Leo hadn’t made it five steps out the door before I shoved through it, too.
“Leo!”
He didn’t stop, and I had no idea where he was even going considering he was storming into a parking lot full of cars that didn’t belong to him. We’d all taken Ubers. He didn’t have anywhere to run, to hide.
“Leo, damn it, stop,” I called again, and this time he paused, fingers rolling into fists at his sides before I saw him take a deep breath. His hands relaxed a bit, and he dragged them through his hair before keeping them there on top of his head, back still to me.
The lot was empty, save for a few smokers hanging out outside the bar. They didn’t pay any attention to us as I hung my hands on my hips, waiting for Leo to say something. His back muscles tensed enough for me to see even through his button up, as if he had a right to be the angry one right now after what he just pulled.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked when he didn’t speak.
Slowly, calmly, Leo turned around.
He pinned me with an inescapable gaze.
“That was me trying to talk to you, and then standing up for you when you wouldn’t do it yourself.”
“You’re joking, right?” I threw my hand toward the bar. “That was you making a fool of me in front of everyone I work with.”
“Because I told the truth?”
“Because you interjected yourself into my job, my career. Do you know how hard I’ve worked for respect at that shop? Do you realize what you could have ruined with those little comments you made?”
“I didn’t ruin anything,” he said confidently, pointing behind me to the bar. “That guy is the one ruining shit. And in case you didn’t realize it yet, he isn’t going to let you go. He wants a piece of you and is damn sure he’ll get it.”
“Oh, and you can see all that by meeting him one time?”
“I knew before I met him. I knew when you told me on the roof what happened between you two.”
“But you weren’t there when it happened! I don’t even know if anything did happen.” A frustrated breath puffed out of me. “I… I probably read too much into it, and nothing weird has gone on since, but now—”
“Don’t do that,” he said, shaking his head. He took a tentative step toward me, his eyes softening a bit. “Don’t second guess yourself like that creep wants you to.”
My words stutter-stopped in my chest, and I swallowed, folding my arms over myself. “Look, what happens to me is none of your business.”
“What if I want it to be?”
Silence.
Silence that was so deafening I felt it in the very core of who I was.
It fell over us a like a parachute, drifting down slowly until we were encompassed completely and hidden from the rest of the world. My pulse reverberated through every cell in my body, the air between us a living thing. And when Leo took another tentative step toward me, his Adam’s apple bobbing hard in his throat, I lost the ability to breathe.
“Say something,” he pleaded.
My heart thundered in my ears as I shook my head, and I had to look down, away from him.
For a moment, Leo stood still, waiting.
Then, he growled in frustration, whipping around until he was storming away from me again.
“Leo,” I said, his name cracking my voice.
I gasped in surprise when he turned on me again, pulling at his hair before his hands thrust toward me, his eyes wild. “I can’t fucking do this, Mary!” His breaths shook through the words. “I want you. I know you know it, too.”
My heart shuddered to a stop.
It was one thing to assume it, but to hear him say it…
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie,” he said, his voice calmer now, softer. He took another step toward me. “You know it. You can feel it. You want me, too, but for some reason you keep playing this fucking game.”
I was shocked silent, but inside, I felt the volcano whistling and searing and roaring to life. Each word he said spawned it on more, the taste of ash on my tongue as it simmered and stirred.
“Damn it, woman,” he said, shaking his head.
My chest was on fire. My breaths were hot steam.
“I’m mad about you!” Leo gripped his hair again before his hands stretched out toward me. “Can’t you see that?”
“You were once before and you don’t even remember!”
There it was.
The eruption.
My eyes brimmed with tears, nose stinging as I lifted my gaze to meet his. My breaths were so haggard now that I pressed a hand against my aching ribcage as if I could soothe it, as if I could tame the molten lava burning me from the inside.
There was no going back now.
Leo just tilted his head to the side, frowning, confusion washing over him. “What?”
I shook my head, turning it to the side to focus on a random car instead of the stupid boy standing in front of me. The motion set two fat tears cascading down my cheeks, and I swiped them away, folding my arms over my chest.
“Two weeks ago, in my room…” Leo breathed the words slowly. “You… you said you wish I remembered…”
I closed my eyes again, tears burning behind my lids where I refused to set them free.
