But I do.
I want you with every cell in my body. Every nerve ending. Every bone. Every ounce of who I am.
“Have a safe flight, Lucas,” she whispered.
Then, she turned around, and even when Taco whimpered and nudged my leg maniacally, I still didn’t move. I remained rooted in place, gasping for air, and watching her walk away with my jacket hanging off her shoulders.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rosie
I stared at the wall of my dad’s guest bedroom.
With a sigh, I braced myself for a new wave of tears, but it didn’t come.
I must have emptied my tank by now—which, all things considered, was only natural when one cried for hours. To my credit, I’d held it all in on my way out of the airport. I hadn’t shed one tear on my way back to the city or in the train to Philly, either. Not even when I realized that I still had Lucas’s bomber jacket wrapped around me, his scent surrounding me.
Only when I climbed the steps to Dad’s door did my eyes start burning, readying me for what was to come. And just as Dad opened it I finally broke down.
He pulled me to him like the hundreds of times he’d done when I was a kid and I just wept. I let it all out.
I still had no idea why I’d gone to him, all the way to Philadelphia; I’d never done this as an adult before. Not once. Every time I’d been dumped, or my relationship had gone sideways I’d always called Lina, downed a pint of ice cream, felt bad for myself for a couple of days, and moved on.
But this didn’t feel like any of those times. It felt like someone had pulled me apart. Disassembled me and left all the parts scattered around. Too dispersed for me to attempt to piece anything back together.
And after staring at this wall for the longest time, I had realized that none of what I’d experienced up to this day had been heartbreak.
This was heartbreak.
So I guessed that was why I’d come here. To the place that would provide the type of comfort I hadn’t needed in years. My dad’s.
By the time I’d run out of tears, I’d opened a different kind of gate. The one that had been keeping in all the things I hadn’t told Dad and Olly. So I told them about writing that first book, about the way I’d felt when that door had somehow opened for me and I’d felt happy, blessed, complete in a way I hadn’t before. I told them about quitting my job and hiding it from them, about lying, because I’d been terrified, paralyzed by the pressure I’d put on myself. The stakes. The possibility of them not understanding how important this dream was for me. And they had listened. Just like a small part of me, the one that hadn’t been ridden with fear and insecurities, knew they would.
“Bean,” Dad said when I’d finished. “Why would you ever think you had to keep this from me?”
I hiccupped and told him, “I was terrified you’d be disappointed in me. Scared for me, when I was plenty scared for the both of us. I… didn’t want to hear that the one leap of faith I’d ever taken was a mistake. I didn’t think you’d understand. I thought that perhaps you’d judge me. I don’t know.”
“Of course, I’m scared,” Dad had answered. “I’m terrified for you. I will always be, Bean. But that’s part of loving someone. You want them to thrive, to succeed, to accomplish any dream they reach for, but you also want to protect them. To soften any blow that might come. But I’d never be disappointed in you.” He had paused and then added, “And I’ll always make an effort to understand, Bean.”
I hugged him tightly. “Even if you’ve never read a romance book?”
“There’s a first time for everything. And who cares what an old man like me thinks? Who cares what anyone thinks?” He’d sighed. “You shouldn’t have kept this from me.”
And I really, really shouldn’t have.
I shouldn’t have kept from Lucas how I really felt about him, either. That I loved him. Even if that wouldn’t have changed a single thing.
Life was too short, too brittle, to keep secrets and live in half-truths. Even when we thought that we were protecting those we loved. Or protecting ourselves. Our hearts. Because the reality was that without honesty, without truth, we never lived fully.
And I was starting to understand just how much.
“And now about this boy…” Dad had said after that, reminding me of a time when everything was far simpler, because I’d just been Bean and Dad had been able to fix everything with a plate of waffles for dinner.
But I wasn’t a kid anymore, and Lucas wasn’t a boy whose name I’d scribbled in my diary.