Page 125 of A Ballad of Betrayal and Beauty

His face contorts with anguish, and I hate that I’ve spent all these years feeling alone in my devastation. Of course Key would feel it too. It was never just my baby.

“They told me it happens sometimes,” I continue. “More often than you’d think. That it wasn’t anything I did. But I’ve always thought it was punishment for every bad choice I made in my life.”

He leans toward me. “It wasn’t your fault. It’s mine. If I had been there, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Maybe I could’ve stopped it?—”

I shake my head. “Neither of us could’ve stopped this. It wasn’t meant to be.”

“Just like us.”

I look to the floor to avoid his eyes now. There it is. The uncomfortable thing that I’ve been avoiding for years. That maybe it was doomed from the start. How can the universe be so cruel as to make you love someone so much only to rip them away from you? How can that love still be so strong after so much?

He glances sidelong at the front door. “Does he make you happy?”

I wipe away the tear that trickles down my cheek and look up at him. “He makes me so happy.”

He nods and fidgets with his hands. The scars look worse than I remember.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I’m glad you found someone to love you. Even if that someone couldn’t be me.”

I wanted it to be you for so long.“What about you?”

“Me?”

I open my hands toward him. “Yeah. It’s been a long time. Has there been anyone who you?—”

“No. It’s always been you.”

Sucking my lip into my mouth, I chew nervously.

“I mean,” he continues. “There’ve been girls, but they were just distractions. It never meant anything. It wasn’t until recently that anyone ever came close to you. Or at least she reminded me of you. I never even met her . . .” he finishes to himself.

At my raised eyebrow he continues.

“A fantasy phone girl, if you can believe it.” He huffs a short laugh but my heart may have stopped beating. “Pathetic, huh?”

My watery eyes search his face. For a trace, for any hint that this is a joke. There’s no way. It’simpossible.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

My hands shake, my head following along as though my physical body can’t accept any more. “Baby?”

Then he freezes too. The two of us stuck, frozen in time. The world is simultaneously crumbling around me, and yet everything makes sense. The connection through the phone line. The way the sound of his voice made me feel. How he was watching my favorite movie. How he came to me for comfort. How he continues to enter my life and make me fall in love with him over and over and over again. Every. Damn. Time.

He drops off the couch onto his knees before me. “Cherry?”

The truth of it is in my eyes. He can see it. Then with the desperation of a man grasping for a life raft, he wraps his arms around my waist, his grip unyielding. “It’s impossible,” he whispers against my ribcage.

It is. It truly is. We both crossed an entire country only to find each other again and again. Even over the phone?

Looking up at me, he grabs my face in his hands. His eyes scan mine and I watch the words form in his mind. How he showed me how he really felt for the first time at thirteen, and that pure-hearted innocence is still there. How he said them to me at seventeen, when we expressed that feeling physically. He’s about to say them, but all I know is the undeniable guilt at wanting to say them back, after almost saying them to Joel.

“Dusty, I?—”

Ring rrrrring.

We look at the phone, then at each other. Neither of us moves. It rings again, again, again. We drift as one to the kitchen and the spiral corded phone on the wall. I know Key’s thinking the same thing: Joel is calling.

Key reaches it first. “Hello?”

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