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“Then what are you...
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“I’m saying you’re a windmill, Tyler, and we both know you ...
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“Don’t do this, Hen. Please don...
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“We both knew how it was goi...
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“I thought you lo...
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“I do,” I said. “But it’s n...
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After all, if you loved something, you needed to set it free.
I wasn’t waiting around until Sunday. Not when everywhere I looked reminded me of her. Not when all I saw was her face telling me there was no future, nothing I could do to change her mind. Not when I’d lost everything that mattered to me.
He sent me a screenshot of the boarding pass, and I locked my phone, holding it tightly in my hand. I was leaving Emerson. Without Henrietta by my side.
Confession: I’ve been preparing for this moment for the last eight years, and I’m still not ready.
“Sometimes I wish you would care a little more about yourself. It’s good that you have Tyler now. That boy thinks you hung the moon and all the stars.”
“I noticed he has a picture of you on a horse as his phone wallpaper. It’s adorable.”
Confession: I’m afraid I’ll forget what it feels like to be loved by him.
I’d lost my job. Lost my apartment. Lost my girl.
Her face. Telling me it could never work.
Her face. Pushing me away no matter how much I begged her to let me stay.
“I don’t know how to live without her anymore. It’s like the second I met her, she became my air. Every morning, I woke up, waiting for the second I’d see her at work, hear her voice. And now that she’s gone, I don’t know how to look forward to the next day or how to even have the motivation to get up anymore.”
Confession: I miss him.
And I knew it wasn’t healthy—you weren’t supposed to make someone your whole world, but damn it, she was mine. She was more than that. She was the air that I breathed, the sun on my skin, the ground underneath my feet, and the clouds I loved to get lost in.
If I died still heartbroken, it would be a price I’d pay. Because it was proof that once I had been loved by her. Once I’d been a part of her dreams.
“I’m not mental, Rhett. I’m fucking heartbroken,”
Confession: I’m twenty-eight years old, and I still need my mom’s permission sometimes.
“Maybe not now. But when you learn you’ve missed out on the love of your life to stick around here and slave away at a job you clearly don’t enjoy anymore?”
“Tyler made you so happy, honey. I’ve never seen you so light as you looked with him.”
“Your father is meeting us there to help me move. I want you to stay here and think about yourself for once. But please come visit me before you leave for Texas.”
“Leave for Texas?”
“You need to follow your heart, and I’m pretty sure that’s where it is.”
Grandma always knows best
Confession: I can’t believe he remembered.
My mouth fell open, and I pushed up from my desk, running outside. I hurried around the building to the box outside my window. And then I saw them. Tulips.
I hope they made you smile.
I knew in my heart she belonged here. That we belonged together.
nodded. “I booked the first flight out of LA tomorrow morning. Mom’s dropping me off so my car doesn’t break down on the way.”
“A few months apart is nothing compared to the lifetime you could have together.”
“All you have to do is show him that you still care about him. That you’re dreaming with him now.”
Because the thought of feeling this ache for him every day for the rest of my life... it was pure misery.
Confession: I’ve never been so scared in my life.
“Standing in front of the school right now,”
“I’ll meet you there in an hour and a half.”
“Everything okay?”
“More than okay.”
This was Tyler’s Henrietta.
But the way he loved her made me care for her too. I wanted this to work for them—if she was here for good. I couldn’t watch my brother go through this again.
And this woman, with her wide brown eyes and lips pulled down with worry? She was the real deal.
“I’m not selling the schoolhouse to you, because I’m giving it to you.”
“You said you had a down payment. I want you to use that money, and the money Tyler has saved, to build this business. And if Tyler’s pride requires him to pay me back, I’ll take a cut of the profits over time as an investor. Even if it’s annoying.”
“I’ve never seen my brother happier than when he was with you... or more devastated than when it ended. I’d give everything I have never to see him like that again.”
“I may have ended things, but it was the worst mistake I’ve ever made. If he gives me another chance, I promise you both I’ll never waste it.”
Headlights panned over us, and we looked over to see Tyler’s truck pulling up to the school.
“Gage, I’m gonna need a little more explanation than that. What the hell is going on?”
It was just Henrietta and me. She looked at me. I looked at her. She waited on the steps. I waited in the truck. But with my window rolled down, I felt more exposed than I had in the safety of my enclosed truck cab.
