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didn’t smell this good, and whatever Claire had going on in
the oven smelled like heaven.
“Claire, I…” All her words deserted her. Her mind circled
through all the things she could say. When you told me to
leave, every part of me cried out to stay. I didn’t want us to
end. I thought you’d at least look at me before I left, but you
didn’t. As Snake was driving us away, you turned and went
back inside. I know you didn’t watch from the window where I
couldn’t see you. My God, it hurt. It hurt so badly that I felt
broken for the past month. Ever since I left here.
Claire left the seafood scattering the floor. She walked over
to Haley, eyes blazing. She looked different. She looked…
happy. At peace somehow. Haley marked all the changes
instantly, because she’d memorized every detail about Claire.
Suddenly, she couldn’t see anything past the haze blurring her
eyes. It burned, those tears. It burned as badly as her heart.
“My grandma finally got tired of me moping around the
house, doing nothing at all, and told me to get my buns here
and tell you how I felt. She wanted me to say that I’d fight for
you, because I will. That I miss you, because I do. That yes,
my dad is still Robert Watt, and the past is still the past, but
what I want for the future is so much bigger than that. Maybe
I’m crazy because I know we didn’t have that much time
together, but I just miss you so much. With this all-consuming,
unfathomable, bottomless kind of ache.”
Claire reached out and swept a strand of Haley’s hair back.
She let her touch linger, soft and gentle, before she used the
pad of her thumb to swipe away the tears from Haley’s cheek.
She made a sound of regret that made Haley’s words keep
tumbling out like an out-of-control waterfall.
