And that’s it. My name on her lips makes me burst into tears, and I move over, hugging her for all I’m worth.
Twenty minutes later, and mostly dry-eyed, I’m walking to the elevator. Just as I pass Charles’s door, it clicks open, and he steps into the hallway.
I hesitate, taking a stutter step, and meet his eyes.
He scowls, and I know immediately that Malik told him the truth about me. “You.”
“Uh, yeah. Me.”
I shove my hands into the back pockets of my jeans, staring back at him, waiting for him to call me out.
“Why?” he finally says.
“I wanted to be good enough,” I say, sighing. “It wasn’t some grandiose plan, though. It just sort of happened.”
“I grew up poor, girl. You didn’t need a name and fake money to impress my family.”
I chew on my lip, my eyes downcast. “I know that now.”
With that, he pushes past me, heading toward the elevator. I stand still, watching him go, until he presses the elevator button and glances back at me. “Well?”
“Well, what?” I ask.
“You coming down to lunch, or not?” the faintest of smiles twitching at his lips.
“Wait, you don’t hate me?” I ask, walking closer.
He shrugs. “I’ve known some underhanded people in my day. You’re not one of them.”
“Oh.” My heart soars. Charles forgives me? How is that possible?
The doors open with a ding, and we step inside. I try not to stare at him, but instead give up, turning to face him. “Does this mean Malik—”
“What he thinks of you is his own business,” Charles says.
“Oh. Right,” I say, and a little bit of the hope fizzles out.
“Give him time,” Charles says. “He’s even more stubborn than me.”
“Hard to believe,” I joke.
And he laughs. Charles laughs. I try to think of a time I’ve ever heard so much as a chuckle from him, but I come up blank. And when I meet his eyes, I can’t help but grin back.
By the time the elevator doors open and I step out onto the ground floor, some tiny bit of my heart heals.
I don’t know if Malik is ever going to forgive me. But if Charles can . . . maybe . . . maybe there’s still hope.
CHAPTER THIRTY
A couple of weeks later later, I’m climbing one of the many hills on the Washington State University campus. Maybe I should’ve taken a PE credit this year, based on all my huffing and puffing, but I’m almost to my dorm room, so I can just pass out there instead.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I shift my backpack to the other arm, digging the phone out of my WSU hoodie.
“Yeah?” I say, clicking Accept.
“I’m official!” my mother yells into my ear so loudly, I wince and pull the phone back for a second.
“Wow, really?” I say, once my ear stops ringing. “So they signed off on your probationary period?”
“Yes! I’m a full-time, permanent employee now. If they want to fire me, they’ve gotta work for it.”
I laugh. “Congrats, Mom. That’s awesome.”
“Thank you! I’m going out tonight to celebrate, and—” My phone beeps, interrupting her.
“Oh, hold on, I think Alex is calling me. We were going to catch up on how her classes are going.”
“Okay, talk to you later, sweetie.”
“Yeah, I’ll call you back! Love you,” I say, pulling the phone away from my ear.
It’s not until after I tap Accept that the name on the screen registers.
Malik.
I stare at my phone in shock, gripping it so hard my fingers go pale, and my heart climbs up my throat.
“Aren’t you going to answer?” a familiar voice calls out.
I whirl around, expecting him to be standing behind me on the pathway, but it’s just another student in a WSU T-shirt, hustling past me with an armful of books.
I put the phone to my ear, wondering if he’ll be able to hear my pounding pulse through the phone . . . or from wherever he’s standing. “Where are you?”
“Look up.”
So I do, glancing toward the building to my left, a squat green dormitory. My dorm building.
And there’s Malik, standing on the fourth-floor common room balcony and staring down at me, his phone pressed to his ear.
“I was hoping someone would be cooking waffles up here, but no dice.”
He’s joking with me. That’s good that he’s joking, right? Could this mean . . .
“What are you really doing here?” I ask, my voice breathless, my heart hammering hard—so dang hard—with hope. Please let him be here because he forgives me. Please let him give me another chance.
