Текст книги "Crash"

Автор книги: Nicole Williams

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I stood in front of the mirror, studying the girl reflecting back. She looked like me, but she wasn’t the same girl I remembered. Something had broken loose in the hours since Jude walked away, and it must have been vital to who I once was.

I felt flat, unable to muster any kind of emotion, and I felt lost, like everything I’d worked for and achieved had led me to a dead end. For the first time in my life, I wondered if the world around me I’d been trying to save wasn’t worth saving.

“Lucy in the sky?” a gentle knocking sounded outside my door. “You ready?”

No, was my answer, but that’s not what came out because when it came to my brother, I never said no. I hadn’t when I’d been asked to speak at his funeral, and I hadn’t every year on the anniversary of his death when dad and I visited his grave. It was the only way I could still show him I loved him and I thought about him every day.

I took one last glance at the girl in the mirror before shaking my head and turning away. That girl was no longer me.

“Hey, dad,” I greeted, opening my door. Like the four prior, dad was in his black suit and had even managed to get his tie almost right. “Just the two of us again?” I asked, looking down the hall. My mom never accompanied us to John’s grave, and for all I knew, she’d never revisited after the day he’d been lowered into the ground.

“Your mom deals with this in her own way,” he said, wiping his palms on his jacket. “We deal with this in our way.”

Most days I wished I could deal with it mom’s way.

“Come on, it’s getting late.” He turned and headed down the stairs. I grabbed my purse and followed.

“You’re driving,” he said needlessly as he locked the front door. The last time he’d been behind the wheel of a vehicle was the day John died.

The cemetery was about an hour’s drive from the cabin, but when you were sitting next to your father in total silence, it seemed more like an entire day without pit stops. This would be my sixth time to the cemetery. I came once a year because it was the right thing to do, but I couldn’t do it any more than that. Besides, nothing of what I loved of John was buried beneath that gravestone.

Dad looked out the side window, thinking whatever the thoughts of a man who had ceased to live were, and I stared at the road ahead, trying not to think because my thoughts only led me down one road.

Like every other cemetery, it was empty. Rolling to a stop, I looked over at dad. He was frozen, still staring out the window.

“Dad,” I set my hand on his shoulder, “you ready?”

He flinched, his eyes clearing as he came back to life. “Ready.”

I slid out of the car and walked around the front. I waited.

And waited.

It was a practice in patience I’d learned five years ago. One I’d perfected.

Dad stood outside the passenger door, fidgeting and fighting with his demons. It took a lot out of me to come see John, but the kind of torture dad experienced to spiral him into a semi meltdown was the kind entire mental illness books were dedicated to.

I’d never timed it, but I’d guess fifteen minutes was about average. This time, he rolled his shoulders back and smoothed his coat into place after only five. Walking up to me, he looked over. “Let’s go say hi,” he said, adjusting his tie for the fiftieth time.

John’s headstone wasn’t far and, about fifty paces later, we were kneeling beside it. Dad looked close to fainting, but I knew he’d hold it together. He always did.

We never said anything, but I always sensed John heard what I wanted to say. The birds chirped, the sun shone down, I pulled my favorite memories of John to the surface, I tried to file the ones of Jude away for good. Life was slowly becoming one giant mess, and I wasn’t sure if this was because I was somehow cursed or if life just blew by nature. I’d been buying into the whole one person can make a difference thing this whole time only to discover that, in the end, the world sucked.

“Would you like to tell me what’s wrong?” Dad asked quietly, resting his hand on my lap.

I startled, whether more from his touch or the broken silence, I didn’t know. “I’m fine.” How was it so hard to make my voice sound normal?

“Lucy, I’ve never heard you once say you were fine. You’re either wonderful or awful or exhausted or rip-roaring angry or anything else but fine,” he said, gazing off into the horizon. “You’re a passionate person. You take after me in that department,” he said, a smile shadowing his face. “Or at least the person I used to be.” He stopped, taking in a couple of breaths, then shifted to face me. “What’s wrong?”

“How did you know?” I asked, thinking of all people on the planet, my dad would be the last person to detect something was going gangrene below the surface.

“When you stop letting yourself feel your own emotions like I have, there’s more room to feel those of others,” he said. “It’s one of the many down sides to becoming a silent shut-in.”

This was the first conversation of meaning my dad and I had had in five years, and the day and place it was happening on made me feel that John had his hand in it. “It’s about Jude,” I said, playing with the grass edging surrounding John’s gravestone.

