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Sometime later, when a luminous crescent moon hung suspended above us, I finally untangled myself from her and built a fire. We sat on the fallen tree trunk wrapped in quilts and I fed her burgoo heated over the open flame. An owl hooted incessantly in the background and Tenleigh’s laughter rang out over the meadow as I told her story after story of some of the trouble Silas and I had gotten into as kids—stories that up until then, no one knew except my brother and me. And somehow it felt like I had brought another piece of him back to life.
We danced briefly under the starlight, Tenleigh laughing as I dipped her. “I’d take you to the prom if I could,” I said softly, regretfully, bringing her back up so her body pressed against mine. “I’d do so many things if I could.”
“I know,” she answered, cupping my cheek in her palm and kissing my lips sweetly.
So many things were swirling through my mind, emotions I was unfamiliar with, feelings I couldn’t organize. But as the embers died and the first rays of daylight rose over the mountains, I looked next to me at a sleeping Tenleigh, her beauty soft and vulnerable under the early morning sky, and I knew what I had to do. I knew it was wrong, and I knew it would shatter me to do it. And I knew despite all that, I would do it anyway.
Someday, when I’m living my dreams, I’m going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I’m going to be thankful for them.
I knew I had to. Because I had been wrong.
Everything had changed. In one night, nothing was the same.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Tenleigh
We took our finals a week later. I looked for Kyland after school but was relieved when I didn’t see him. I didn’t really want to talk about how he’d done. Not that I didn’t already know—I was sure he had aced them. He hadn’t seemed concerned in the least, and when we’d studied, even though he’d been distracted, he’d answered every question I’d asked him from his study guides with unflinching certainty. And I definitely didn’t want to talk about how I’d done. I shifted my shoulders back, swallowing down the lump in my throat.
I had to hurry to get home and drop off my stuff so I could get going to Al’s, where I had a shift. Al had said he’d have more shifts available now that summer was almost here. The clientele picked up in the warmer months when he opened the outdoor patio and he had lost a couple girls to the new bar that had opened in Evansly. So that was great news. I had insider information I’d be staying in Dennville and so it was good I was going to have a regular income, at least for the summer. After that, I’d figure something out. I’d come up with my life plan B. Disappointment filled my chest, but I dismissed it. I’d done this. I’d made the choice and I’d followed through with it. There was no going back now.
As I walked up the main road through Dennville, lost in my own thoughts, I looked to my left and saw Shelly talking to Kyland in the doorway of an abandoned building. She was standing in his space and looking up at him just like she owned him. A pang of jealousy made my stomach cramp. He leaned his hip on the doorframe as she said something I couldn’t hear. I stepped backward so that I was being hidden by a thick, wooden telephone pole and peeked out at them.
Great. Now I was a stalker.
What was I doing? I bit my lip and debated whether to walk over and join them. We’d only been together the one beautiful night in the lavender field, but I knew it had meant something to both of us. Didn’t it? I glanced back over at Shelly and Kyland. Why did some part of me feel like I would be interfering in whatever they had going on between them if I approached? Like I was the interloper? I recalled the kiss I had witnessed between them, the groping in the theater all those months ago, and suddenly I felt like I’d be sick to my stomach. When I looked back again, they were gone. I looked around and spied them walking up ahead, Shelly pulling him along by the hand as he followed her.
My heart dropped. I didn’t know how to feel. Was he mine? Did I have any right to claim him in some public way? He had asserted again and again that he was leaving and he could make me no promises. How could I talk to him about it now, demand things, when I had been the one to tell him it was okay with me if he slept with me and still left? But he’d told me he loved me. If love wasn’t a sort of claiming in itself, then what was it? Could he love me, be intimate with me, but still feel free to be with other girls? I was upset and confused. I felt hot yet empty—my skin prickly. No, he wouldn’t. That wasn’t Kyland. If I knew anything of him, I knew he was honorable. Didn’t I?
