“He’s still going to want to know, Tanya,” I say, refocusing on her face. “All of the hidden things have been killing him, too.”
“After trials. I just…I just want him to have this,” she says, and I can tell she loves him when she speaks. I don’t even really care if she loves him the same way I do. It’s nice seeing people love him. He needs more of that.
“After the trials,” I agree.
Tanya looks down to my hands, limp and lifeless at my sides, and she pulls the one closest to her in her own. I look at how similar we are—our skin, our size, the small wrinkles—mine from hours in the water, hers from life.
“Please love him, Maddy. Will…please love him,” she says.
I remain quiet, eyes on our rigid yet tenuous hold on one another.
“He deserves someone to love him, Maddy. Give that boy a reason,” she says.
I look up and into her waiting stare, the red gone, replaced by a clear green and white, her mask in place for just a little while longer, and I lift my chin slightly. She shakes my hand in her grasp, her lips pulling into a tight smile as she nods with satisfaction.
“I will say this about Evan Hollister,” I say the moment I see her eyes begin to slant again, sadness trying to take over. She raises a brow in question at me. “He had excellent taste in women,” I say, biting my lip until her mouth curves into a grin, her lips part, and a laugh of madness escapes.
“That he did,” she says. “Impeccable, if I dare say so myself.”
Chapter Eighteen
Will
She never left.
Maddy…she stayed.
I blew her dad’s interview. My temper, it’s been in check for way too long, and I just couldn’t handle being the doormat any longer. Maddy was my line—the trigger.
She insisted on staying with me. I know it’s because if she goes home, to her parents’ place, she has to deal with the aftermath of me walking out. It isn’t fair to her, and before she has to, I’ll make amends with her dad. Or I’ll quit before I sink his chances. Maddy’s peace of mind is what’s important to me.
She’s peaceful when she sleeps. We got back to the club at around seven, and Duncan had made spaghetti. Maddy crashed on the sofa with her bowl half eaten. I took a photo with my phone because I want to remember her forever, just like that. I’m making up for all of those moments I missed, that Evan got and wasted. I bet Maddy fell asleep in their dorm studying sometimes. I bet she got drunk at parties, and wore sexy little costumes on Halloween. And I bet she spent many nights in his bed, or he in hers, curled up with his arm around her. The envy guts me. It always has, but somehow it feels even worse now.
That’s how I win over it, though. I make my own memories—better ones that erase the ones I’ve imagined and grown jealous of, and ones that have been tarnished and ruined for her. I will treat her like the queen she was meant to be.
“Will,” my uncle whispers, twisting the dimmer on the small light in our kitchenette. He’s been sitting at the table for the last hour, tinkering, while I’ve been sitting on the floor across from Maddy, staring at her.
I nod to him and climb to my feet, pausing to click off the TV before moving to the darkened kitchen.
“I can’t wake her,” I whisper.
“It’s fine,” he smiles, glancing past me to where she rests. “You take the bedroom, and I can go sleep in the office across the way.”
“No, no,” I shake my head. “I doubt I’ll sleep anyway, and if I get tired, I’m fine on the floor.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners as he looks at me, and his mouth pinches, suppressing a laugh.
“What?” I whisper.
He keeps quiet, picking up the day’s paper that he has yet to read from the table and folding it under his arm before reaching up to pat my shoulder as he passes.
“Welcome to the world of smitten, my boy,” he teases, the chuckle rumbling from his chest.
“I think I’ve been smitten for quite some time, old man,” I say.
“Ah, yes…indeed you have,” he winks, nodding for me to look over my shoulder. I turn around to find the most beautiful pair of brown eyes staring at me over the back of a tattered sofa.
“You smitten with me, Will Hollister?” Maddy asks, her voice crackling with sleepiness.
The bedroom door shuts behind me, and I glance back to where my uncle just was, and I smirk before turning my head sideways to look at her.
“Yeah, Maddy. I’m pretty smitten,” I say.
She stretches her arms out so I walk toward her, the greatest feeling in the world the one that comes with her arms wrapping around my waist. She rests her cheek against my stomach and holds me quietly for several seconds, and I’d be content to stand here like this for days.
“What time is it?” She twists her head, her chin in my belly while her wide eyes blink open at me. I slide my hands up her cheek then bend down to brush my lips against hers.
“Not quite ten,” I whisper.
She smiles against me. I feel it.