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My words fade away as I realize what I just said. When I blink up at him, he’s frozen.
“You… care about me?” he repeats.
I’m frozen too now. We’re just a couple of statues. Maybe if he blinks long enough, I can slip away and find a big hole to fall in.
“Kail.” He pokes my arm lightly. I must look catatonic.
“I didn’t mean to say that,” I groan.
His face falls, and I shake my head like an idiot.
“No, I meant it. I just didn’t mean to say it out loud.”
He picks me up like a doll and deposits me back onto the lounger by myself. When he backs away, I’m convinced this is it. He’s going to run now like he always does, and that’s exactly the point. But he just paces along the length of the floor, silently debating something.
When he turns back to me again, he looks terrified and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.
“I want to tell you something,” he says. “To prove a point. But you might look at me differently if I do. You might hate me, and I’m not sure I can handle that.”
My heart softens. “I could never hate you. I tried. Repeatedly. Remember?”
There’s a slight tremor in his arms when he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Did you find your tablet?”
My tablet. Holy crap. How could I have forgotten to ask him about that?
“Were you the one who took it?”
He shakes his head, then continues to pace. “No, it was Suzy.”
“Suzy?” Her name tastes like dirt on my lips. “She came into the pool house?”
“I didn’t find out until it was too late,” he says. “It never occurred to me, but it should have.”
“So she went through my journal and leaked that story to the press?”
It’s hard to swallow. This is his mother we’re talking about. His flesh and blood. The woman who is supposed to love him unconditionally and support him. Instead, she abuses him and sells him out to the media. I’m shaking mad. I want to find her right now so I can punch her in the face again. But that still wouldn’t be enough. She’s like a disease, and I can see how she’s sucked the life out of him. It isn’t fair. She needs to be stopped. Someway, somehow…
“She hurt you.” Landon’s voice is paper-thin. “She would have kept coming back here. If she ever did something else to you… I couldn’t live with myself. I couldn’t allow that to happen.”
He sounds so different. As if he’s not really here right now. And I can tell by the glazed expression on his face that he isn’t. He’s remembering something, and it doesn’t look good.
“What happened?” I ask gently.
“I gave her a choice.” He stares at the floor. “Drugs or me. I told her I would cut her off. I offered to send her to rehab, but the decision had to be hers. She chose the needle like she always does. I left her in a dirty motel room with a two-week supply. She must have taken too much. She couldn’t handle the temptation, and she overdosed. The police just notified me.”
His confession settles between us like a dense fog. I’m trying to wrap my head around it. Swallow it down. Do something with it. Because right now, it’s stifling.
“Is she…”
He blinks at me. “Right before she stuck the needle in her arm, she said I ruined her whole life. It was the last thing she ever said to me.”
“Landon.” My voice fractures as I walk to him. He seems uncertain when I reach up to touch his face as though he can’t be sure it’s real. My fingers graze his jaw, and he closes his eyes and shudders against me. “This wasn’t your fault. Her choices were her own. I’m so sorry she hurt you for so long. I know deep down, you loved her. You’d taken care of her your whole life when she should have been the one to take care of you. She couldn’t see how special you are, and that was her loss. You deserved so much better than that.”
His head dips into my hair, and I wrap my arms around him because no matter what’s happened between us, I know he needs me right now. He needs someone to let him grieve. For a few long minutes, I think that’s exactly what he does. He lets me hold him, and I whisper my assurances over and over.
This wasn’t his fault. I repeat it until I know it sticks and he calms down enough to look at me again. I massage the tension from his shoulders and open my heart for him regardless of the risks. For him, I can be vulnerable if it helps ease his pain. At least temporarily.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I tell him. “I’m here for you whenever you need to talk. No matter what’s going on between us, that offer will always stand, okay?”
