I guess it was his way of telling me that He didn’t let any of us do anything. If we screwed up, it was on us. We had to own it. We could think. We could do.
It was up to us to make the right choices, but maybe it was up to Him to help with the fallout.
Maybe it was He who had sent Monroe to me.
Or maybe it was just fate.
Or maybe none of it was real. Maybe none of it mattered. Maybe I was so tired I couldn’t think straight.
I tried to wiggle my legs a bit because my muscles were tight and cramped, but all I did was manage to send shooting pains up my thighs and to wake up Monroe.
She moved against me, her hair a wild mess that spilled over my chest. It took a few seconds to clear it from her face, and when she did, her eyes, those pale, crystal clear eyes, gazed up at me in a way that made my heart twist.
“Hey,” she said, her voice raspy.
I didn’t answer because nothing seemed to be big enough. No one word or phrase could cover what I was feeling. Instead, I bent forward and kissed her forehead, my hand seeking her jaw, and then I brushed the softness of her mouth.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
I nodded and just held her for as long as I could. She didn’t say anything else, and I was cool with that. Somehow, it was easier to confess and reveal when you were in the dark, but here in the early dawn, it was harder.
For now, holding her was enough. At least, I hoped it was enough for Monroe, because I would do anything to take away the pain I’d seen the night before.
Anything.
“Oh my God!” She squirmed and sat up. “We’ve been out here all night!”
Monroe rolled over and was on her knees before I had a chance to do or say anything.
“Gram is…I don’t know what Gram is gonna say, but I need to get to the house now. Maybe she won’t know I left. Maybe she’s still in bed.”
I nodded.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
It was Monday and I was due to be here in an hour or so anyway. I figured it was around six in the morning. I would have enough time to go home, eat breakfast, shower, and then start my day. But before I could do that, I had to make sure things were going to be cool between Monroe and her grandmother.
The meteor shower had been my idea, and though I hadn’t meant for us to fall asleep, I liked waking up with Monroe in my arms. Any blowback would be worth it.
I packed up my bag. Tossed in the uneaten chips and Cokes I’d brought and then rolled up my blanket. When I glanced up, Monroe was staring down at me. I couldn’t quite read her expression, and my gut twisted.
“What? Are you okay?” I asked, trying not to show panic, but man, she ripped me apart without even trying.
She nodded, a small, tremulous smile on her face. “I think so,” she said almost carefully, as if she wasn’t sure she should say anything at all. “I mean, I feel…lighter.” She moistened her lips.
Slowly, I got to my feet. “Last night…” Shit, I needed to get this right. “I just want to make you better, Monroe. I don’t want you to hurt anymore.”
She stepped forward, slipped her arms around my waist, and rested her head on my chest. As soon as she touched me, my heart sped up and I buried my nose in her hair, loving the way she smelled. The way she felt.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about Malcolm. Not even my therapist.” Her breath hitched and my arms tightened.
“After it happened, I just wanted to forget everything about him. I wanted to forget how the sun made his hair look like liquid gold, or how, when he smiled, his dimples appeared like tiny little craters that I wanted to kiss. I wanted to forget how he’d made me so angry, and I wanted to forget how sorry I was. How guilty I was.”
“It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand, Nate. I couldn’t even tell my parents the things they wanted to hear. The little details that told them he would be fine. After he died, they kept waiting for me to start talking…to start moving. I can see now how they existed in a state of nothing. They weren’t moving forward. They weren’t going back. They were just stuck in this horrible place, and they needed me to lead them out, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough. Instead I cut my wrist, which wasn’t so much an attempt to kill myself as it was a way to make myself feel.”
“Shit, Monroe.” I lifted her chin. “I’m glad that you didn’t…”
She sniffled. “It proved that I didn’t feel anything. My parents sent me to therapy and they tried to get out of that place they were in. My dad started acting like everything was normal when it was so screwed up, and that made me angry. My mother…she just didn’t know what to say or how to act, so she started avoiding me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“I get now that they were waiting for me. Waiting for me to come back to them. That they needed me before they could start to heal.” Her eyes were shiny again, and she reached for me. She kissed me then, her mouth soft and tentative. I tasted the salt from her tears and the pain from her heart.
It was a slow, lingering kind of kiss that I wanted to keep going, because I could kiss this girl all day, but she pulled away and slipped her hand into mine. “We’d better go.”
The birds sang as we trudged through the damp grass. We’d just rounded the corner of her grandmother’s house and I was picking a twig out of Monroe’s hair when the front door banged open and we both froze.
“A little early in the morning for a stroll, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Blackwell leaned against the railing in a blue and white housecoat that fell almost to her feet. Matching slippers tapped along the floorboards, and she stared down at us with an expression that wasn’t exactly pissed off, but it was something. What that something was I couldn’t say at the moment.
She arched an eyebrow and pinched her lips when neither one of us answered right away.
Yeah. Okay, maybe she was pissed off.
“Mrs. Blackwell, I can explain. There was a meteor shower last night and I wanted Monroe to see it.”
Her eyebrow arched a little higher.
“I called late and she, uh, I guess you were in bed and…”
Damn, that eyebrow was even higher now.
“Well, we kinda fell asleep in the maze,” I finished, a smile pasted to my face. Usually a smile was enough to get any sort of female to melt a little bit. But she wasn’t budging.
Though her eyebrow relaxed a bit, which made me feel a whole lot better.
“It’s not Monroe’s fault, so I hope if you’re upset with anyone, it’s me.”
“I see,” she said, eyeing my backpack and the state of our rumpled clothes. “Well, come on in then. I’ll make you breakfast.”
Breakfast.
“It’s okay, ma’am. I’ll just be heading home—”
“No, Nathan Everets, you will not. If I’m going to be upset with you, I’d rather do it over a pot of coffee and some bacon and eggs.”
She gave us each a good long look and then slowly turned around, disappearing inside the house.
“Come on.” Monroe tugged on my hand. “I wouldn’t argue with Gram. She’s pretty fierce and even though she looks sweet and maybe more frail than, say, a,” she paused dramatically, “dragon, she’s not.”
“Is she pissed?”
“She’s gotta be. At least a little.”
“Should I be worried?”
“Probably.” She tried to hide a grin. “Definitely.”
Okay. Good to know.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Monroe
There are things in this world that will never surprise you. Things that are absolute. The sun rises each morning and sets in the evening. No surprise there.
The four seasons fall, one after the other. Again, no surprise.