Kale didn’t speak; he just continued to stare at me.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you . . . just not in the way you love me.” I looked him in the eye. “I
’m in love with you. I have been forever.”
Kale opened his mouth to speak, but when nothing came out, he closed his lips.
I held my hand up. “You don’t need to say anything – you don’t even need to feel any type of way about this,” I assured him. “This isn’t your issue; it’s mine.”
Kale blinked his eyes a couple of times.
“You love me?” he whispered, his eyes wide and distant.
I swallowed. “Yes, I love you.”
Kale blinked his eyes back into focus and trained his gaze on me. “But . . . but you told me it wasn’t like that between us – you told me it wasn’t. I asked you, and you told me no. You told me no.”
My heart shattered once again.
“I was terrified what I felt was wrong. I tortured myself for years because I thought I was dirty for loving a person who everyone considered my brother.” I cast my eyes downward to try and gain control of my tears; if I didn’t look at him maybe I wouldn’t hurt as bad.
“We have been around each other since the day I was born. You were the first man that wasn’t my father to hold me. I know you were little too, and at that time it was friendship that sparked, but it changed for me, Kale. I’ve loved you since that night when I was ten years old and you slept outside my wardrobe all night with a baseball bat to keep the monsters away. I just didn’t realise you keeping them away would awaken new ones within me.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he was in shock. He couldn’t begin to think about the weight of my words until he had time to process what I was telling him. He needed space, and I was going to give it to him.
“You told me no,” he whispered.
I sobbed when his eyes filled with water.
“You told me no. I wanted you, and you told me no. I hurt when you refused me your heart, God knows.” He wiped his tears as they fell onto his cheeks. “I hurt so bad, Lane, but I learned to live with it. I learned that there was never going to be a Kale and Lane together in the way I wanted. I learned to love you without needing you. I learned to move on from you.”
I didn’t think I could hurt more than I already did, but hearing the words “move on” come from Kale broke me into a million pieces. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
“I’m with Drew, and I love her. She is an amazing woman, and she’s stood by me for as long as I can remember.” I looked up as he spoke, even though it was killing me. “I’m going to have a baby with her, I’m going to marry her one day. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at her and feel the way you made me feel.”
“Made”, not “make”. Past tense.
“Kale, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and gripped onto the arm of the sofa next to me to keep from falling to my knees.
“I’m sorry too,” he replied. “You have no idea how much.”
He took a step backwards, then another, until he was out in the hallway.
“Take care of yourself, okay?” He swallowed. “I’ll always be here if you need me.”
He turned then and walked out of my life, destroying what was left of my heart in the process. Before the hall door clicked shut, I heard him say three words that would haunt my dreams every night for the next six years.
“Goodbye, Laney Baby.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Day four in York
Hey, Lav,” I said, smiling down at the picture of my old friend on the front of her beautiful grey marble headstone.
I reached out and brushed my thumb over the image, then sat down on the cold grass of her grave and criss-crossed my legs. I placed the bouquet of lilies I brought her in front of the cute little ornaments on her grave and sat, simply staring at her picture.
“I’m sorry this is only my second time to come and visit you,” I began, then frowned, guilt gripping me. “After your funeral things kind of went to hell.”
I could practically hear her voice in my head say, “No shit, Sherlock,” and it made me smile.
“Things with Kale went really bad, Lav, and then they went even worse with my family when I packed up and high-tailed it out of here.” I swallowed and looked down at my hands. “I ran away and stayed away for six long years.”
I sighed and shook my head.
“I was so heartbroken when I found out you died, and then I found out that very day that Drew was pregnant with Kale’s baby. It was all too much, and I figured if I was thousands of miles away, it would somehow help, but it didn’t. My mind is my own worst enemy. Even though I couldn’t see Kale, I would envision him and Drew together with their baby all the time, and it killed me.” I frowned deeply. “When I wasn’t thinking about them, I was thinking about you and what would have happened if you hadn’t died. I don’t think you would have let me leave . . . I don’t think leaving would have even been an option if you had still been here. Losing you pushed me over the edge, Lav.”
