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But I knew.
I knew it happened because of me. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with saving her and being better than my dad, she would actually be alive today.
“Simon.”
Swallowing, I focus on her. This brave, innocent girl. Her tears are falling again. I’m making her cry. That’s all I seem to do.
There was a time when I could wipe off her tears, sit her in my lap, smooth down her hair and kiss her forehead, and she’d look at me like I was her hero.
Fuck, that look.
That look made me want to shake her, so she stopped doing it. She stopped looking at me like I hung the moon.
It also made me want to kiss the breath out of her, wrap her in my arms and keep her tucked by my side, slay all her dark thoughts and drink down all her salty water.
“She was in an accident,” I tell Willow. “She didn’t die but she went into a coma. Anoxic brain injury due to severe head trauma. And her parents filed a lawsuit against me when I told them it was my fault. The board asked me to step down from my position until the matter was resolved, and I did. I wasn’t going to stay anyway. Not after what happened.”
“Is she…”
She trails off, her eyes wide and so blue I want to drown in them.
I am drowning in them.
I am drowning in this fucking wait to see what she has to say to my confession. I know it’s a distinct possibility that she’ll send me away after this, and I honestly don’t know what I will do if she does.
“What happened?” she whispers at last, and my next breath comes easy.
I still have time. I can still be in her presence. I can still look at her, hear her voice.
“They took her off life support. I was going to stop them. I was driving up there.” I shake my head. “But I decided not to. I decided to let her go.”
“Why?” she asks, frowning, so fucking perfect in her confusion.
“Because my dad’s nurse called me saying that he was lucid. He seemed to remember me. She told me I should see him.”
“D-did you get to talk to him?”
I smile sadly. “No. By the time I got to him he was… not lucid anymore.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
Even if she hadn’t called, I wouldn’t have been able to make the entire drive, anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to leave Heartstone.
“It’s okay. It was the right thing to do. Letting her go.”
That night when I turned around, I felt the pressure easing off from my chest. I didn’t know it then but the act of driving back to my father was my way of moving on, and letting Claire go.
Maybe that’s what acceptance does. Eases off the pressure, the friction. That’s why Willow started laughing more when she confessed her lies in the group a long time ago.
Beth was right. I tell my patients to fight but I, myself, forgot.
“Well.” She sighs, wiping off her tears and straightening her spine. “I’m happy for you. That you’ve moved on. But I need to get back to work so –”
“I lied,” I tell her, then.
This time when her eyes go wide, there’s more than sadness in them. There’s awareness. An electricity that seems to flare whenever we’re close. I noticed it the first time she came into my office. That was the reason I kept asking her to meet me against traditional practices, against all reason.
“Lied about what?”
I walk closer to her and she steps back. “About everything I said that night.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Actually, I noticed that spark even before that. When she was on her knees, collecting pages of her book. Maybe that electricity was why I knew I had to kneel. I knew I had to help the silver-haired girl.
This is what they call fate, I think. This electricity, this magnetism. This strange call from the gut.
I shouldn’t crowd her and cage her against the door she came out of, but I can’t stop. I put both my palms on either side of her head and whisper, “I do have feelings for you. I’ve always had them.”
She purses her pretty mouth. “I don’t care.”
I keep going, though. “I always thought that my feelings for you were my weakness. I thought every time I watched you walk down the hallways, every time I strained my ears to hear you laugh or talk, every time I called you back into my office I was failing. You were my patient, I wasn’t supposed to feel that. I wasn’t supposed to look for you in the dining hall or on the grounds. I wasn’t supposed to hear your voice in my head or think about your skin when I saw the moon. I wasn’t supposed to imagine touching your hair every time you swept your bangs off your forehead. I thought I was failing.”