“I thought you weren’t seeing each other anymore?” Dad cleared his throat; he was really doing this. Having a concerned parent conversation with his teenage daughter.

“We weren’t, but we kind of stumbled into each other last night.” My dad might be exhibiting a margin of strength, but I feared that telling him about the event leading up to Jude’s and my reunion would send him into another five years of absenteeism. “We worked things out and then, this morning, we found out there was something between us that we could never work out.” I also knew this information might send my dad into a downward spiral, but he was sitting before me looking so much like the beacon of strength I remembered as a little girl. Like a man that nothing could take down.

He nodded. “And what was that?”

I blew out a breath, the letters etched into John’s gravestone going blurry. “Jude’s last name is Jamieson.” Even as I said it, I still couldn’t quite believe it. I still didn’t want to believe it.

Dad sighed, rolling his shoulders. “I know.”

My head snapped up. “What?”

“I know, baby,” he repeated. “I’ve known from the beginning.”

Okay, dad was having a moment. Another break with reality, but this one led him to lie through his teeth.

“Are you saying you knew from the first night I brought Jude home that his dad was Henry Jamieson?” I spelt it out a little clearer.

“I knew,” he said. “It took me a while, but yes, I figured it out.”

I wasn’t sure how much farther down the rabbit hole I could fall. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you were happy and because Jude isn’t his father and because I knew one day, if the two of you stayed together, you’d figure it out.”

“We figured it out.” I sunk my teeth into my lip.

Dad patted my leg. “And you’re wishing you hadn’t?”

I bobbed my head.

“Because you cared about him and wanted to be with him?”

Another nod as I concentrated on keeping myself together. This day was bending my mind so far, I was bracing for it to snap at any time. “You should have told me.”

“Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. Jude shouldn’t be judged by who his father is,” he said, grabbing my hand. “What Henry Jamieson did is unforgivable, but that doesn’t mean Jude is undeserving of happiness. We lost our John, but he lost his father.” His voice wavered, but he caught it. “Everyone lost something that day, and I was glad to see one seed rise up from the ashes.”

That seed had died in the ashes. It was a seed that’d never taken root. “He blames you.”

“And you blame his dad,” he said, his eyes moving between me and John’s headstone.

“That’s because he killed John,” I said. “I have every right to blame him.” Blame was the least of it for murdering my brother.

“It doesn’t matter who’s to blame and who isn’t when it comes to you and Jude, sweetheart. What matters is what the two of you want. Both of you are looking for an easy way out of this because it scares you,” he said, looking into my eyes with actual emotion and a presence I’d thought was long gone. “Caring for someone is scary because you both know how it feels to lose someone in the span of a heartbeat. But you can’t let fear dictate your life or else you’ll end up like me. Don’t live life hiding behind your past, live for right now. When you find someone you want to spend forever with, you don’t let them go, whether forever turns out to be a day or a year or a hundred years.” He rested his other hand over John’s grave. “Don’t let the fear of losing them keep you from loving them.”

There was the Wyatt Larson who could talk to anyone about anything, the man who’d operated the largest commercial construction company in the state before his whole world came to an end, lecturing me about living for the moment and not letting the past make you fear the future. I knew he wasn’t a hypocrite, that’s what he believed; he just was incapable of living like that now.

“I have lost him, dad,” I confessed, wondering if I’d ever had Jude.

Dad looked off into the distance, his expression flattening. “It always amazes me how when we’re sure we’ve lost something for good, it winds up finding us.”

I smiled. It was a sad one, but it still registered. My dad had said the same thing numerous times when I was younger and lost a favorite toy. He’d been right. As soon as I surrendered to the fact Teddy was long gone, he somehow popped up in the most obvious of places.

“Even if we did get back together,” I said, “how could we ever hope to move on from something like that? How can I look past his dad being Henry Jamieson? And how can he look past my family being the reason he lost his dad?” That question didn’t have an answer, and I wasn’t expecting one.

“I’m fool hearted enough to believe love can conquer all,” he admitted, lifting a shoulder.

I laughed a little, but it sounded all off since I was trying not to cry. “You are fool hearted,” I said, looking over at him. His words and voice were right, but his shoulders and head still hunched forward. He was a fraction of the father he’d been. But I’d take a fraction.

“What happened to you, dad?”

