My chest aches. I never start gossip—that’s not who I am. But I don’t finish it, either. I go with the flow with my friends, listening and then following along. Just like Knox said—the person who blends in, who has no voice other than to make people happy. Only adding a comment here or there to enter the conversation. Guilt thickens my throat. Alphabetical order. Isn’t that what Veronica said when we started working together?
Screw me, she’s always been right there. “I didn’t mean anything.”
“Most people never do, but that doesn’t make it right,” he continues. “Jesse thinks you’re a rebound. I think she’s lonely. Either way, you’ll end up hurting her, even if you don’t mean to, and she doesn’t have time for that.”
“If you don’t like me, why’d you let me in?”
“I didn’t let you in to help you,” he says. “This nonsense has already gotten out of hand with the two of you. You know more than you should, and she said you two are casual. Maybe you were. Maybe that’s how it started out, but you’re on the verge of hurting her. When she feels better you need to break this off before you hurt her in ways you can’t take back.”
“I’m not ending anything.”
Kravitz steps into my space and looks at me with vacant eyes. “You think you’re strong enough to be with her?”
“I am.”
“You’re not. Loving V requires sacrifice. It means you don’t get to be selfish, and you don’t get to call the shots.” He shoves a finger into my chest and emotion shakes his voice. “It means having your heart ripped out again and again, but you stay by her side, supporting her, because she’s one of the best damn people you will ever meet. You don’t have that in you. Not the boy who doesn’t have the guts to stop his friends from talking crap about a girl he says he cares about. Because that’s what’s happening at school. Since she’s been with you, the rumors are getting worse, and she hears each and every single word. She doesn’t have time for that crap, and she deserves a hell of a lot better.”
The raw pain rolling off him cracks something in my chest. The type of pain I’ve only seen a few times from people in my life at funerals. Something I only felt once and that was when my mother and father told me to choose between them. I see grief.
She won’t walk in without permission.
Death.
Ghosts are in the house.
Her mom.
She wants to believe.
It’s real.
The world tunnels in then tunnels out.
“The tumor’s worse than what she’s let on.”
He doesn’t deny it, just stares at me like he’s a horseman of the apocalypse and I’m on his list. I move to go around him, he slides with me. My hands come up, I push him back, his arms come up and when I’m ready to block and throw a blow a voice comes from behind me.
“Let him through.” Jesse Lachlin. An unlikely ally enters the apartment. “She’d want to see him.”
“He’s bad news.” Kravitz fumes.
“Yeah, but that’s not our choice. It’s never been our choice.”
With a final glare at Kravitz, I let my shoulder hit his as I sprint across the room and up the stairs. I glance right and see what must be her father’s bedroom, then left. Veronica’s laid out on the bed, a crocheted blanket over her sleeping form. A soft light on her dresser keeps her from being eaten alive by the shadows stalking the room.
I enter and a sweet herbal scent hits my nose. Pot. On the bedside table is a smashed-out joint on a ceramic plate. I rub my eyes as exhaustion sets in. Kravitz, Lachlin and Veronica were never stoners. They were helping her deal with her pain. Damn. Just damn. No one at school has anything on them right.
Veronica is pure beauty—her blond ringlets rest against the pillow and the soft light glistens off the strands. She’s incredibly still. So much so that it aches, and it’s like she feels my pain as her eyelids crack open.
“Hey,” she whispers.
“Hey,” I say back.
She opens the palm of her hand, her fingers weakly beckoning to me. “Lie with me.”
Anything. I would do anything for her.
Doing as I’m told, I slip off my shoes, slip into bed and close my eyes as she rolls into me and I hold her tight.
VERONICA
“You’re dying.” Mom and I sit on the beach watching the waves roll in and roll out. This is where she takes me when I dream. To the beach. Blue skies. A slight breeze. The taste of salt in the air, but today, on the horizon, there are gray storm clouds.
“I know.”
