Page 43 of The Heartbreak Hotel

“You really think I’m lying?” Henry asks, his voice rising. It’s the loudest I’ve heard him since that day in my kitchen, when the Denver Post article came out and I caught the very first glimpse of his jagged, broken heart.

“Maybe!” I cry, throwing my hands up. “I don’t know what to believe now, Henry, I—”

“Believe this,” he says, and reaches for me.

His hands are cold, framing my face. “The past few months with you have torn my life apart.” His eyes track over mine—sharp, paralyzing blue in the afternoon light.

“There were years when I didn’t want anything at all.

Not to remember any of it, not to feel anything, not to imagine a future. The rest of my life, without her.”

I bite my lip, and Henry’s eyes flick to my mouth.

He lowers his hands so they’re on my neck, thumbs tracing my jaw.

“But you—” He breaks off. His eyes search mine, and I wait.

Henry draws a shaking breath. “I imagine it, with you. I want—” He stops again, dropping his hands and shrugging helplessly.

He takes half a step backward, giving me space.

When he speaks again, his voice is so soft I hardly hear it. “I want.”

Me, too , I think. I want Henry so badly it leaves me breathless—the defeated slope of his shoulders, and the earnestness of his gaze on mine, and the flush creeping up his neck.

I want to touch him there. I want to hear him say my name like he did that night at his house, wrecked and breathless.

I’ve imagined it, too. I’ve imagined all of it.

But I force myself to speak. “Then why did you keep this from me?”

Henry exhales, looking out over the open space.

He licks his lower lip and then rubs his palm over his mouth, covers it with his hand, gathers himself.

“Because it’s hard,” he says finally. “Because there’s so much pain in that house, and between Joss and me, and I didn’t want to—I wasn’t ready to bring that to you. ”

I feel my eyebrows pull together. Wave a hand half-heartedly into the space between us. “I’ve shown you my whole mess, Henry. Nate, my mom.”

“I know,” he says, taking a step toward me. I’m so cold, even in his coat—he must be freezing. “And then you disappeared.”

My head snaps up. “What?”

“You think I haven’t noticed you distancing yourself from me since Thanksgiving?

” His eyes move back and forth over mine.

“You happen to be at my house when your mom calls, so, okay, you feel like you have to tell me. You let me into this part of your life, basically by accident, and then you shut me out. What am I supposed to think, Louisa?” His dark eyebrows rise.

“That I should make things more complicated? Tell you about Joss?”

“That’s not—” I shake my head, trying to clear it. Why is this conversation turning onto me? “That’s not fair.”

“No?” Henry doesn’t blink. “Then where have you been the past few days?”

Licking my wounds , I think. Trying to see past how desperately I care about you .

“I meant what I said,” he continues when I still haven’t responded.

“You scare me shitless.” A car whips past us on the road, and Henry turns to watch it over one shoulder.

I stare at his face in profile: flushed in the bitter chill, dark and severe and familiar.

He turns back to me. “I knew about you for years, but to actually know you—” His jaw clenches, lets go.

“How incredible you are. How you have this way of making every room you walk into feel better, and warmer, and safe. How I want you so badly I can’t even sleep.

” My eyes film over with tears, blurring him as he takes a step closer.

This hurts too much; more than I have room for in my body.

“Now that I know you, I can’t—” Henry’s eyes trace back and forth over mine.

Then he swallows, his voice going soft. “Please don’t cry. ”

It only tightens the vise on my throat, and when I bite my lip to try to swallow my tears Henry reaches for me. He tucks me in against him, his cheek on my hair, and I let him.

“Sweetheart,” he murmurs. It blooms in my chest like a bruise.

I don’t want to call you what everyone else calls you.

“Please. I’ve been so terrified to get attached to anything, terrified I’ll lose it, especially you.

” His lungs rise against my cheek. I can feel his heart beating—even through the coat, even through the cold—quick and hard.

“So why would I, after feeling you push away from me, tell you something that I know is complicated? That I know is going to be hard for you to hear?”

I squeeze my eyes shut and force myself to move away from him.

He doesn’t fight it; his arms drop to his sides, his eyes scanning my face as I wipe my cheeks dry.

“That’s not how it works,” I say. “You can’t pick and choose which parts of yourself to give me, Henry, it has to be all of it. I can’t have you halfway.”

“No,” he says, urgent, one hand reaching for mine. “That’s not what I mean.”

“It is.” I cut him off. Detangle my fingers from his and jam them into his coat pocket. I can’t be this person: giving all of myself to someone who’s holding back. “I can’t.”

Henry blinks. When he takes a step backward his eyes sweep over me, like he’s assessing damage or looking for someone he recognizes. “Can’t what?”

I bite my lip to hold back my tears, and it doesn’t work. When they leak onto my cheeks the wind chills them to ice. “Can’t do this. You lied.”

“Louisa,” he says, reaching for me and then dropping his hands. He looks scared, wrecked. It hurts like a bone bruise, like something under the skin. “Please. I didn’t.”

“Henry, you did.”

“Well, what about you?” His arms lift as his voice goes rough, uncontrolled. “I Googled you.”

My mind blurs, all the things he could find: “Purple Girl,” Nate cheating, every unflattering photograph from Say It Now shows in college. But it doesn’t occur to me what Henry’s talking about. What he means. What of course, of course, of course he means.

“You aren’t a therapist,” he says, and it hangs in the cold air between us. “I know you aren’t licensed here. You lied to me, too.”

I blink the tears out of my eyes, trying to see him clearly. How long has he been sitting on this? Why hasn’t it mattered until now?

“That’s not the same,” I say thinly.

“No?” Henry sounds ruined—like something’s snapped inside of him. I want to cover my face so I don’t have to see him like this, anguished because of something I’ve done. “Why not?”

“I just wanted you to believe in me,” I say. I sniff against the wind, wipe a hand roughly over my eyes. “I just wanted you to trust me, Henry.”

“Me, too,” he says. “That’s exactly what I wanted, too.”

I look up at him. The intensity of his gaze, the pain on his face—clear, consuming. I can’t think of a single thing to say, a single way to fix this. I have the distinct, saw-toothed thought that I’m hurting him. That if I’d just left Henry alone, we’d both be better off.

“I’m going to go,” I say, and reach for my car door.

“Please.” His hand lands on my arm, but when I look over my shoulder, he lets go. “Louisa, I don’t want you to leave like this.” He clears his throat. “I don’t want you to leave at all.”

It tugs me open, loosening a stitch that unravels everything I’ve been trying to hold together.

I feel my nose scrunch, my body’s very last-ditch attempt not to cry.

“I’m sorry,” I manage—and then I’m in my car, and I’m closing the door, and I’m driving away.

When I glance up, just once, Henry’s standing on the shoulder in the rearview.

I’m halfway home before I realize I’m still wearing his coat.