“Alex told me what dorm you were in,” he said.
“You talked to Alex?”
“I went to her house. Her mother was kind enough to ring her on their house phone.”
I just keep staring up at him, trying to make out his face, but this side of the building is in shadow.
“Meet me in the lobby,” he says, disappearing into the building and cutting off the call.
I nearly drop my bag so I can run faster, but I force myself to walk—a rushed walk, but at least it’s not a sprint—into the lobby.
But it’s empty. The elevators in our building are notoriously slow, and most of the time I take the stairs or I’ll end up late for class. I contemplate running up the steps, taking them two at a time, all the way to the fourth floor where that balcony is. I can probably catch him still waiting for the elevator to arrive.
But instead, I force myself to stop next to a big saltwater tank, the bubbling of the air filter almost too quiet to be heard over my thundering heart. I stare at the waves of light the tank has created, counting backward from a hundred. I take deep breaths and smooth back my hair and straighten my hoodie.
Waiting.
At last, the elevator arrives with a ding, and he steps out.
He’s so painfully beautiful, it steals my breath away.
He stops a few feet shy of me. I want to ask again why he’s here, but instead I wait, staring into his eyes. Hoping that he’s here to say he can’t live without me, to ask me to be with him again, to say every day apart has been torture for him just like it has been for me.
“I figured it out,” he says instead, shoving his hands into his pockets.
“Figured what out?”
“What I want to do. You know, how I’m going to give back. Make a difference.”
I stare.
“That link you sent me, about the basket store?”
“Yeah?”
“Every basket they sell is handmade in an impoverished country. A single store in Seattle has created a demand for the product, and those people sell their baskets as fast as they can make them.”
“I know, that’s why I sent it to you. I thought maybe you could talk to the store owner or something. Maybe he would have some ideas for you.”
“I did,” Malik said. “And I realized what he’s done has barely scratched the surface.”
I narrow my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t have to be just baskets. There are people all over the world with special skills. Wood carving. Weaving tapestries. Jewelry.”
“But Buchannan Industries was founded on American-made,” I say.
“I know. And I think our main Web site should stay that way. But I realized something.”
“What?”
“I think the reason my grandfather was successful, even with his hand-written catalog, is that people want to help people, just like the mission statement says. Everyone is sick of buying plastic junk made in factories in China. They’re tired of lining the pockets of rich CEOs while the blue-collar workers barely get by.”
His eyes are blazing with such enthusiasm, such excitement, it’s like he’s come to life for the first time.
“We’re going to create a subsidiary e-commerce site. One that features t
he stories and the skills of people all over the world. We’ll sell their handmade wares at prices they could never command in their own region. We’ll help them, but they’re going to help themselves. It will be their work that gives them a better life. I’m just going to give buyers access to their products in a way that’s not possible right now.”
A smile tugs at my lips, and my chest tightens. “It’s that whole teach-a-man-to-fish thing.”
He grins, nodding. “All they need are customers. And I’m going to give them a worldwide storefront.”
“That’s . . . that’s genius,” I say. “It’s everything you wanted.”
“Because of you,” he says, and the happiness simmers, darkens in his eyes as he steps closer to me. “See, here’s the thing.”
He falls silent, and I want to reach out, want to embrace him. But I’m afraid to move, afraid to fast forward and find out if his arrival here isn’t actually the beginning of a make-up.
“When I figured this out, all I wanted was to tell you. To share it with you.” He looks up at me, a tiny smile playing at the edges of his lips. “You were the one who believed in me. Who pushed me to figure it out. And so I got in my car and I drove six hours to see you.”
He closes the distance between us until there’s hardly a breath of air separating us, and I have to crane my neck to meet his gaze.
“Six hours is a long time. I did a lot of thinking,” he says.
“And?”
“And today is National Positive Thinking Day.”
I blink. “Is that a real thing?”
“Yes. We got lucky. I mean, I was hoping it was Grandiose Romantic Gesture Day, but no such luck.”