Mom turns her head toward me. “No, V. I need you to understand. This is real. This isn’t a decision you can take back. You need to tell your father. I know you think you’re okay with dying, but you aren’t. You’re afraid.”
“I’m not. I know what I’m doing.”
Warmth along my other side and it’s not from the sun. My skin tickles. The pleasing kind. A caress. I look and there’s Sawyer. He’s holding me, in my room, in my bed. His fingers run through my hair and I love the gentle pull. “What do you know?”
“That I’m dying.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“My mom.” I glance back at her and she’s watching me as if she’s curious. The wind blows through the palm trees and through her hair. “She never left me.”
“I promised I wouldn’t,” she says. I smile as the fuzzy feeling associated with Mom overwhelms me, but Mom frowns. “I wish you had more time. I wish you could have what I had.”
“What did you have?” I ask, confused, as I have everything I need.
There’s a gentle tug on her lips. “College. Oh, V, you’d love college. I know your father has given you a ton of freedom, but it’s a different taste of freedom there. You get to learn about all the things that fascinate you while trying to pin down who you are without anyone else in your way. And then the feeling of working your first real job—the one you know you were born to do. I want you to laugh. The type of laugh that only comes with experience. The one that is drawn through years of understanding that life is so precious and that laughter is the best medicine for the soul.”
“I laugh now.”
Mom tilts her head as if I don’t understand. “And then I want you to love.”
“I do,” I whisper.
“Not just family or friend love, but soul-mate love. The love your father and I had.”
Have. She’s still here. Their love hasn’t died. “I do love.”
“Who do you love?” Sawyer draws my attention back to him, and I brush my fingers along his strong jaw. I enjoy how he moves closer, as if my touch is water on parched land.
“You.”
“Me?” His blue eyes dance yet there is pain in them. Pain I wish I could take away.
“Yes, you.”
He rests his forehead against mine as his hands tenderly slide along my back. “I love you, too. So much it consumes me at times. Scares me, too.”
“Why does it scare you?” I ask.
“Because I’m broken.”
I shake my head. “You’re not. You’re just a little lost, but that’s not broken. But you’re finding your path. You just have to learn how to be the you I see with everyone else.”
“I’m not you,” he whispers. “I don’t have your courage.”
“Sure you do. You just misunderstand courage.”
“How?”
“You think you have to take care of everyone else,” I say. “You think that’s courage. You have to learn there’s a difference between loving someone and taking care of them. They aren’t one and the same.”
“He’ll take care of you, V,” Mom warns, and I flip my head back in her direction. I blink repeatedly as the wind has picked up on the beach and the thunderheads grow in sizes and roll toward us. “If you get sick, he’ll stay by your side until the very end, and that will break him. It’s what his problem is—he loves everyone else so deeply that he loses himself. He enables them to the point that he breaks. T
hat’s the reason he jumps and the next time he jumps, it will be because of you.”
Lightning strikes the beach and the explosion causes me to jump. Arms tighten around me as my heart picks up speed. Mom starts to fade and I reach out to her. “Mom? Don’t go!”
“It’s okay,” Sawyer whispers in my ear. “Everything is going to be okay.”
SAWYER
Wednesday October 23: It was a beautiful day today. I just cured all day long. I loved it out. Hated to come in.
Went over to see Bray today about my throat. He told me to keep sort of quiet. Guess it must be worse. Gee, I can’t help it. I can’t be keeping quiet forever.
I’ve been silent a long time, but I don’t think I can keep quiet forever, either.
Veronica didn’t come to school on Monday. I don’t know why I was disappointed when it was to be expected. When I left her apartment around two, she was in a deep sleep. No longer talking to me, no longer talking to the air, no longer restless as if she was being tormented in her dreams, just sleep.
I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay, but Jesse told me he’d seen my mom’s car pull in. I expected to walk into the living room and be berated for not being home, for her to be frantic that Lucy wasn’t asleep in her room, but she wasn’t waiting for me.
