Page 85 of Together Is Where We Belong

“Because you said that you completely changed after I left and you had to pretend to be something you’re not. I hate that I made you that way,” she confessed.

For a long time after she’d left, all I wanted was her to return and apologize. I’d have forgiven her and we’d have been happy. Not that she’d said she was sorry, but I felt it in my soul that she was about to, and I wasn’t sure I needed those words anymore.

“Honestly?” I asked.

She gave an unsure nod.

“The truth is you leavin’ did change me. I missed you so much that I didn’t know how to handle a life without you in it. But I hated how people treated me almost more than I hated that you’d left. I needed people to just see me and not my broken heart. I made those choices. Not you. I made them because you left. Because I couldn’t face the feelings I had. It was easier to pretend,” I explained, and she gave another nod as she looked over at me.

Luke stirred beside us, and we both looked down at him as he curled the blanket around him and settled into the couch.

“Maybe we should get him up to bed,” she suggested, and I hated that we were about to leave another conversation unfinished.

I picked Luke up, and Carolina followed me as I walked up the stairs to my old bedroom.

Once he was settled on the bed, I covered him up and made sure his blanket was tucked right beside his face before I gave him a kiss goodnight. I moved out of the way, and Carolina leaned over and stared down at him for a few moments before she did the same.

I walked alongside her to the bedroom door. I let her exit the room first before I followed her out, closing the door softly behind me. She walked down the hallway a few steps before she stopped in front of Ainsleigh’s old bedroom. She turned to face me as she shuffled her feet.

She looked up at me, longing in her eyes. I stepped forward.

One step.

Two steps.

Three steps, and I stood right in front of her. She looked up at me and pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and worried it with her teeth.

“Leo,” she whispered with a plea underneath.

“Carolina,” I whispered back as I stared into her chocolate eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said as she blinked back tears.

“For?” I asked, unsure of what she meant.

“I lied to you that day, Leo,” she replied.

My heart began to race at the memory of the day my world upended.

I swallowed hard, unsure how to respond.

“What do you mean?” I managed to choke out almost too scared to know the answer.

What could she have possibly lied to me about?

I searched her eyes as I waited for her answer, hoping that I’d find it in the chocolate depths that looked up at me.

Only all I saw was the longing look in her eyes. The look that told me whatever she was about to reveal would likely change my world all over again.

“I lied about not loving you the way you loved me. I lied because I knew that was the only way to get you to let me go. I never stopped loving you, Leo, not for one second,” she said as she brought her hand up. I thought she was about to touch me, only she reached for whatever the chain around her neck held and gripped it tight within her grasp. I wanted to know what lay beneath the cotton scrub shirt she’d worn. I brought my hand up to where she gripped her shirt, but her grip tightened and caused me to pause.

Words were caught in my throat at her confession.

She gave me one more longing look before she turned and opened the door. Too stunned to move for a moment, I stood there, but just as I stepped forward about to enter my sister's old room, the door shut, separating me from Carolina. I broke out of the trance her words had put me under.

I heard her head hit the door on the other side, and I turned and put my back to the door, resting my head against the hardened wood.

The only thought that I’d managed to repeat in my mind was What did her confession mean, and what was I goin’ to do now that it sat unsettled between us?