I licked my dry lips and looked back up to Lavender’s headstone.
“Everything ended up being a nightmare, though. Things panned out worse than I ever could have imagined. Kale’s poor baby boy died, and now he is alone. I can sense the change in him. I see it in his eyes. He’s like me, just existing, and I hate that. I don’t want him to feel like that because I know how empty and cold it is.”
I picked a few blades of grass from the ground and broke them up with my fingers.
“I think about you all the time too, Lav,” I said, just in case she thought I didn’t. “You’d know what to do if you were here; you always had the best advice.”
I glanced around me then, checking whether anyone was close to me. I was glad when I saw there was no one around; it made me feel better knowing my conversation with Lavender was private. Talking to her made me feel better. Even if she didn’t reply back to me, I knew she was listening.
I could feel her.
“Are you with my uncle?” I asked in a whisper. “If you are, can you tell him that I really miss him?” I smiled as a cool breeze swirled around me. “I think I’m still in a state of shock, because I have moments where I completely forget that he is gone, then I realise he is, and my heart breaks all over again.”
I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. “I thought burying you was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but my Uncle Harry’s death hurts on a whole other level. He was all I had from home after I left, and now he is gone.”
I rubbed my eyes.
“I made things right with my family again. Being away from them, from here, was solving nothing. It was only causing more unnecessary heartache. And after all that shit that went down with Jensen when I was a kid, I really shouldn’t have upped and left the country in the first place. Layton told me how much they would worry for me, but I didn’t listen. I’m home now, though, and I’ve made things better.”
I sighed and pushed loose strands of hair out of my face.
“I’ve yet to have my proper talk with Kale, and I’m honestly quite scared about it. I have absolutely no idea what will happen after we do talk, and the not knowing is terrifying, but no matter what happens, we need to clear the air. He needs to know how I still feel about him, and he needs to know why I couldn’t be here anymore.”
I was silent for a long time after I finished speaking. I just sat there as still as a statue while the magnitude of loss swept over me. It was a part of life, but it sucked. I was grateful to finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I needed my family now – I saw that clearly. Their love and concern wasn’t overbearing anymore. It was comforting.
I wasn’t staying to please anyone else, I was doing it for myself, and I couldn’t help but smile because of my uncle’s sneaky hand in it. I’d do right by him. I’d talk to Kale because I needed to speak to him for me, not for an inheritance. At the thought of Kale, I looked in the direction of Kaden’s grave, and I froze when I saw who was standing before it.
Drew.
I watched her for a moment, and before I knew it, I was on my feet and walking towards her.
I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I needed to say something. Anything.
I approached her with the gravel crunching under my feet. I stood a few feet from her and exhaled a deep breath. “Hey, Drew,” I said softly.
I startled her, because she jumped and looked at me with surprised eyes. “Lane?” she breathed, and placed a hand on her chest. “You scared me.”
“I’m sorry.” I frowned. “I thought you heard me walking up.”
She shook her head. “I was in a world of my own.”
I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. “I was visiting Lavender and saw you down here. I wanted to come and say hello.”
She flicked her eyes over my shoulder before sliding her eyes back to mine. “I never got a chance to say it, but I’m sorry about your friend. Kale told me how devastated you were when she died. He said he lost you that day in the hospital.”
I stared at her, surprised she’d revealed that to me.
“He said that?” I questioned.
Drew nodded. “He used to have nightmares about it. He’d sit up in the middle of the night apologising to you and trying to console you, but then he’d wake up and realise you weren’t there.”
My stomach churned because I knew that he had been trying to make amends and comfort me because that was when he had told me he and Drew were going to have a baby together.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Drew blinked. “What for?”
“For being on his mind when he was with you.”
Drew smiled then, and I couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was. She was older now, but she was also still the nine-year-old girl I’d first met in the school playground all those years ago.
“Lane, you were always on Kale’s mind. He’d talk about you without realising what he was doing. We’d be watching a film or having a random conversation, and you’d pop into his head, and everything would become about you.”
Shame filled me.
“I’m so sorry.”