He looked up, searching the clouds. Looking for shapes or answers or an escape, I wasn’t sure, but searching for something. “When a child dies, a parent loses a part of themselves,” he said. “Your whole world ceases to exist and you’re nothing but a shell of the person you once were. Your mom has dealt with it in her way, me in mine, and you in yours,” he said, lifting his hand off of John’s gravestone and rising. “Your mom hates the world, I avoid it, and you try to save it.”

“Tried and failed,” I muttered, not about to count the ways.

“I know why you try to save the world, baby,” he said, extending his hand down to me. “Because you’re trying to atone for John. To atone for the guilt you feel for it not being you that day.”

I stared down at the dates of John’s life. A life cut short because I was being a brat and made my older brother deliver dad’s lunch. “I’ve saved nothing.”

“You saved yourself, Lucy,” he said, his forehead lining. “You saved me. That first year, the only thing that kept me getting out of bed in the morning was you.”

I stared at his outstretched hand, not able to accept it. “I didn’t save John.”

“Oh, sweetheart. John wasn’t yours to save,” he said. “I didn’t save him. God didn’t save him. How much longer are you going to let the guilt of the past hinder the present?”

I looked up at him, grayed, wrinkled, and sad. He’d aged thirty years in the span of five. “I could ask you the same.”

“I know,” he said, extending his hand again. “But you’re stronger than me, my Lucy in the sky. You’re stronger than you credit yourself.”

I took his hand, letting him lift me up. “You are too, dad,” I replied, leaning in and kissing his temple. “You are too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The last couple days leading up to graduation were packed with senior breakfasts, cap and gown distribution, cruises around the lake, and yearbook signings. I’d chosen not to participate in any of it. Despite dad’s and my “pep” talk at the cemetery, I couldn’t seem to accept his words as truth. Fathers were meant to encourage and believe their daughters were infallible creatures. I knew dad believed in what he’d said to me, but it was because, as a father, he was incapable of looking at me in an impartial light.

I was his baby girl. His Lucy in the sky. That was all he saw when he looked at me; he couldn’t see what I’d become. But he was right about one thing—I couldn’t save the world. It wouldn’t change what had happened and it wouldn’t bring John back. However, having accepted that, I no longer knew what to do with myself. My life felt kind of empty and upside down, and that was no recipe for celebrating with a bunch of people I’d known less than a year and wouldn’t be in contact with in a week.

I’d been silent in my assigned metal folding chair, waiting to get this thing done with so I could put this year of my life up on a shelf and forget about it. The rest of the three hundred plus graduates were trickling in, everyone hugging and smiling and gushing about how they’d stay friends forever and would never, ever lose touch.

It was all way too much mush and bullshit for me.

A few more minutes passed and the majority of the seats filled in. I bit at my tassel. Fifteen minutes down, two hours left to go of blah, blah, blah, our future is bright, blah, blah, blah, you can be anything you want, blah, blah, blah.

Blah.

One of the last remaining stragglers weaved through the row a few in front of mine. Sawyer was moving a bit awkwardly, like something wasn’t working quite right, or something like his hand had been glued to his dick. I didn’t even try to help the laugh that burst free.

A few heads turned, including his, but as soon as he saw it was me, his head snapped away like I’d just clocked him in the jaw. I’d kissed that dirtbag. I’d done more than just kiss him. That was enough to make a girl swear off men forever. Especially a girl about to head to college where I’d heard the guys who’d been dicks in high school turned into Grade A assholes, and the few good ones were already taken by the time fall rolled around. Outlook in the man department was bleak, so I’d just pretend there was no department with that title. Better off alone and marginally happy than coupled and positively miserable.

Principal Rudolph appeared from behind the burgundy colored curtains and headed for the podium. This was going to be painful. I actually felt bad for my parents, who were both in attendance, smiling and waving at me every time I glanced in their general area.

“Students, parents, faculty,” he began, going for the whole ominous thing that just wasn’t working for him, “this is truly a time to celebrate the past, the present, and the future.”

What was it with these graduation speeches? Was there some law they all had to be the same, old, tired thing?

“I’d like to take this time to—” Principal Rudolph froze in place, his mouth open and his eyes wide. Making his way onto the stage, Jude jogged across the stage, holding out his hand to Rudolph.

He gripped the mike harder, shaking his head, so Jude snatched it right out of Rudolph’s death grip. I hadn’t seen Jude since Sunday morning, and everything about him was different. He looked like a man at peace. A man who’d uncovered all of life’s mysteries. A man who still, despite all the revelations and words, made my heart throb.

