Page 108 of Back to December
I didn’t understand what Holden asked me to do a year ago; I only thought I did.
I know now.
But since I’d never seen or experienced atruepartnership, I didn’t know how to take part in one.
“I had more than one. But the last one—the one you heard—everyone moved on without me. Ella and Luke moved to her farm, and everyone had new traditions. They were building a whole new life, one that even included you. But I wasn’t part of it. There was an invisible wall. I thoughtif I kept my distance, I could protect everyone, but all I did was disappear.”
His arms tighten around me, then ease enough for him to look at me. Pain flickers across his face, quiet but deep.
“Do you really think that’s how your story ends?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “It felt real. It still does. Maybe I deserve it.”
I glance toward the pillow wall and swallow.
He reaches out and gently nabs my chin between his thumb and forefinger, turning my face to look him in the eye again.
“Don’t ever let me hear you say that again, Laila.”
“What?”
“That you deserve it. That you’re the villain in this story.”
Relief unfurls in my chest, loosening the tension that’s lived there for months.
His words are sunshine breaking through the darkness.
He keeps his voice steady. “You’re not the villain, honey. You never were. I think you’ve just been trying to finish a story that stopped belonging to you a long time ago. That’s why you stopped feeling like you fit.”
Something inside me cracks open. Maybe it’s everything I saw in those glimpses, maybe it’s years of pretending I was fine. Either way, it spills out.
“I want to believe you, but I pushed you away, Holden. When things got scary and tough, I built a wall. It’s all I know how to do.” I gesture to the pillow wall as if he needs the reminder.
“You didn’t know how to deal with your mom. Laila, no one would know how to survive that cleanly. You asked for space, and I gave it to you because that’s what you needed.”
I’ve lived a life without him, and it never felt whole. We built something together once. I saw it with my own eyes. But I don’t know how to get back there. How to bridge who I am now to the version of me I saw in that glimpse.
More than anything, I need to understand what I’m feeling. I’ve got to untangle the thoughts that have been circling ever since that one, brief interaction with my mother. I can’t let them go.
“You’ve always needed someone,” she’d said, her words sharp as glass. “You don’t know who you are without someone else holding you up. Do you honestly think you’d be where you are without me?”
The truth is, I would. Sweet Treats is doing well, and Annie’s accounts are, too. Everything I know about social media, I built myself.
But Holden is different. He’s a piece of my story I can’t quite place, one I don’t know how to fit yet.
I press my lips together. “How do you know that what we have isn’t codependent?”
He blinks. “A what?”
“A codependent relationship. What if I’m relying on you to feel whole and happy? I always seek you out when I need to feel level again—when I can’t breathe and the world makes no sense.”
He shakes his head slowly. “That’s not what this is.”
“How can you be so sure?”
He traces a thumb down the track of a tear. “Because you’ve never been afraid to stand on your own. You’ve built boundaries, and you’ve kept them—even when it broke both of us. You don’t lean on me to exist, honey. You just… let me stand with you while you find your balance.”
“Then why does it feel all wrong?”
