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The memory I’d lost returns to me in startling clarity.
She left with her suitcases and I’d crept out of my room to catch her and Dad arguing.
I glance up, my vision blurring. “I forgot. I forgot that part.” I run trembling fingers through my hair. “Mom was leaving us.”
“I blamed you too.” Dad stares glumly at his feet. “So I understood why you blamed me. I’m sorry, son. Instead of being the adult, I took cues from the heartbroken child and ignored my responsibilities to you and to our family.”
Mom left.
She left me.
“Why are you here?” I ask in a broken voice.
“Because I heard about this girl you’re seeing.”
“What?”
“Doc told me.”
I grit my teeth. “So he was a spy.”
“Don’t make the same mistake I did, Hawk. Don’t let fear keep you stranded in the middle of the ocean and away from what matters.” He gestures to the water around us. “I regret what happened with your mother everyday, but I don’t regret fighting for her to stay. It would have haunted me to death if I hadn’t given it my all. Maybe it was a little too late. It took her leaving to wake me up and by then she was gone forever.” Tears glisten in his eyes, but he doesn’t shed them. “I heard from Doc. How this girl makes you smile. How she makes you a better man. I want that for you. Don’t let her slip through your fingers.”
His words dig deep beneath my skin. Twine around my soul. Destroys the pride and the self-pity I was living with for the past few days.
I jump up. “Get out of the way.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m turning this boat around.”
32
SHANEL
“Hawk isn’t here,” is the first thing Linda says as she opens the big front door and admits me into the foyer.
“I’m not here for Hawk.”
“Oh.” She studies my face. “Are you… okay, dear?”
Short answer is no.
Long answer is…
I’m going back to the real world and leaving the man I fell in love with behind because he lives in a movie where he ends up with someone else.
Yeah, I don’t want to get into that.
“Look at those under-eye circles.” Linda grabs me into a hug. “You kids are suffering.”
I melt into her embrace.
Tears well in my eyes. You’d think I’d stop crying by now.
Guess not.
It’s been a harrowing three days. Catherine did her best to cheer me up. Fitz and Barclay stopped by multiple times with food and flowers. They bad-mouthed Hawk for me and promised to beat him up when they see him.
