Page 12 of Every Heartbeat After

He stills, stopping us just a few feet from the base of his stairwell, and unravels our arms. “I wish I’d met her, too. If she was anything like you, she was surely something special.”

Something special.Kit’s muttered words at the airport, that I now realize were probably just an echo.

My nose burns, the prelude to tears I don’t want to cry. “I miss them both so much. No matter how much time passes?—”

“It doesn’t hurt any less,” Gary finishes for me.

“Exactly.” I think of the bridge at the edge of town whose guardrail split my parents’ car in two. The river below that buried the pieces. I still go out of my way to avoid it, even so many years after the crash. There’s no grinning and bearing it with a grief like that. There’s only avoiding it till it catches up to you, then kicking like hell when it does its best to drown you.

“I don’t mean to be forward, Tess, but…” Gary’s voice is raw with emotion. He takes a moment to clear it, then reaches for my bicep and squeezes lightly. He meets my gaze with one as watery as my own. “I know you have a life in Alabama, but if you ever want… if you’d ever consider…” He wets his lips, then tries again. “Well, I’m just saying that Loveless can be a wonderful place to start over. That’s all.”

I brush him off with a sharp laugh. It’s not the first time someone’s suggested that I move. Whether it was my grandparents offering to send me far away from Fly Hollow for college, or strangers who felt like they knew my story enough to suggest I jet off to someplace their cousin-twice-removed lived in and loved. All things that implied my pain was something stationary, that I need only run away from in order to escape. As if I haven’t tried.

And though it doesn’t quite feel that way with my uncle, I can’t kick the instinct to immediately dismiss the idea. Old habits die hard.

It’s also impossible to ignore the fear that splinters through me as it always does when I feel tempted to run away from my life. Like a defibrillator shock to my system at the thought that I might abandon the people and places that still remember my parents, even if that memory hurts just as much, if not more, than its absence might most days.

“I can see you turning white as a sheet, so we’ll move on as if I didn’t mention it.” He chuckles nervously. “It’s just so good to have family again; I’ve gotten carried away. I apologize.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I croak, surprising myself. I’m usually so good at keeping these types of feelings hidden from outward view. “It’s very kind of you to offer. I just… I’m not sure I’m in the right place in my life for that. You know?”

Because starting over feels a lot like forgetting. As much as I might try to bury the past, I’m also never so far from it that I cannot find my parents if I reach for them. My grandparents, too, now that they’re gone. Fly Hollow will always hold the version of me they knew, that everyone believes is real, even when I can’t be convinced myself.

It also keeps me close to the Carmen. I think of standing in the airy lobby just two months ago on my annual trip. How close my parents felt, as they always do when I’m at the little seaside resort we frequented. It’s strangely similar to the sense of nearness I’ve felt here in Loveless. A town they never stepped foot in that they’re somehow a part of all the same.

“I know.” My uncle pats my arm one more time, pulling me from the memory, then turns toward his wrought-iron staircase. “Loveless will win you over yet, Tess. You just wait.”

I know it’s not what he intended, but a certain dark-haired deputy flashes through my mind in an instant. I reach for Gary’s elbow and scoop his scooter up with my other hand, shaking my head at thoughts that don’t need encouragement. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“Would you?” he says, punctuating his chuckle with a whistle. It’s the first thing he’s done that reminds me of my mother. And it makes me happy to know she’s alive in him, too, even if the reminder that I’ll never again hear her do the same brings stinging tears to my eyes.

ChapterFive

Kit

Her laughter plaguesmy every waking thought for the rest of the day, which in all fairness, there aren’t a lot of. I doze intermittently in the recliner in my living room, not even bothering with the bed. It’ll take days for my sleep schedule to recover. I’m not as quick to bounce back as I was in my twenties, something that pains me to admit, almost as much as sleeping in this chair does.

The sun is setting on the other side of my blinds, painting my pathetically barren living room in an odd light. My ex made our house in Colorado Springs a home. I, on the other hand, suck at nesting. Even two years after moving here, I’ve not managed much more than a gaming system beneath the television and a side table for the recliner.

It feels a lot like holding my breath, though I have no clue what for.

As I blink into the settling twilight that leaks through my blinds, Tess’s laughter fades into something else. My ears ring with her bright tone when Zoey apologized for the asinine comment about Gary being a father to the fatherless. Everything I’ve been trained for tells me Tess was covering the truth with too much positivity. One glance at her face when she turned to watch me approach—tense at the corners of an otherwise magnificent smile, green eyes hardened to jade river rocks—and I knew she was compensating for something.

Zo mentioned she’d been through a lot, and if my suspicions are correct, then saying so was short selling it. I picture my father, probably posted up in a La-Z-Boy none too different than this one. No matter how many years have passed since we shared a beer over an Ole Miss game, the idea of burying him hits me square in the chest. “Fuck,” I mutter. No wonder this weekend is so important to Tess. If she’s lost her father, finding an uncle would be all the more meaningful.

Pain shoots up my back as I rise from the chair and stretch my spine. I stop the dryer mid-tumble and retrieve a clean T-shirt that I pull over my head. The fridge is disappointingly barren. I scrub a hand through my hair. There’s only one fast food joint in Loveless, right on the outskirts of town. Looks like no matter how much I’d rather not, I’m hitting the road again tonight.

Part of me hopes going for a drive will help rid my thoughts of Tess at last. And it does, at first. Until I’m meandering home with a vanilla milkshake in hand and spot a tall, blonde figure in a sundress making her way down the quiet sidewalk along Main Street.

Against my better judgment, I pull onto the wrong side of the road and roll down my window. Snarky, offhand flirtations are usually my forte. But suddenly I can’t think of a thing to say beyond, “Need a lift?”

She startles. When she glances over at me, her gaze appears red-rimmed in the streetlamp’s glow. The vise of my ribs clamps tight around my lungs. I stop the slow roll of the car. She stumbles forward a few steps, then stops, turns around, and walks back to my window.

“You realize I’m only a block away from the motel, right?” She jerks her head in the direction she was walking. “I can literally see it from here.”

Whatever sadness drove her nearly to tears, there’s no trace of it in her voice.And I thought I was a good performer.

I press my lips together and lift my brows. Who am I to blow her cover? If she doesn’t want to talk about it, I won’t be the one to bring it up. “Just trying to be a gentleman.”

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