“You know what?” Landon said, darkening. “You actually do. You’re not a fucking teenager, Rose.”
The swearing was new. Rose had been losing her temper at him left and right, but he’d been taking it without complaint, and certainly without firing back. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
“It doesn’t matter how I talk to you!” he exploded. “Becauseyou’re not listening to me! You haven’t heard a fucking word I’ve said to you since we got back from the hospital.”
“That’s enough.”
“No,” Landon said. “No, I’m not falling for this anymore. I’m not doing it. You can’t keep pushing me away. You’re not okay. You almostdied, Rose. I watched you almostdie.” It was the first time he’d named it without a doctor present to mediate the experience. It stopped Rose cold. “I’m going crazy here. I can literally see you slipping away, and you won’t let me help you.Please, Rose,” he said. “Please let me help you. Let me get you help.”
It was horrifying to know that he could see just how close to the edge she’d been standing all these weeks, that he had watched her teetering and had only now reached out a hand. She found she couldn’t stand any longer and went limp, dropping down into the bracing Atlantic. Landon was two beats behind her, bending to his knees with the trademark clumsiness she managed to find endearing even in this most dire of circumstance, soaking his shorts and T-shirt. “You remember your nurse?” he asked. She didn’t, but she nodded anyway. “She gave us both hospital pamphlets with resources. There are groups you could join. Or therapy. You might consider medication. I think you should try all three, but I am fucking desperate, so if you told me you would try just one, I would kiss your feet.”
The water lapped at her hair, and Rose thought of Cordelia, sleeping peacefully, she hoped, in the arms of anyone but her. “I should go feed her. She must be hungry by now; she must be—”
Landon reached for her hand. “If you won’t do it for me, then do it for her. You got a second chance to be her mom, and I feel like I have a front-row seat to watching you squander it.”
Rose shook her head. “Too far,” she said. The anger that hadbeen lurking just below the surface exploded like a long-dormant volcano. “You have no fucking idea what you’re talking about.”
“Hey—”
She ripped her hand free. “You have no idea what this is like.”
“You won’t let me—”
“You have no idea what it feels like. I feel like a fucking ghost, Landon! I don’t even feel real, I feel…” She shook her head, too far gone to comfort.
“Help me understand, then,” he pleaded. “Jesus, Rose, just talk to me. You think you feel like a ghost? It’s like I’m not even here!”
“She doesn’t feel like mine!” Rose said. And once she’d said it, she could never take it back. “She was here and I was gone. Landon, I was gone.” Under those white lights, in that operating room, she’d been tired—so, so tired. And then, all at once, she’d felt nothing. Exquisite nothingness. A bright light. A warm embrace. It hadn’t been just the absence of pain, but the promise that there was place where pain could not find her. And she was almost there. She was slipping away. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still feel it.
“Rose…” His voice broke.
“It’s like we’re still living on different planes,” Rose said. “Even now. I don’t feel like I belong to her. I don’t feel like she belongs to me.” Before her mind could catch up with her body, she was crying, heaving sobs wracking a frame still soft with the remnants of pregnancy.
“I’m sorry,” Landon said. “I am so, so sorry.” They were words you say when you don’t know what to say. They didn’t make Rose angry, or even sad. Just tired. Landon wrapped his long arms around Rose and did his best to hold her together. But you can’t keep a ghost from slipping through your fingers.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Give me a few minutes, will you?” Rose called from the bathroom.
“Take your time!” he called back. He wondered whether she’d omitted the obligatory “make yourself at home” because she knew the sentiment was far too aspirational for the space.
Despite being hardwired for it, Landon tried not to be too judgmental. The flat was sparse, and the furniture functional.Sparse and functional—he held on to those two words like a lifeline as he wandered.Not abandoned, he scolded the hypercritical side of his brain,just not lived in. It was small, with large windows, and had good bones, but Rose had done almost nothing to improve on what was already there. She hadn’t hung curtains or even put in plastic shades, so there were no decisions to make about whether to let the light in or keep it out. The furniture didn’t match, nor did it look all that comfortable. The blush-pink couch had what looked like cigarette burns on the arms, which Landon didn’t imagine was a feature anyone would actively seek out. Her bookshelf held only three worn textbooks and, despite the nature of her part-time job, not a single work of fiction. It reminded him of Rose’s basement apartment in New York. She’doutright refused to decorate until she’d become the kind of person that she felt the city demanded of her. But in the Brooklyn apartment, despite its intentional minimalism, Rose had brought with her the kinds of objects people slowly accumulate over a lifetime: her dad’s old college sweatshirt, the journal in which she’d recorded thoughts from her middle school self, her scrapbook full of programs from roles that had forever altered her. Their presence here was sorely missed. And for the first time without Conor or Poppy’s prompting, he wondered whether what he was doing here was wrong.
The floor creaked behind him. “I’m not here very much,” Rose said. Her skin was clear again, with no trace of the blood that had clung to it. She looked up at him with hungry eyes, and he knew that if he stood there a moment longer, he’d be at risk of crossing the line they’d both been toeing.
“I’m really glad you’re feeling better.” He wanted to run his thumb down her pale cheeks. “I should go.”
“Do you have to?” She stepped closer.
Landon didn’t trust himself. This place felt as timeless as World’s End but lacked all of the warmth and weight. He wasn’t sure he had ever felt so out of sorts. “It’s late,” he said, intentionally giving the thinnest excuse he could think of.
“Stay.” It was both a suggestion and a request, and Landon was weakened by it. He swallowed hard, searching her face for the hesitation that would help him do what he needed to do.
But there was none.
“You don’t really want me to,” he said, testing her.
“I do.” She stepped close enough that the streetlights lit her face.