It felt like an eternity passed, but when I chanced looking at Leo again, he was ashen.
Every line in his face had softened, his eyes wide, jaw slack. He stared at me, but it was like he wasn’t seeing me at all.
It was as if he was in another place, another time altogether.
“You…” he croaked, and then shook his head, deftly blinking before his eyes found mine. “Stig?”
The nickname was just above a whisper when it left him, but it felt like a knife to my chest.
I swallowed.
I nodded.
And then I let out a gasp of a sob as he charged me and swept me into his arms.
Leo
An entire city crumbled inside of me, burying my aching chest and stammering heart in the rubble as I reached for Mary and pulled her into me.
My next breath burned even more than the last as I crushed her to my chest, but I held her only a moment before I was pulling back to look at her. I swept one hand through her silky hair, cupping the back of her head as my eyes searched every curve and line of her face. I took in her freckles, her glossy wintergreen eyes, her trembling lips.
My other hand ran along the line of her neck, her skin hot to the touch as I traced her collarbone and then up to her jaw. My heart was in my throat as I smoothed my thumb over the apple of her cheeks, memorizing the bridge of her nose as I traced it, committing her plump lips to memory when my thumb found them next. Her breath was as shallow as mine, the warmth of it ghosting over my fingertips as I took her in.
I choked on the first clean breath I’d taken since I lost her.
Wrapping her tightly in my arms again, my hands went from her hair to her back, over her arms, up to frame her neck and hold her even closer so I could feel that she was real, that she was here.
It was a dream and a nightmare all at once.
“How?” I whispered, not sure if the question was to her or myself or the universe. I pulled her back, framing her arms with my hands and letting my eyes wash over her before I crushed her to me again. “How?”
I never wanted to let her go.
I never would let her go.
I’d already decided, my arms tightening around her, chest swelling with that possession that had built before I even knew who she was.
How did I not know who she was?
My mind raced with memories of that summer, of how she left me with no explanation, of the pain I thought I’d never escape. How could she be here?
And if she knew it was me… why didn’t she say anything before?
I frowned as I thought through the last year and a half, from the comments she slung at me when she lived with Julep to every waking moment she’d lived at The Pit. My brain hurt as I tried to piece it all together.
I wish you remembered…
Her words echoed in my soul, but I couldn’t make sense of any of it.
I didn’t realize Mary was crying until she sniffed, pressing her hands into my chest and putting space between us. She folded her arms over her middle again, like she wanted to shield her most vulnerable places from me.
“I… I don’t understand,” I finally managed, aching to pull her into me again, but I refrained. “Mary, you knew it was me all along?”
“Of course, I did.”
Shock slammed into me, my jaw hinging open. “I… why didn’t you say something? Why…” I swallowed, and then the questions I had buried for so long tumbled out unbidden. “What happened? Where did you go? Why did you ghost me?”
It was her turn to look confused. “Ghost you?”
“Right after school started,” I reminded her. “I logged on and saw your username but then you just… disappeared. I called you, but you didn’t answer. My texts wouldn’t go through. I…”
Mary blinked at me, anger simmering in her green eyes. “Are you playing some sort of fucking game right now?”
The way she looked at me, like I was some sort of villain…
It killed me and confused the ever-living hell out of me, too.
“What? No,” I started, but she cut me off.
“You rejected me,” she spat, and I didn’t miss how tears welled in her eyes again, but she didn’t let them fall. “I told you who I was. I gave you the drawings you asked me to make for you. I… I put everything on the line, and you took one look at me and decided I wasn’t enough.”
I was so desperate to hold her I couldn’t fight it anymore.
“Mary, I would never—”
But she yanked away from me before I could touch her.
“You did,” she seethed, but her anger was snuffed out by pain. “You did, Leo. Do you seriously not remember?”
I shook my head, so confused I couldn’t do anything but blink at her.
“Pimple-faced porn freak?” She lifted her brows, waiting.
I frowned, tracking through my memories, because something she said did trigger a distant something. I closed my eyes, reaching for it. Whatever it was was so foggy, so minuscule in my filing cabinet of memories that it was like searching for a crumpled-up receipt lodged somewhere between thousands of pieces of paper.
My head ached from how hard I tried to reach for it.
And then, I remembered.
