I watch my future crumble before my eyes. The memory of Honey’s warm, soft body beneath my fingers slips from my grasp, spilling from my hands like sand. As if the timer has finally run out on us and now it’s time for her to flip it over and start the next year without me.
To leave me behind. Like everyone I’ve loved has.
I muster all the courage I have left, scraping it from the deepest, darkest depths of my soul, the parts I didn’t think I’d ever return to again, and try one more time. ‘But … but, Blue, I lo—’
‘Don’t.’ Honey cries out the word, her hand flying up to clutch her chest. ‘Please don’t say it. Not when you don’t mean it.’
My eyes sting. ‘But I do.’
‘No,’ Honey argues back, the word coming out muddled between a sob and a laugh. ‘You don’t. Neither of us truly know what love is. Which is why we shouldn’t be shaping our lives around it.’
Which is why she’s leaving me.
She told me I was easy to love. But how would she know?
I sink back into the driver’s seat as the last remnants of my fight drain from me. I’ve scraped the barrel and there’s nothing left. The only way to face the agony as my heart cracks is the same way I do with all pain—just absorb the blow, bury the pain deep inside and move on. It only hurts if you let it.
A sick part of me hopes Dad’s in a bad mood tonight just to punish myself for being tricked into love.
Voice emotionless, I just say, ‘Okay. Good luck with college, I guess.’ I chew on the inside of my lips to hold back the flood of emotion that’s ready to spill.
‘Sawyer—’ Out the corner of my eye, I see Honey lean forward, trying to catch my gaze, but I can’t look at her, not if I don’t want to get sucked into the promise of those baby blues again. Especially when she says adamantly, ‘I don’t regret it, you know? Any of it. I might not fully understand love yet, Sawyer, but I’m starting to, and I have you to thank for that.’
All I can do is nod and tell myself her words are empty.
Honey hovers in the passenger seat, heavy gaze weighing down on me. But I keep staring out the windshield, wondering if I’ll ever find the same golden future she does in the distance, and wait until she opens the truck door and slips out.
When she finally closes the door, the one to my heart follows. She says I don’t know what love truly is, but I do—we both do, and that’s why she’s running. Love is trickery. Love is broken promises. Love is showing someone the deepest, darkest parts of your soul and then watching them run away. And that’s why I’m never going to bother with it again.
37
Sawyer
The buzzer goes to Wolfman’s apartment—where I’ve been staying since Christmas—interrupting the basketball game we’ve been catching up on from yesterday. It’s technically my place too, so when he came home to me on his couch Christmas night without warning, he didn’t exactly beg for an explanation. Even if he has occasionally tried to get something out of me since, dropping subtle mentions of Honey into conversation or reminding me of the many missed call notifications on my phone. I stopped charging it when that became overwhelming.
Wolfman eagerly jumps up from the couch opposite me, rushing over to the door and pressing the button to let whoever the visitors are in without even checking.
‘We expecting someone?’ I ask from where I’m horizontal on the couch, a bag of chips resting on my chest.
What if it’s Honey? I don’t think I can face her yet. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to face her. Just planning on waiting it out here until I know she’s left the ranch—I senther one text after I left saying,stay at the ranch as long as you need, so they still have somewhere to stay. No one else will get hurt because of me, then. It’s better for everyone that way.
Even if my heart and head has been swarmed with shadows since the moment I left. I knew her and Noah brought a hell of a lot more sunshine into my life, but I’d almost forgotten how dark it had been before … Stupid of me, really, for letting myself get used to their light. To think the flowers they bloomed into the darkest corners of my soul could live on forever. Everything dies eventually.
‘Oh, yeah,’ Wolfman says, heading back to where he was sat. ‘Invited the guys over—you don’t mind?’
‘Not at all,’ I reply, though it doesn’t alleviate the tightness in my muscles. Or the dread beginning to swirl in my stomach.
I’ve already said no to going to the bar for New Year’s Eve tonight; are they going to try to convince me to come again?
It takes a minute or so before the door’s opened and Wyatt and Duke bustle in, Duke carrying a small crate of beers. I swallow down the nerves creeping up my throat and throw on a casual smile—the kind they know me for, the kind they think signals everything’s okay.
‘Alright?’ Wyatt asks as he shucks off his coat and throws it over the back of the couch. He offers out his hand to me as I sit up, and I give it a light smack in greeting, doing the same with Duke when he settles next to me.
Duke hefts the crate of beers onto the coffee table in front of us and offers me one as Wyatt and Wolfman lean over to help themselves.
‘They’re non-alcoholic,’ Duke states just as I’m about to reach for the bottle he’s holding out to me, which makes me pause.
‘Okay …’ I’m not sure why that matters.