Page 136 of Heartbeat

Why had I let him get so close? Why had I let him see me the way he did?

I couldn’t help it. No, that was a fool’s answer. Of course I could’ve. At least, I should’ve. I knew it was a bad idea to bring him into my lonely, let him enter it and find what it truly was like in here. I knew it, yet I allowed it. Not just because he was impossible to ignore but because he looked at me in a way that seemed so lovely, in all its innocence. He looked at me and saw not the breaks, not the cracks, but beyond them, and he somehow found beauty in it. How?

It didn’t matter. It had to stop. Maybe the way it had happened hadn’t been ideal, but I didn’t think I could have, in all my selfishness, pushed him away without some kind of incentive, some sort of excuse. Because I knew this was an excuse. It had its merits, sure, but it hid something larger, something deeper. The way I’d lost myself in him was dangerous. For him, more so than for me. And he had no idea how dangerous it was. In the past three years, the people in my life had either been disappointed or hurt by my actions. Regardless of whether they’d had any role in it or not, sharing the load, it had still happened. It had happened, and I’d tried to prevent it from getting worse, but I’d failed every single time. But him? I couldn’t fail him. To imagine him looking at me with anything remotely resembling hurt or disappointment was simply not an option.

So, maybe it was better—okay, perhaps not better, but best—this way. It didn’t feel it though. Surprisingly, as much as I’d realized I had been on the verge of shutting down ever since leaving Dr. Foster’s house, I couldn’t do it—not completely. And as the universe is nothing if not perverse, Ethan was the very reason why I hadn’t shut down yet. Sitting on the shower floor, shaking still, despite the warm water prickling down on me, I silently cried, letting tears flow freely until they fused themselves with water.

Trouble was, I was unable to make it stop. All through the night, tears streamed down my face devoid of any effort on my part. It was as though my body had finally had enough and had decided for me that it was time to cry.

*

“Thomas?” Noah said quietly after knocking on the door three times.

“Thomas?” he repeated, this time louder. “Are you awake?”

“No,” I mumbled.

I lay on my side, under the duvet. But I wasn’t on the side of the bed I was used to sleeping on. I was on the left. The pillow still smelled like him, on the left.

Noah stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and made his was over to me cautiously. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, holding his knees up with his arms and keeping them in place by turning the forefinger of either hand into a hook.

“Are you sick?” he asked softly.

“Yes,” I most honestly replied.

“Do you need some medicine?”

“It’s not that kind of sick.”

He kept looking at me, so worried.

“I heard Mom talking to your doctor,” he finally said, still softly. “Ethan’s name came up.”

I didn’t say anything.

“She’s not mad,” he volunteered.

I huffed. “I don’t care if she’s mad, Noah.”

“She’s not.” He still felt he had to reassure me. “She’s just…worried. She said she likes him.”

“Yeah. Everyone likes him.”

“He is pretty cool. Did you fight?”

“No, we didn’t fight.”

“Did you break up?”

“We didn’t—” I couldn’t help but sigh loudly. “I talked about him, Noah. To his Mom. I told her…everything.”

“You mean the sex?”

“No, I don’t mean the sex. That doesn’t matter. I told her about him. About who he was. I—what am I supposed to do, anyway? Hang out at her place? Spend the night? Reminisce?”

“That would be horrible,” he conceded.

“Yeah, no shit.”

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