worry in his tone.

Nodding, I ask, “Are you?”

He gives me the slightest shake of his head to tell me no.

“Talk to me.”

Standing between his legs, I feel him cup the back of my thigh with his palm. His thumb strokes back and forth against my skin as he mulls over something in his mind. “Why are you working so much, Hallie?”

Well, that was not the question I was expecting.

But I’m not lying to him anymore. Today felt like a shift. An important one, so I swallow my pride and tell him the truth. “Because I’m in debt.”

He doesn’t react at all. “And why are you in debt?”

Searching his face, I realize he already knows the answer. That’s why he’s not reacting. No, my dad didn’t tell him because he has no idea about it, but this is Rio. The person who knows me better than anyone, even all these years later.

“I think you already know.”

“Your dad’s cancer trial. The insurance didn’t cover as much as you let him believe.”

I shake my head. “It didn’t cover housing or moving expenses. There was no caregiver stipend like I told him there was. But he wouldn’t have done the trial if he knew that, and I needed him to get better. So, I told him everything was covered. I took out a loan to make it happen.”

Rio’s brows knit together, but he doesn’t say anything, so I continue.

“I was working on paying it back when he was in remission the first time. I was able to work more hours, but then he got sick again and needed me. I couldn’t make the payments. Interest compounded and well... it got expensive.”

Again, he doesn’t say anything, and there’s a part of me that wonders if I’m being judged for being careless with my money, but I didn’t think it was careless back then. I still don’t.

“As soon as I get hired full-time at the design firm, I’ll be able to pay it down quicker. I’m just trying to stay on top of it as best I can until—”

“Hallie,” he cuts me off. “You don’t owe me an explanation. You were taking care of your family. I’d do the same thing if I were in your position.” Shaking his head, he’s having a hard time looking me in the eye again. “But you should have never been in that position in the first place and I’m so fucking sorry for putting you there.”

I knew this was coming. I knew he was going to feel guilty. That he’d blame himself.

I’ll admit, when I was younger, there was a part of me that wanted him to know how hard things were after he left. I wanted him to feel like shit for leaving me the way he did. But not anymore. Neither of us can change our choices, and dwelling on them is only going to fill us with regret.

I don’t stop running the pads of my thumbs in soothing strokes against his cheeks as I give him a minute to gather himself.

Eventually, he tilts his head back and looks up at me. “When did you find out he was sick?”

That is something I can’t tell him right now. Not when he’s already so busy beating himself up from everything else he’s learned today.

“Rio, it’s late. Let’s get some sleep.”

His eyes are filled with dread as he looks up at me, like he already knows what I’m going to say. “When?”

I exhale a resigned sigh, knowing he’s not going to let this go until I tell him. “The summer you got drafted. Two weeks before you left for training camp in Chicago.”

I watch as he tries to process it, as he tries to understand the timeline. I see the moment it clicks because he looks like he got the wind knocked out of him.

“Please tell me that’s not true.”

All I can do is offer him a sad smile and watch his entire demeanor deflate more than it already was.

I hadn’t gotten a chance to tell him about my dad’s diagnosis all those years ago because twenty-four hours after I learned about it, I found out that his dad was having an affair.

I was so scared for so many reasons, and suddenly, I didn’t know how to tell him anything.

Leaning forward, he drops his forehead to my stomach to hide his face from me. “You weren’t yourself at all those last two weeks. I remember that. After everything came out, I figured it was because you had known about my dad and were trying to keep it from me.”

I run my fingers through his hair, attempting to soothe him. “It was partly that. But I was also scared about my dad being sick and not knowing what that was going to look like for us. I was supposed to move to Chicago with you, and I didn’t know how to tell you that I might not be able to go anymore.”

He shakes his head. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Rio—”

He lifts his head to look at me, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so heartbroken. He’s trying his best not to cry. To keep it together.

“I left you to deal with all of that on your own, Hallie. Do not try to make me feel better about this.”

