Page 50 of The Heart That Breaks
She pushes it back down. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Ann-Elizabeth. Yes. It is.” Fury boils in the pit of my stomach. And I swear, if Lance was anywhere within my reach, I don’t know that I could stop myself from killing him.
“Nathan, there’s something I need to tell you.”
“What?” I ask, my skin prickling at the note of resignation in her voice.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“What’s not going to work?”
“Us,” she says, her gaze meeting and holding mine, and I can see an awful sadness in her eyes that tells me she is utterly convicted of the truth in what she’s just said to me.
“Why?” I ask, the word rolling out on a note of confusion.
She lifts her shoulders in a tired shrug. “Isn’t it obvious, Nathan? We’re from two different worlds. We could never work.”
I sit on the side of the bed, reach for her hand and press it between mine. “That’s not how I see it,” I say.
She stares at our intertwined hands. A tear slips free from her lashes and slides down her cheek.
“Hey,” I say, tipping her chin up so that she has to look at me. “We’re just getting started.”
“Oh, Nathan,” she says, shaking her head and wiping her face with the back of her hand. “I’m at the bottom of the ladder, and I have every intention of working my way up it, but you’re already there. The only thing you’ll gain by reaching back down for me is to risk falling off yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is. I don’t have anything to offer you but problems. And I need to figure out how to fight my own battles.”
“It looks like you did a pretty good job tonight.”
She looks up at me then, appreciation for what I’ve said clear on her face. “And that’s how it’s going to have to be. Because there will be more.”
“You don’t have to do it alone.”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Ann-Elizabeth…”
“You need to go, Nathan. We’ll be friends. We’ll see each other in school. But that’s all it can be.”
The curtain opens then, and Ann-Elizabeth’s mom steps in. “Henry’s just fine,” she says, and then spotting me, adds in a surprised voice, “Well, I didn’t know you had a visitor, honey.”
“Mama, this is Nathan. Nathan, this is my mom.”
“We chatted one day when you came in the store,” Ms. Casteel says.
“Yes, ma’am. How are you?” Imanage to get the words out, even though I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach.
She glances from Ann-Elizabeth to me, clearly trying to figure out the reason I’m here.
“Nathan was just leaving, Mama,” Ann-Elizabeth says.
“Oh,” she says, looking disappointed. “It was nice of you to come by, Nathan.”
I look at Ann-Elizabeth. “I can stay if…”
“No,” she says. “But thank you. For everything.”