Instead she had gone straight to her room. Her bedroom door was closed and light seeped from underneath the crack. She was ignoring me. Ignoring Lucy. We had seen Dad, and even though that was because she pushed us, for the next forty-eight hours, we were traitors.
That crap got old a month after the divorce.
Twenty minutes into first period, my mind had checked out. Ten minutes later, I watched the clock tick on the wall and did a countdown to the bell. My grades were still teetering, I had a swim meet this coming weekend and skipping was the last thing I should do, but staying was no longer an option. I had to see her. I had to see Veronica.
She said she’s dying.
She said she loves me.
The bell rang, I left and didn’t find her at her house. I texted. No response. Feeling like a caged animal, I tried the only other place I could think she would be. About a twenty-minute ride out of town, I parked in front of Jesse Lachlin’s trailer. No answer at the door, but then I followed the sound of an engine.
The walk wasn’t far, the fall morning brisk. Dew lay like a blanket in the valleys of the land. In the distance is a tractor with a hay baler attached and every so often a huge, rolled-up bale of hay plops out.
I stop walking when I spot Nazareth Kravitz leaning against a tree trunk. He looks at me with that same impassive boredom, but I learned a lot about this kid—there’s more to him lurking underneath. Maybe he and I aren’t so different after all.
As the tractor comes closer, I notice that the door to the tractor is open and that Jesse Lachlin is standing half in the cab of the tractor, half out as he’s laughing and talking with whoever is doing the driving. I’m sure that’s against OSHA regulations.
When the tractor is an acceptable distance from us, Jesse leans into the tractor pointing at things and the tractor comes to a stop and the engine dies. The world becomes oddly quiet as Jesse grimly glances at me, at Nazareth, and then back at me. He hops off and Veronica emerges from the cab of the tractor. She has a breathtaking smile on her face as she mumbles something to Jesse. In a blink of an eye, his glum expression is gone and he lights up as he laughs with her.
She and Jesse talk and then he tips his head in my direction. Veronica looks over at me and her posture falls. That’s a nice kick in the gut. Jesse jumps off the tractor and Veronica follows. He doesn’t join her as she heads in my direction.
“Nazareth,” he calls, “can you help me move a limb that fell from a tree? It’s heavy and I don’t feel like chopping it up. I figure we can move it out of the way.”
Nazareth heads his way, and the two of them disappear into the tree line.
Veronica’s a sight in a short, black, pleated skirt, an off-the-shoulder knitted blue sweater with a tank underneath and Wicked Witch of the West green-and-black-striped tights. On her feet are black combat boots. The boots are like her father’s, just the right type for kicking ass. Her short blond curls are pulled up into a ponytail on top yet several strands have declared rebellion and bounce near her face.
“Did you and Nazareth have a nice conversation while waiting on me?” she asks, and I wonder if she knows about our conversation last night.
“He didn’t say anything. Not today, at least.”
“Don’t feel bad. He doesn’t talk to many people. That’s what happens when you’re a walking, talking, residual haunting.” She watches as he disappears into the trees.
I find that interesting, but Nazareth isn’t why I’m here. “How are you feeling?”
“Better. Shouldn’t you be at school?”
“Shouldn’t you?” I counter.
“I’m co-opting. You know, learning a career hands-on? I should probably inform the counselor, but she probably would tell me no. Anyhow, I’m a farmer this month. I only have until October to learn it all and then I’ve decided to be a vet.”
I can’t tell if she’s testing me or teasing. Maybe a little of both. “So no more school for you?”
“I wish. I’ll be back, but as I’ve said before—rules are optional for me.” She winks then, a bit of a smile, but it quickly fades.
Veronica’s cool as the morning as she walks past toward a tire swing hanging off the branch of the tree I’m standing under. She sits on it and lightly swings. Indifferent to me, to the world, to what happened between us. This is the literal definition of night and day. Friday night, she was in my arms and each touch was as hot as an August night. Last night, we whispered words of love. This morning, she’s impassive. “I’m worried about you.”
