Page 62 of I Always Will

Hailey laughed, getting up and moving around the desk to pull Esme into a hug. “I hope Daniel Daley knows just how lucky he is to be getting you.”

“I’m pretty sure he does.” She sounded blissfully happy. Hailey loved that for her. “Just as Al knows how lucky she would be to get you.”

“Alexandria,” Hailey corrected, rolling her eyes at the way Esme giggled at her again. “It’s Alexandria.”

And it always would be.

Twenty-Five

Four days ago

Alexandria was shaking as she made her way to the platform. Despite the cold, she walked along to an empty bench, ensuring she stayed under cover of the shelter to avoid the rain. Most people were inside the waiting rooms or still in the concourse for warmth. Alexandria didn’t care about the cold right now, she just needed to sit down.

The story I’ve been writing, that’s what Hailey had said. Alexandria hadn’t needed to ask questions to guess what was in the box.

She’d thought she’d ruined everything on Friday night by admitting to making CDs for Hailey. To any other person, that would undoubtedly be a weird thing to do, even weirder to admit it. And then she’d been dragged off to see her mum and deal with everything she had going on and, while she hadn’t been exactly sad at being dragged out of Hailey’s house before an excruciatingly awkward breakfast encounter could occur, she knew it wouldn’t look good. So, when Hailey had disappeared from Mash-N-Go, Alexandria was certain she’d blown it, despite the tentative looks they’d shared at the counter. She never would have imagined Hailey showing up and handing over her journals.

Alexandria wasn’t sure how many were in the box, but she knew it was more than one. The box was far too weighty to just be one or two.

She wanted desperately to rip it open, to devour the contents within, but this wasn’t the place for that. She knew she was going to cry when she did and she didn’t want to cry here, in the train station. Nor did she want to expose all of Hailey’s most private thoughts to the platform, no matter how empty it was.

There was also the risk the rain posed. Hailey was giving her something incredible, but Alexandria wasn’t going to keep them and she didn’t want to destroy them. Returning them in less-than-perfect condition would be unforgivable. She wanted Hailey to know she fully understood and appreciated the gesture.

Still shaking—though now from a combination of the chill and the emotional roller coaster she had been on since Hailey handed her the box—she glanced up to see how long she had until her train arrived. Six minutes.

Six minutes until she could be on the train. Two hours and twenty minutes until she was back in London. Fifteen minutes from the station to her apartment. And then she could read. Then she could break down and cry and love and learn a million things she’d missed over the last seventeen years.

“Alexandria,” called a familiar voice.

For one wild second, Alexandria hoped—ridiculously and knowing she was wrong—that it was Hailey. It wasn’t, of course. It was her mother. Running along the platform towards her, a Marks and Spencer bag for life in hand.

“Mum?” she responded, standing up while keeping the box clutched tight to her chest. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, I’m so glad I made it,” Susan said, sitting down beside where Alexandria had been sitting just moments ago.

“Made it where?” She frowned down at her mother, looked back the way she’d come, and, when no answer appeared, looked back at her mum and her suspicious little bag.

“In time for the train.”

The train? As in, to get on the train? As in, she was coming too?

Susan looked around at the dreary evening before looking up at her daughter, looking more like the mother Alexandria had known most of her life than she had all day. “Why on earth are you sitting out in the cold, Alexandria? They have waiting rooms for this.”

Alexandria pressed her lips together, fighting the urge to tell her mum off for criticising her choices when she wasn’t even invited on this trip. She glanced up at the board again. “The train will be here in four minutes. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“Well, don’t blame me when you get ill,” she said. It was so reminiscent of her old self, but with the very slightest warmer edge. Alexandria supposed change didn’t happen overnight.

“Mum, in the nicest way possible, what are you doing? Are you coming home with me?” She sat back down on the edge of the metal bench that felt significantly colder now that she felt as though she’d been doused with ice water.

Her mum laughed. “Of course I am. What else would I be doing here?”

“I was hoping you could tell me,” Alexandria muttered, increasingly worried about how her mum was doing.

Not once had her parents been to her apartment. She was pretty sure they didn’t even like London. Well, her dad didn’t. She supposed she wasn’t sure what her mum liked. Neither was her mum, that was kind of the point of this whole thing.

She clutched the box closer to her chest, taking in how Susan seemed irritated with the cold but in surprisingly good spirits otherwise. She didn’t know what she was going to do. She wanted to help her mum—obviously, she did—but she had important plans when she arrived home, plans that relied on her mother not being there to read the journals or to watch Alexandria cry over her tangled relationship with Hailey.

“Did Daniel drive away and then bring you back?” she asked her mum, who had shown no signs of wanting to leave the car when Daniel had dropped Alexandria off.

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