Grandiose romantic gesture. Please let him be saying what I think he’s saying.
“Okay . . . ,” I say, trying to quell the urge just to kiss him. Trying to keep the hope from bubbling too high.
“And so, I was thinking we can make our relationship work. I mean, yeah, six hours is going to be a pain, but we could meet halfway sometimes, and there’s always Skype. Besides, we have those plans to go to Disneyland over your next semester break.”
I hurl myself against him, wrapping my arms around his body and pinning his own arms against him. And it’s not until that moment that I realize how nervous he was, because it’s almost like he melts against me in relief. The two of us nearly tumble to the ground before his legs scramble beneath him and we knock into the fish tank instead.
Luckily, it’s too big to move.
“I love you,” I whisper, my lips brushing against his neck.
I just breathe him in, that faint scent of cinnamon that I didn’t even realize I’d been missing. It’s not until a group of students tries to get past us that I let go.
“I love you too,” he says as we pull apart. “You believed in me in a way no one ever has, and as soon as you were gone, it was like I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m sorry it took me this long to realize it . . . but I need you.”
“I might forgive you,” I say, unable to keep from grinning. “Is it really National Positive Thinking Day?”
“Yep. It’s also Fortune Cookie Day, so I was kind of thinking we could go grab a bite to eat? It’s not quite cooking-you-waffles-on-a-rooftop romantic, but . . .”
“It’s perfect,” I say, so happy I could burst. “Let’s go.”
As we step out into the sunshine, Malik’s arm draped over my shoulders, I can’t help but feel this is the beginning of my happily-ever-after.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Although this may be my eleventh book, somehow it never gets easier. I owe many thanks to those who helped shepherd this story along.
My gratitude to: my agent, Bob Diforio, who brightens every day; my editorial team, Laura Whitaker and Sarah Shumway, without whom this book would be a mere shadow of itself; Jackson Pearce and Cyn Balog, who read an early draft and asked all the right questions; and last, but certainly not least, DeAndre Yedlin, who is so ridiculously good-looking he inspired the character of Malik.
The line
Fool Me Twice
by Mandy Hubbard
Wish You Were Italian
by Kristin Rae
Not in the Script
by Amy Finnegan
Wild Hearts
by Jessica Burkhart
Red Girl, Blue Boy
by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
Everything but the Truth
by Mandy Hubbard
Just Like the Movies
by Kelly Fiore
(coming soon)
What You Always Wanted
by Kristin Rae
(coming soon)
Copyright © 2015 by Amanda Hubbard
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
First published in the United States of America in November 2015
by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
www.bloomsbury.com
E-book edition published in November 2015
Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Bloomsbury Children’s Books, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York 10018
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Hubbard, Mandy.
Everything but the truth : an If only novel / by Mandy Hubbard.
pages cm. – (An If only novel)
Summary: Holly Mathews lives at a retirement home for the super wealthy that her mother manages on expensive Mercer Island, but when she meets Malik Buchannan, grandson of one of the residents, she allows him to think that she is just visiting so he will accept her as belonging to his A-list world—it is just supposed to be a summer fling, but soon she finds herself falling in love.
ISBN 978-1-61963-660-6 (paperback) • ISBN 978-1-61963-659-0 (hardcover)
1. Dating (Social customs)—Juvenile fiction. 2. Deception—Juvenile fiction. 3. Social classes—Juvenile fiction. 4. Mothers and daughters—Juvenile fiction. 5. Love stories. 6. Retirement communities—Juvenile fiction. 7. Mercer Island (Wash.)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 2. Deception—Fiction. 3. Wealth—Fiction. 4. Social classes—Fiction. 5. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 6. Love—Fiction. 7. Retirement communities—Fiction. 8. Mercer Island (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Series: If only novel.
PZ7.H856676Ev 2015 813.6—dc23[Fic] 2014034600
ISBN 978-1-61963-661-3 (e-book)
Everything but the Truth Page 21