“Excuse me for just one minute, everyone,” Jude said, stepping around the podium. Heads were turning, looking to their neighbors to see if they were just as confused. “No surprise I’m not here speaking as a valedictorian today, but I think all of you are surprised I’m graduating at all, so I’m interrupting this little borefest. Since we started the year with me ripping the mike out of Principal Rudolph’s hands, we might as well end it just the same.” A hushed round of laughter rippled through the graduates. “And I actually have something important to say, unlike the rest of these genius bastards down here in the front row.”

Everyone was either whispering to their neighbor, or trying to pull their mouth from the floor, or glaring at the stage like this was inexcusable. However, Lucy Larson was smiling. Seeing Jude up there in his cap and gown, about to graduate, moving on to some future that involved football warranted a smile. I was happy for his successes.

“This year wasn’t like any before it,” he began, looking out into the crowd. “I learned more about myself and life and even love than I have in the entire seventeen years before.”

A dozen heads turned and looked back at me when Jude said the “L” word. I wriggled down in my chair. I had no idea where Jude was going with this whole graduation, soul-bearing speech, but I knew it would mean embarrassment, in the best case scenario, for me.

“I learned I’m not the piece of shit everyone likes to believe I am. The piece of shit I believed I was,” he said as Principal Rudolph ran a hand over the sheen of sweat forming on his forehead. “Someone told me that again and again and again, and it took me the better part of the year, but I think I finally believe her.” His eyes flickered in my direction for the shortest second. “Because I don’t need to believe where I’ve been is where I’m headed. And I don’t need to believe that one tragedy can shape the future,” he paused, clearing his throat. “Only I can do that. I see that now.”

Another pause, and now the room was pin-drop quiet. “I also know that in the process of me learning this, the person who taught it to me lost her belief in me, and maybe even herself, and the whole damn world.” His fingers clenched around the microphone, no longer looking around the crowd—he was looking straight at me. “I could go to jail a million times and nothing would be worse than what I did to her. She taught me how to love—she even gave me chance after chance to show her that I was capable of it. And I failed her every time.” His face wrinkled into a partial wince, but he didn’t look away from me. “I love you, Lucy Larson. And I’m sorry I had to ruin everything we had to recognize that. And I get why I lost you and I’ll never get you back.”

My eyes closed; it was too much. The confession, the emotion behind the words, everyone in the auditorium looking at me, everything I was feeling.

“You saved me, Lucy, and I didn’t return the favor. And I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “I just wanted you to know.”

Opening my eyes, I made myself look at him as he backed away from the stage, handing the mike back to a red-faced Principal Rudolph. He was smiling at me, the one of Jude’s that was reserved for rare occasions, and I returned that smile.

In the midst of everything being very wrong, something right was pushing its way through. Something was rising up from the ashes.

Lifting his hand, he waved before turning and walking off the stage, leaving his past behind and getting after that bright future thing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

My skin didn’t have a chance to brown before I was packing up and moving across the country. I’d passed the short weeks of summer dancing, reconnecting with my parents, and dancing some more. It was the kind of summer that could be considered close to perfect. Except for one thing.

Or, more like, one person.

Jude checked out of the boys’ home the morning after graduation and no one heard from him again. Of course more than a few rumors circulated, but after being a victim of the rumor circuit, I vowed I’d never give any credit to another. Some said he was at summer camp for some big NFL team as the biggest paid free agent in history. Some said he’d skipped the country after holding up a bank down south and shooting one of the tellers. And some said Jude had an utter and irreversible break with reality and threw himself off of Highman’s Bridge.

I liked to believe that, wherever he was, he was happy and, at last, at peace with himself and his past.

It was something I’d wished for myself after graduation and had made some progress towards. Happy was a stretch, but I leaned more towards the happy than the unhappy spectrum, and that was a victory. My past was still there, every morning and every night, ready to haunt me if I let it, but most days I didn’t let it. I remembered John for how he was meant to be remembered, not for how he’d died.

And as for saving the world, I hadn’t quite let that whole annoyingly altruistic idea go. At initiation, I’d signed up to be a dance teacher at a studio in the city where low income kiddos didn’t have to pay to learn dance. An alum had even set aside a fund so they didn’t have to buy their ballet shoes and tights. So I danced, and I taught, and I learned.

