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He’s sorry.
I rub my dripping nose.
Letting me go is Mitchell’s way of protecting me from our other two brothers.
“What is he—the nice one?” Lo asks.
“Mitchell could’ve stopped them,” I mutter. He’s closest in age to me. Two years older. “He never did. Does that make him nice?” I shake my head. “…I don’t know. I never stopped my friends from breaking into your house. I never stopped myself from pranking you. We’re all the same. We’re all shit.” He needs to remember who he’s inviting into his home. I’m not a good guy. Doesn’t he remember?
Lo leans forward, and with utter conviction, he says, “This guy in front of me isn’t shit, and I’ll still be here when you finally believe it too.”
I inhale like I haven’t taken a full breath in all my life.
I was wrong about my family—how I can’t trade them in.
They may be blood, but they’re not mine anymore.
I can choose my family. Lo gave me that option.
And I choose this one.
56
willow hale
“Lo told me I could pick any room in the house that I wanted with one exception,” Garrison explains as he folds clothes into a new dresser. I watch him on Skype. Boxes surround him, and computer monitors and cords litter the queen-sized bed.
Before he officially accepted Lo’s offer, he called to ask if the whole thing was a bad idea. He wanted to make sure that I was on board.
My boyfriend moving into my brother’s house.
In Garrison’s words: “If you become unhappy in our relationship and this makes it harder for you to break up with me—then I won’t do it.”
He’s always thinking about me, in most everything. Even in some strange reality where I’d break up with him, he thinks about me. By the way, that’s a reality that I refuse to believe will ever come true.
During the same phone call, Garrison spilled everything about his brothers. How they hurt him during the holidays and then again in the greenhouse. How his mom did nothing.
It gutted me, but I tried to stay strong over the line for him. Towards the end, we were both crying. I wish I could’ve been there.
With him.
His drunken anger in London made more sense, and guilt gnawed at me for not flying home with him that night. Garrison said he wouldn’t have wanted me to, but I’ll regret it forever.
“I regret a lot,” I told him on the phone, wiping at my tears. “I could’ve confronted your mom or told Lo sooner—”
“No,” Garrison forced out. “We were teenagers.”
“I’m not a teenager anymore.”
I could hear his tears and cracking voice. “What happened isn’t on you, Willow. You left everything you knew to come to Philly. And you came here to meet your brother. Saving me wasn’t your job. It’s mine. And you know how many times I wanted to confront your mom but never did?”
He’s been pissed about how easily she’s erased me from her life.
“She’s thousands of miles away in Maine,” I said in quiet protest. “Your mom lives down the street.”
“So what? I could’ve flown there. I have money.”
I felt terrible for making this about me. “I’m sorry.” I grimaced at the apology, hearing my best friend Daisy telling me not to apologize for my feelings. Even though it’s hard. I sniffed back emotion and loosened my grip on the phone. “Sometimes I think that I’m a nonentity in so many people’s lives—shy, timid Willow Hale,” I whispered, “and I’m afraid of being a nonentity in yours.” He’s my guy, my only love, and it’s terrifying to think that I could be this invisible shadow to the person who’s been my everything.
“You’ve never been a nonentity to me, Willow,” Garrison breathed. “From the first time we touched, you became my world and safe place. I’m so in love with you that my heart feels like it’s being ripped to shreds just knowing you’re sad, and I’m stuck here, sitting on this crappy floor. Wishing I could hug you.”
I was sitting on the floor too. I told him that.
We laughed softly. Sadly.
I hugged my arm around my body, pretending that Garrison was with me. “Don’t push me too far away that I can’t ever reach you again, okay?”
“Okay.” We listened to our breath over the line for a while. It sounds creepier than cute, but it felt…calming. To hear him ease and our tears dry.
So that was the phone call.
A big one.
All I can do is think about now.
How he’s moving into my brother’s house, and we’re currently on a Skype call.
This move is a great thing for him. He’ll be surrounded by people who care about him and love him. Happy doesn’t even come close to what I’m feeling.
I’ve been grinning so much these past couple days that my cheeks hurt.
“Which room did you pick?” I ask Garrison. Back on Skype, I squint at my computer screen, trying to decipher which room he chose in the big eight-bedroom Hale house.
