Page 52 of If You Stayed

“If I’m happy.”

I felt nervous to ask for some reason. Maybe because I knew she’d answer, and I wasn’t certain she was ready to answer. I wasn’t certain she was ready to express her truth out loud.

“Are you happy, Kierra?”

“No,” she quickly replied. “But maybe some people aren’t meant to be happy. Maybe some people are just meant to be heartbroken.”

“Maybe that’s true. But I don’t think those people are you.”

“How can you be so sure? You hardly know me.”

“I know,” I agreed. “It makes no sense, but Ifeelyou, Kierra. I don’t know how to explain it, but I can tell the type of person you are, and you aren’t a person that’s meant to be unhappy.”

“You feel me?” she asked, slightly perplexed.

“Yes,” I told her. “I feel you sometimes even when you aren’t around.”

“Gabriel?”

“Yes?”

“I feel you, too,” she whispered.

Fuck my heart…

It just did a million somersaults in my chest.

“Why are you staying with him?” I asked. “If you’re so unhappy. If he’s cheating. If he’s a complete shit in all ways.”

“Because of Ava.”

“You could be without him and still have Ava. She’s still your daughter.”

“Yes, she is. But not on paper, and he’s told me repeatedly that he’ll take her away from me if I leave him.”

“He can’t really mean that.”

“You must not know my husband.”

“Why would he make Ava suffer, though? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Because it would hurt me…and that would please him.”

“There must be a way out, Kierra. We can figure out—”

“We don’t have to figure this out now. It’s not even yourresponsibility,” she cut in with a weighted sigh. “I just wanted to hear someone else’s voice to drown out the heaviness of my own thoughts.”

“Okay.” I paused for a moment, considering what else I could say to keep the conversation moving away from Henry. To lighten her spirits. To give her some kind of peace when her world seemed to be nothing but storms.

“What’s your favorite thing to do when you feel overwhelmed?” I asked her. “Something that’s just yours.”

“Sit by the ocean and draw. I haven’t done it in so long. I used to drive out to the coast and stay for hours, just listening to the water crashing against the shore. It stilled everything else for a while. It calmed down all the commotion in my head.”

“I’ll be by your place in twenty minutes.”

She laughed. “No, Gabriel. That isn’t—”

“Kierra.”

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