But something was still missing, or maybe I was missing something. Either way, a hole ached in me that I had to fight to get past every day. Most days I won that battle, engaging in classroom discussions, smiling at my new friends at the right moments, but other days the ache went too deep for me to keep up with the pace of life.

It was a good life, and I felt guilty for thinking it, but I knew it could be better.

“Lucy, are you going to put that earring in or caress it all night long?” India, my roommate, hollered over at me, giving herself one final once over in the mirror.

“You’re dragging me where again?” I asked, sliding the silver hoop into place.

Rolling her eyes, she tossed my purse at me. “To a party at Syracuse. There’s guys and booze and music. It’s meant to be fun.” India was the queen of fun, for real. Her family had patented something like twenty board games, driving the family fun night trend. As a perk, she had an innate sense of adventure, could turn an early morning pop-quiz into a good time, and was invited to any and every party in the state.

“And you need me to go because?”

Another bonus to being a wealthy ambassador of fun? You never had to worry about rolling solo to anything unless you wanted to.

“Because you work too hard and play too little and that kind of a Lutheran work ethic is seriously messing with our room’s zen.”

Grabbing my jacket hung over the chair, I followed her out the door. “Forgive me for mistaking college for something as taboo as hard work,” I said, bumping my shoulder into her as we walked down the hall. “How can I set our room’s sacred zen right?”

She grinned over at me. “You can get tipsy. You can get up on a table and shake your ass. And you can get laid by the finest, sweetest man God had the audacity to make.”

“Oh,” I said, waving my hand in the air, “if that’s all.”

“Sometimes I swear,” she said as we left the dorm, “the creator forgot to install a fun button in you.” India clicked her keychain, and the lights of her car flashed. Another benefit to growing up in a family of entrepreneur millionaires? You got to drive whatever the hell you wanted.

“And someone forgot to install a filter in you,” I said, opening the passenger door and crawling in.

India groaned, pulling out of the parking lot. “Good thing it’s a short drive because you, my friend, are in serious need of some tipsy, table dancing, sweet love making tonight.”

“Well,” I said, leaning my head against the headrest, “drive fast.”

It was like stating the obvious because India did everything fast, most of all driving and, on this trip, she didn’t disappoint. At the rate we went, we could have been to Canada in under an hour.

“So,” I said, looking over at her, “who’s the guy?” I’d only known India for a few weeks, but it hadn’t taken long for me to figure out if we were going somewhere, a guy was always involved. India held a firm belief that men were the spice of life. Based on the men I’d seen her with, she liked her life spicy.

She shrugged a shoulder, staring out the window like she had something she was dying to say.

“You’ll see,” she replied.

Her mysterious act was all kinds of annoying. “Well, if you’re driving to see him, he’s gotta to be hot. Possibly the hottest guy to ever be ogled by women.”

She flattened her lips out, making a maybe face.

“But because you are who you are, you don’t just roll out the India carpet for a pretty face. So he’s got to be smart, witty, and wealthy as a sheik.”

She lifted a finger. “Wealth isn’t a requirement,” she said, like it was offensive I’d even imply it. “Wealth can be created. Wit and intelligence can’t.”

“All right, Freud,” I said as we rolled into Syracuse. “And here I thought you were majoring in music.”

Braking to a stop, India killed the ignition outside what looked to be a dorm hall. “Just get out of the car, will ya?” she said, opening her door. “Before you screw with my baby’s zen too.”

I stepped out and waited for India to come around the car. “What is this?” I asked, watching students trickle inside the building, where neon lights blinked in the first level windows.

“It’s some sort of beginning of the year student mixer,” she explained, grabbing my arm and pulling me behind her.

“You brought me to some lame mixer?” I said, ready to turn and run for the hills. “I thought the reason we graduated from high school was so we didn’t have to suffer through any more of these things.”

“They’re a little different in college,” she said, walking up to the entrance.

“Really?” I said. “So there won’t be any horn-dog guys trying to grind up on anything that moves?”

She shot me a sheepish smile.

“And there won’t be any lame brain music that doesn’t carry even a hint of a beat to dance to?”

A more pronounced sheepish smile.

“Eh, India,” I groaned. “If I wanted to go to hell, I’d just go up to the front door and ask Satan.”

“Why is my roommate so damn difficult?” she said as we started weaving our way through the packed building. “You’ll like this mixer,” she yelled back at me over the, yep, lame music with no beat to dance to. “Trust me on this.”