It was hazy, a day I hadn’t thought twice about even when I was younger. But I vaguely remembered a girl giving me a notebook at school after practice. I had no idea who she was. I couldn’t recall a thing about what she looked like — the color of her hair, what she was wearing — nothing. And I definitely didn’t know her name — not even then.
All I remembered was feeling uncomfortable, just wanting to walk away before any of the douchebag guys on my team could make it any worse for either of us.
The reality of what it really was hit me so hard I stumbled backward.
“Oh, God,” I managed, shaking my head. I lifted my gaze to Mary’s. “That was… you?”
“Fuck you, Leo,” she said, spinning on her heel. She stormed away from me, but I chased after her, rounding her and blocking her from going anywhere else.
“Mary, I swear on my mother’s life, I didn’t know.”
“You’re telling me you saw what I drew you and it didn’t click? Me and you, an Xbox controller, the stars?”
I didn’t. I didn’t remember a single thing about what was in that notebook.
“I… I don’t know what to say. I was an idiot, a fucking kid, okay? I thought you were some random girl with a crush on me and I was afraid my friends would make your life a living hell so I just blew you off. I mean, I didn’t know it was you but—”
“They did,” she said, her bottom lip trembling. “They did make my life a living hell. And you did nothing about it.”
“I didn’t know.” The words were a cry, a plea.
“So, you didn’t see the fucking flyers they printed out of my face and my drawing? Didn’t catch the nickname they gave me that I never escaped?”
This time, I really couldn’t place what she was talking about. “What? When?”
“Right after it happened!”
I frowned, shaking my head, and then I grabbed her arms and held her so she’d look at me, so she’d see the sincerity in my eyes when I told her the truth.
“Mary, I didn’t notice anything that entire fucking year. Okay? I was sick over losing you. I was… I don’t even know, paralyzed by the loss of you. I barely passed my classes that semester. I had the worst season of football of my entire life. I spent every waking minute that I wasn’t at school or at practice trying to find you.”
She tried to scoff and brush me off, but I held tight, carefully bringing my knuckles to her chin and tilting it up to look at me again.
“I never would have hurt you on purpose,” I swore, and I prayed she felt it, that she believed me. “But I’m sorry I did. I’m sorry, Mary. I’m so, so fucking sorry.”
Her face warped, like my words had speared her, and I knew without much rumination that she had to have been waiting years for me to say them. While I was missing her, wishing for her, she was trying to recover from the ugliest side of me. It killed me to even consider, to know those guys I’d called friends had made her suffer.
That I had made her suffer.
I’d hurt the one girl I’d ever cared for, all without even knowing it.
My stomach rolled at the thought, and I had to hold her. I had to hold her and pray that she felt who I really was, that she’d believe I never would have done this to her had I known.
I pulled her into my chest, squeezing my eyes shut as the overpowering feeling of having found her settled over me. She was stiff in my arms at first, but then she melted, her hands fisting in my shirt. I squeezed her tighter, wanting so badly to kiss the crown of her head, but refraining only because I knew I had a long way to go to earn back her trust.
If I ever even had it in the first place.
“You really didn’t know?” she asked, her voice muffled by my shirt.
“I swear, Mary. I had no idea. If I had, I would have pulled you into my arms and claimed you for everyone to see.”
She sniffed, burying her head in my chest. “No, you wouldn’t have.”
I pulled back on a frown, sliding the pad of my thumb along where a tear had streaked her cheek. “Are you crazy? You meant everything to me.”
“I saw it on your face when we met, though. I wasn’t good enough for you.”
I tilted her chin again, finding her gaze with my own. “You were too good for me. I was an idiot for not seeing that it was you.” The truth of that hit me like a tidal wave, the fact that I’d put us both through years of misery all because I didn’t realize…
I shook my head, determined not to dwell on the past, on mistakes I couldn’t take back.
She was here now, and I had the chance to fight for her.
I’d die before I’d let her slip through my fingers again.
“Come home with me,” I said, searching her glossy eyes. “I know I have a lot to prove to you, a lot of pain to heal, a lot to explain.” I swallowed. “Let me start tonight.”
Mary rolled her lips together, eyes flicking between mine.
Mercifully, she nodded.
And when I took her hand in mine, the piece of me I’d been missing for years quietly snapped into place.