“You shouldn’t be,” she says. “We aren’t supposed to get all emotional, remember?”
I do. That was the deal, but … “Things changed.”
She becomes crestfallen. “Look, I like you, I really do, but—”
“You told me you loved me last night.”
“I was high.”
“I told you that I loved you back.”
She closes her eyes as if that causes her pain.
“Look.” She reopens her eyes. “We had a great time together, and you’re a great kisser, but I told you I wasn’t looking for anything serious. After you getting upset with me about Lucy and ghosts and now it appears that you’re overreacting with the headache last night, I think it might be best if we return to just being project partners.”
“Project partners?” I challenge. After what we’ve gone through together? After what she’s become to me? After I allowed her in?
“We had fun,” she says like that should be the end of the conversation. “Maybe when we get past this awkwardness and this strange breakup, we can kiss again sometime.”
My jaw twitches at the idea of a casual hookup. I get that’s what society tells me is every man’s dream, but that’s not what I want. Not from anyone. Especially not her. “I want more.”
“More kissing?” Veronica gives me a drop-dead smile as she stands from the tire swing. “I didn’t realize I was that good at it.”
“I want more than kissing.”
Her flirtatious smile fades. “And we should have never put a label on things. We should have just stayed casual. That would have been better for both of us.”
“I love you.” I drop it out there, leaving me naked and raw and her holding my heart. “It’s done, Veronica. It happened. You trying to take three steps back doesn’t change that.”
Veronica nibbles on her lower lip. A move that means deep thought and conflict for her, one that makes me think incredibly too much of how I’d love to kiss her lips again and how I hate it when she looks sad. I reach over and with my thumb, smooth out her mouth, and her eyes snap to mine. The sadness is gone, replaced by a spark.
I cup her cheek and caress her soft skin. Veronica swallo
ws then her tongue darts out to lick her lips. She breathes in deeply as if she, too, is having a hard time keeping her heart rate calm. Energy builds in the air around us, so potent that it practically crackles.
“That’s all this is,” she whispers. “We’re attracted to each other. That’s it. And that attraction works and works well. You’re confusing it for emotion.”
“I’m not,” I say softly. “I love you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“But I do.”
“But you shouldn’t.” Veronica steps back, rejecting my touch.
“Why?” I run a frustrated hand through my hair. “You’re smart and you’re funny and I’m fascinated by all of your quirks. You love life, you don’t judge and you’re so damn beautiful that it hurts to look at you. I think about you all the time—when I wake up, before I go to bed. I dream of you. I look forward to seeing you so I don’t understand why I shouldn’t care.”
“Because I’m dying!” she shouts.
“You don’t know that. You said the tumor was small, but you’re fine!”
“I lied! The tumor’s growing. My headaches are worse, my symptoms are worse, I know that you know I see my mom! That’s not normal. Not even for me. I want her to be real. I need her to be real, but I’m not stupid. I know what it might mean. I know that I’m dying.”
Her words echo through the field and through my soul. She said it last night, but I knew it before her whispers. Yet I still had tried to talk myself out of it, but there’s no rationalizing it away. The admission is a crushing weight, it’s a rope tied to my ankle that’s stuck to the bottom of the quarry pond. The moisture lining the rim of her eyes tells me she just delivered the gospel truth.
I can’t breathe, and I flinch as I fight the need to double over. It’s like someone has punched me in the throat then in the gut.
“My decision about how to handle the tumor—that’s why this project is so important to me. I want to show my dad that when it’s time, when the tumor progresses like Mom’s did, that we don’t have to go through all the terrible treatments. That he can just let me live my life and permit me to enjoy whatever time I have and then it’s okay to let me go because I won’t be leaving him alone. Not really. If I prove ghosts are real, he’ll know that I’ll still be with him—just in a different way.”
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