“You didn’t know.”

He breathes a self-deprecating laugh. “Because I never gave you a chance to tell me. All this time, I thought if you could forgive me for leaving, then maybe we could have another shot at us. But this?” He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t give me another chance either.”

“Rio, that’s not... Maybe initially, yes. I didn’t want to give you the time of day because you hurt me. But when things started to shift, when it started to feel how it used to feel between us, I knew I was going to have to tell you everything and I was terrified to. I didn’t want you to blame yourself.”

His eyes go wide. “You were afraid that my own actions would hurt my feelings? Jesus, Hallie. You should hate me, not protect me.”

“But I’ve always protected you. At least I tried to, and that hasn’t changed.”

He watches me for a moment, eyes searching my face. “For a while, I convinced myself that I had every right to feel the way I did, but before I even found out about your dad, I knew I was lying to myself. I even called you about it earlier today. I wanted to try to explain how fucked up my head was at the time, but to find out I left you with all of this? I should’ve been there.”

I shake my head to tell him no. “You don’t need to explain anything. When I’m logical about it, I know why you left. Rio, you were heartbroken over your parents.”

“Don’t make excuses for me. Your parents split up too. I’m assuming that’s what your dad meant, and I’ve spent all this time focused on my family falling apart, while you were going through the same fucking thing.”

“I wasn’t though. My parents’ divorce did not affect me the same way yours did.”

His brows furrow. “What are you talking about?”

“You held your parents’ relationship on a pedestal as this ideal picture of what love should look like, but I didn’t view my parents’ relationship that way.” I take his face in my hands, making sure his attention is on me. “That’s how I viewed ours .”

He stares at me, and this time he doesn’t fight the tears from welling in his eyes. He doesn’t wipe them away when they fall either. So, with my thumbs I gently clean them off.

“You have every right to hate me, Hal. You have every right to believe that I forgot about you, but I didn’t. Not one day went by that I didn’t think of you. You were everywhere. In the music I listened to. In the house I live in. I tried to compare every single person I met to you, but there was no comparison. And I will spend the rest of my life regretting leaving you behind all those years ago.”

There’s no point in telling him I forgive him or asking him to forgive himself right now. Anything I say will fall on deaf ears. He won’t be able to hear me take responsibility for my part in our breakup, or when I tell him I don’t blame him for something he didn’t know about. He’s just going to be hard on himself for a while.

Instead, I go into his closet, retrieve the black cardboard box I found last week, and set it on the nightstand.

His eyes flick to it as I open the lid.

“Rio, I know you didn’t forget about me.”

He studies the box for a minute, and I’m hoping he’s not going to be so hard on himself right now that he brushes this off. To anyone else, him keeping these might seem like no big deal, but to me, this is our everything. Not just the songs, but the moments they represent too.

“Come here,” he says, tugging at my hand to pull me onto his lap.

I go willingly, thankful that he’s open to this conversation.

“When we were in New York, you asked me why I never upgraded that old boombox. Do you remember that?”

I nod.

“This is why,” he says. “I didn’t have any other way to play the tapes and CDs, and not playing them wasn’t an option for me. For years, I’ve taken this fucking boombox everywhere with me. Held on to it, like if I could keep rewinding and replaying these moments we had, then maybe it wasn’t over.” He pulls a random cassette tape out of the box, running his thumb over the inked heart. “I don’t want it to be over, Hallie.”

Using the tip of his finger, he covers the tail of that overdrawn heart, and it makes me want to cry. Not from sadness or painful nostalgia. But from hope.

Hope that now that everything is on the table, maybe we can move forward.

I lean my head on his shoulder. “I can’t believe you kept them all this time.”

“Well, I know that technically, these are your best memories, but they’re mine too. Meeting on that roof, listening to music. Getting the opportunity to fall in love with you is my best memory, and all I can do is hope that one day you’ll let me do it again.”