Page 66 of Forget Me Not

“He’s upstairs,” he says. I nod at him and walk through the shop. I walk up the stairs and stop in front of Kade’s door. I pause, taking a deep breath before knocking on the door.

I hear movement in the loft until, finally, the door swings open and Kade stands in the doorway. He looks like he hasn’t slept in days, and he’s run his hands through the top of his hair a few too many times. He looks like a mess, and yet, he still looks so fucking perfect to me. I stare into his blinding blue eyes that captivated me from the first look, and for a second, I let myself drown in them.

Lennox never found her acceptance. I thought I had, but I was wrong. I hadn’t, until this moment. The past, the pain, the memories, the guilt, the happiness, the joy, the unknown. I accept it all. And finally, I let myself move on.

“Hi,” I say.

CHAPTER

THIRTY-EIGHT

Kaden

This doesn’t feel real. This is the moment I’ve been waiting for, to see my beautiful girl standing in front of me. It’s finally here, and I feel frozen. Paralyzed by what her presence does to me. She looks nervous, but she’s also smiling.

“Hi,” I finally say back to her, my voice raspy from little use. We stand there for a minute before I finally pull myself together. “Fuck. Come inside.” I open the door wider for her and usher her in.

She walks inside slowly. She’s bundled up in sweatpants, a hoodie, and slippers that she slips off her feet. Her hair is a wild mess of waves around her head, and she doesn’t look like she has any makeup on. I stare at her as she walks farther into the apartment toward the couch, and I’m reminded of her absolute beauty. As if I could ever forget.

I follow her to the couch and sit down next to her, angling my body to face hers. It’s killing me not to be touching her, but I’m trying to let this be on her terms. There’s palpable tension between the two of us. Emotional and physical.

“I had this whole plan coming over here.” She laughs awkwardly. “I knew exactly what I wanted to say, what I wantedto ask. But now you’re in front of me, and all I can think about is how much I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you so much more, baby girl. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry for not telling you the truth, I’m sorry for the way you found out, and I’m sorry for what happened after. I’m sorry for hurting you, Lo. I would take every ounce of your pain if I could.”

“I know you would. It’s why I’m here.” She smiles softly. “You and Lennox. What did the two of you talk about?” She doesn’t seem angry, just curious as she asks.

“It depended on the day. Some days, she’d message me wanting to hear about any clients I had or how the weather was. Other days, she’d talk about how she was struggling. She never went into much detail on those days though.” I hesitate. “And then sometimes she’d talk about you. I didn’t know it was you at the time, but I do now.”

“What would she say? About me?” She crosses her legs underneath her and leans against the back of the couch.

“She would say that you’re good.” I smile, recalling her words. “You were good in every way. You were good at school, good at life, good with people, a good person. You were just good. She was right. She always seemed amazed by you.”

“I was amazed by her. Before everything happened, Lennox lit up every room she entered. She never tried to be the center of attention; she just was. She had this rare ability to make you laugh at any given instant. You could be crying one second, and the next, she’d have you smiling, having forgotten what you were even sad about.”

A tear falls from her eye, and I instinctively reach across to wipe it from her cheek. She looks up at me through her lashes as I do. She leans her cheek into my hand, closing her eyes, and I savor the feeling of my skin against hers before she pulls away.

“Do you remember Lennox’s journal I told you about?” she asks.

“Yes, of course.”

“I read the last journal entry in it today. Right before I came here actually. It was the first time I read it. It wasn’t so much an entry as it was a letter addressed to me. She wrote it the day she took her own life. The same day she messaged you.”

“Fuck, Lo. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I think I actually am.” She smiles. “She mentioned you in the letter. She used her last words on the two of us, for the two of us. She said you were my soul mate.” She bites her lip anxiously. “I think she was right.”

“I know she was, baby girl.” I gently pull her onto me, needing to be touching her now. She sits sideways on my lap, and her head rests against my chest.

“I still miss her, and it feels okay to miss her. I always thought that if I let myself move on, if I let myself be happy, I would be betraying her. Now it feels like the opposite. It feels like if I don’t live my life, I’m disappointing her. I finally feel like I can move forward without erasing her memory.”

“Nothing you do could ever erase her, Lo. You’ll see her every day in the things that remind you of her.”

“Like in the flowers. Forget-me-nots.” She smiles at me. “Promise me something?”

“Anything.”

“One day we’ll have a house with a big backyard surrounded by a white picket fence that’s so cheesy we can’t help but laugh at it every day. It’ll have lots of rooms for all the kids we may or may not have. It’ll feel like a home. And you’ll plant me a field of forget-me-nots that I can lie in and watch the sunset.”

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