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“After that, we spent a lot of time together. She was all isolated with her dad in the massive mansion on the hill and I was living in a house overflowing with kids.” A foster home, but I leave that out.
The memories flood through me, like just letting out one is enough to bring it all rushing back. The soft feel of her hand in mine, the sound of a breeze and the rickety, bent rotted wood beneath our feet. The scent of the flowers from the garden, a girl with wide blue eyes whispering “It’s okay. I’ll take care of you.” Something deep lodging in my chest at too young an age, threatening the protective layer of anger I’d formed.
“And LaBlanc?”
An angry laugh bursts from my chest. “He’s an asshole, always has been. It fucking sucked when I was sixteen and didn’t know what to do with him, and now—” My hand rises to my chest, but not daring to touch the cut on my cheek. “I don’t know. It feels worse, but it’s not really.”
“He’s always been hard on you?”
It’s an understatement, but I nod.
“And Lily?”
The noose around my neck squeezes tighter. How many times have I defended her in the quiet? Taken an extra hour of LaBlanc’s ire so that he’d leave whatever he said about her alone. Agreed to play for his team and attend that goddamn prep academy just so that she wouldn’t be so alone—
“I loved her,” I say. “She was everything to me then. My entire world revolved around her by the time I was ten. And it never got better, it only got stronger.”
Holden nods.
Sometimes the weight of my feelings for Lily LaBlanc made me feel as if my heart was collapsing. But it wasn’t unrequited. She shared in my torment. She was my past, my present, my future, until it was all taken from me.
There’s a lull for a moment where my harsher breathing shudders out into something calmer. Holden’s hand is on my arm, soothing and steadying. But I can’t stand the almost suffocating feeling on my chest, so I jerk back my arm.
“She’s important to me, still. That doesn’t just disappear,” I finally manage, clearing my throat as if that might rid the gruff emotionality from my tone. It’s as close to the truth as I’ll dare to go. “And I didn’t hit her. I’d never—” My voice is shaking, and no matter how many times I try to quell it, the emotion sticks, like blackened tar. “I would have never hurt someone, especially a girl. I didn’t—”
“I believe you, Tor,” he says. Like a healing balm to my torn-up, beaten soul. “And whenever you’re ready to tell me more, I’ll be right here. I’m not leaving you alone.”
Holden never has left me alone—on the team or otherwise. I might’ve joked or pretended to be annoyed, but the boy I’d been for most of my life, alone and terrified of being left behind, wanted so desperately for this to be real. For him to be my friend.
And he is. Maybe I can trust in that.
He doesn’t ask for more now, only offering for me to come to his place again and play games. I take the in.
I don’t want to be alone anymore.
Maybe I don’t have to be.
• • •
“Lily?”
She’s on the sofa, but stands up, almost abruptly at the sound of my voice. Paloma and Holden stay in the doorway speaking carefully—Holden flirting his ass off for the girl I know whose heart is entirely taken by a very large goalie. If he knew, he wouldn’t try her.
I don’t think Holden even really wants Paloma in the way he pretends he does. I think it’s a bit of an overdone cover for his other interests that he hides carefully.
“Hey, Lil.”
Her eyes water. She’s dressed in a sweatshirt I recognize—faded black with cream writing, the neck completely worn out, slipping off one delicate, pale shoulder. My old The Smiths sweatshirt. It was from my foster brother Henry’s clothes, the stuff he left behind when he left me behind. I’d worn it until it was nearly falling apart. When I’d outgrown it, because my body grew too fast, Lily started wearing it, because she knew I didn’t want to get rid of it.
And she kept it.
My throat tightens, even more so as I scan up to see tear tracks and brighter-than-usual blue eyes.
“You’re here.”
“Always,” I say, barely a whisper as I step over and wrap her in my arms, pulling her to climb up and wrap her legs around my waist. Sinking down into the sofa, I let her just sit in my lap, head tucked beneath my chin.
I press my nose into her hair; the smell relaxes my entire body, a deep, settled breath rolling out of me.
