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I don’t think happiness is the point. I think this is. Love is the point.
It’s not a requirement to be happy. And sometimes I am. When I’m painting. When Paloma says “Hi” in that excited tone of hers when she sees me come in. When Holden teases me with that smirk that lets me know it’s to make me smile. When Toren looks at me like he did earlier, like he can’t believe I’m real, here, in his arms.
“Are you going to leave me?”
That’s not what I meant to say, but I can’t take the vulnerable words back now.
“Lil . . .” He turns his head. He’s fully sitting on the side of my bed now, but he takes my body, pliant in his grasp, and maneuvers me to straddle his hips again, holding me close to his heaving chest.
“I’m not leaving you, okay. I’m just—” He clears his throat and shakes his head. My fingers press into the soft wave of his hair at the base of his neck. For a moment, I miss the length, the way I could thread my fingers through it over his shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I don’t really know why. My eyes are still locked on his shoulders, tracing paintings and lily flowers.
“You didn’t . . . Lily, I need you to listen to me, okay?” He takes in a heavy breath and pulls my chin so my eyes are meeting his. It used to bother my dad that I avoided his eyes as much as I could. Eyes up here, Lillian, he’d snap, especially if I was getting a dressing-down.
Toren’s eyes were so strange, the color so unique I always wanted to stare at them.
“That night, after I left your hospital room when you fell asleep, I went home. And they threw me out,” he says, almost haphazardly skipping over this information. It’s important, but he says it like I already know. Or like he doesn’t care about this part of the story. My chest hurts.
“Your dad showed up, drove me with all my things to your house. I . . . I thought—” A breathy, unhumorous laugh pulls from him as he shakes his head and closes his eyes. “I thought he was going to let me stay. I don’t know. It’s stupid.
“And instead, there’s all this paperwork sitting there. A restraining order.” I nod. I know this. I remember asking my dad to explain it to me over and over again, until he snapped, yelled at me, and slammed my bedroom door so hard it cracked the molding.
“A restraining order you’d asked for, Lily. Against me—banning me from contacting or speaking to you again.”
Wrong. This is wrong.
“He told me you were scared of me. That when the police asked what happened, you couldn’t remember who it was that hit you. And that you thought it was me.” He chokes on the word and my stomach sours.
“I didn’t say— I know what happened,” I snap, my voice loud, angry. “I’m not stupid. I know who hit me.”
Toren tucks me close and a breath releases from deep in his chest. We’re talking about the most painful day of my life, of his, too, maybe, but his body feels more relaxed than I think I’ve ever felt.
“I thought you were scared of me,” he whispers, a brokenness in his voice that makes me grasp hold of him tight. “For almost f-four whole years, Lil, I’ve thought—”
I pull back from him.
Scared of him? Scared of Toren Kane?
How can I explain it? That there isn’t anything about him I’ve ever been frightened of. Nothing. He has, at so many times, been the only person who I wasn’t scared of, the only one who protected and defended me without fail. He tattooed himself with my name and my interests; his body is a shrine to me.
Why doesn’t he understand?
Pushing off his body, I stand between his legs and bite down on my lip, before suddenly turning to search for a shirt, reaching for the black button-up he’d been wearing earlier that smells so strongly of his skin, it feels like he’s around me. I pull it on, swimming in it, buttoning a few of the buttons, though I think I’m off on most of them.
I just can’t find it in me to care.
“I need to show you something,” I say, pulling on his hand.
Chapter 50
Toren
We’re in front of a door.
I did know this room existed, but I guess I’d always assumed it was an empty extra room or a storage closet. There’s a sign on the wood paneling that reads Do Not Enter in script that looks suspiciously like Lily’s handwriting.
Lily shuffles her feet, lip between her teeth as the too-big neck of my button-up starts to slip off one of her delicate shoulders. Her mouth opens. Then shuts. Then opens again, but she doesn’t speak. And I watch quietly.