Breaking through the hallway where, yep, some horn-dog guy slid up to me and starting humping my leg before I could shove him aside, I yelled, “I can’t give you trust until you earn it, Indie!”

“God, I need a drink,” she said, pulling me along behind her as she beelined for what I guessed was the beverage table.

“Just pour me something!” India hollered over the music at the guy manning the drink table. He made a shotgun motion with his hand before mixing something that came out looking too pink and too strong.

“What for you, pretty lady?” he asked me after handing off India’s drink.

“Got anything that won’t make me shit-faced in two sips back there?” From the looks of the crowd, it was doubtful.

Another shotgun motion and he popped open a cooler and twisted the lid off a beer. The fist pumping song came to an abrupt halt right in the middle of the obnoxious chorus and then, a slow, very familiar song wove its way through the room.

“Hey, my man!” he yelled at someone over my shoulder. “What can I get you?”

“I’m not sure if I can have what I want anymore,” a familiar voice answered as Paul McCartney’s voice echoed off the walls.

The breath caught in my lungs. Setting the beer down, I turned slowly.

“Hey, Luce.”

It was him. Really him. Smiling at me with those liquid silver eyes.

“Jude?” I said. “What are you doing here?”

Not my best moment. With all the questions that played out in my mind over the summer, this was not one of them.

Taking a step closer, his smile grew. “I kind of go to school here.” Over his shoulder, India snuck away, shooting me a thumbs up and a knowing smile.

“So you totally snubbed the NFL?” I said, stepping closer, wanting to reach out and touch him to confirm he was really here.

“The NFL isn’t going anywhere,” he said, sticking his hands in his jeans. In his blue jeans. In fact, nothing was grey on him. He’d even lost the old beanie. He looked completely different, but completely the same too. “But some things are.”

Yeah, I knew he was implying something, but was clueless as to what.

“And you didn’t skip the border to keep from getting locked up for life?”

He chuckled, shifting his weight. “Nope. I’ve been crime free for a while now.”

“So why are you here?” I asked. “Aren’t there about a dozen schools with better football teams you could’ve gotten into?”

“Maybe,” he answered with a lift of his shoulders.

“Then why here?” I knew I was asking idiot questions, but I couldn’t stop them.

Rubbing the back of his neck, he looked at the ceiling. “I was hoping that would be kind of obvious.”

Nothing about now, or any of Jude and me, had been obvious.

“I’m here for you, Luce,” he confessed. “Shit, if Juilliard had a football team and actually wanted me, I would be there.”

I opened my mouth. Nope, words failed me.

“Hold that thought,” he said, lifting his finger. For once, he looked almost nervous. “I’ve been practicing this for a while and I need to get it out before you slap me and walk out on me. Ready?” Squaring his shoulders, he inhaled. “Hi, I’m Jude Ryder Jamieson,” he began, extending his hand. I took it, shaking it. He held onto it when I tried to pull it back. “My mom left when I was thirteen. My dad’s serving a life sentence for killing a young kid. I spent the last five years in a boys’ home being bullied, beat, and abused by the kids, the staff, and even the goddamn dog. I sold drugs. I did drugs. I got arrested. A lot. I screwed a lot of faceless women.” He paused, sucking in a breath. “And then I met one whose face I couldn’t forget. I fell in love with her. I hurt her because I fell in love with her and was afraid she was going to leave me the way everyone else had.” He lifted his other hand, cradling mine between his. “I still love her.”

I wasn’t able to draw in a breath at this point in the conversation, so I was lucky I was able to make any kind of reply. “Jude,” I whispered, not sure what to say next. We had so much history, history that made for the worst kind of foundation to build a relationship on.

“I love you, Luce,” he continued. Clearly he wasn’t going to stop until he said what he needed to. “And I’m sorry I ruined everything we had before I could admit it to you. Before I could admit it to myself. You didn’t make me a better person, because no one can do that. You made me want to be a better person. You believed in me and stuck up for me. You cared for me when no one else would. You made me better, Luce. You’re right—one person can make a difference. One person can change another person’s whole world for the better,” he said, his whole face on fire with his words. “One person ruined my world, and that was my dad, and one person saved mine, and that was you.” Raising his hands, he fitted them on my face. “The same tragedy upended our worlds. The same tragedy brought us here today. Don’t let it tear us apart.”