Authors: Juliana Stone
“You’re wrong to hate Nathan for what happened to your
son,” I gasped. “So, so wrong. It’s not fair.”
He made a sound— something almost inhuman— and took
another step toward me. His eyes glistened with a hardness that
made me flinch.
“Who the hell are you to preach to me about what’s wrong
or what’s not fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair. It’s not fair that my son is lying in a hospital bed where he’s been for over three
months. It’s not fair that now he’s battling an infection that could kill him.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “They think he’s leaving us
tonight, did you know that? The doctor told us this morning
that they don’t expect him to make it. Christ, Trevor isn’t even
seventeen. What in hell is fair about that?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing about this is fair, don’t
you see? What if Trevor had been driving that night and it was
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Nathan in a coma? Would you think that your son deserved all
this hatred? All this blame?”
“Trevor wasn’t driving the damn car!” he roared.
“But he could have been.” How could I make him see? “
He
could
have
been!
We’re kids. We make mistakes. We screw up and sometimes we screw up so badly that people get hurt. Haven’t
you ever done something so wrong or so bad that you wished
you could take it back?”
I
have.
My voice broke, and he looked away as I struggled to keep it
together. “Look, we don’t know each other and I’ve never met
Trevor. But from what Nate told me, I think that, no,” I shook
my head, “no, I
know
that Trevor would hate what you’re doing to his best friend. I know that Trevor would be big enough to
forgive Nathan.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes, and my heart turned over at the
raw pain I saw there. “Forgive. That’s a joke,” he said hoarsely.
“It’s so damn hard.”
I nodded. “I know. It’s hard not to blame someone. It’s hard
to just accept when something awful happens because it hurts
so much, but I…” I paused and choked back my own tears. “I
don’t think Trevor would want his best friend to be broken for
the rest of his life. I think that Trevor would want his family to be compassionate. I think he would want them to forgive.”
Trevor’s father didn’t say anything else. He looked away,
stared at the ground for a few seconds, and then turned around.
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He disappeared into the shadows, leaving only the sound of
his footfalls to echo into the silence. To echo into my head.
And it seemed as if I stood there for forever, until the sound
went away and I was able to move.
I turned in the opposite direction and let the shadows fall
over me, but their darkness offered no relief. They only offered a window to disappear into— a moment in time— and I wondered
if Nathan had found his own window. His own shadow.
And I wondered if it felt as empty as mine.
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It was close to midnight when I finally parked the Matlock in
Gram’s driveway. A light rain had started a few hours ago, and
the temperature had gotten warmer instead of cooler. Thunder
and lightning cut across the sky, but the rain remained steady,
falling in soft waves against the windshield.
“Where are you, Nathan?” I asked the darkness, but of course
there was no answer.
It felt like I had driven up and down every freaking street in
Twin Oaks and then I’d headed to the drive- in, but there was no
bush party tonight. I’d even swung by Baker’s Landing, hoping
that maybe he was there, but again it was quiet, with only the
swans in the pond to greet me.
I was trying to be strong. Trying not to be mad at Nathan,
but it was hard when I was basically going insane. I don’t even
know why I bothered coming back to Gram’s— it’s not like I was
going to be able to sleep or anything— but I’d called her and
told her I’d be home by midnight, and really, where else could I
go? I didn’t know where else to look.
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I slipped out of the car and trudged toward the porch but
paused, one foot on the bottom step, head to the sky as the rain
slid over my cheeks. Somewhere in the darkness, I heard an owl.
The sound was so lonely and sad. So freaking appropriate.
What was I doing? There was no way I could sleep.
I took a step back and then walked around the house. In the
distance, the shadows were thicker, and my eyes moved over the
large crypt where the family bones were buried.
Fireflies danced around the edge of the cemetery, appearing
between the raindrops, only to disappear in a flash. And there
just beyond the maze…
the
maze
.
Oh my God, the maze!
I ran like a crazy person, nearly falling when my feet slipped
in the wet grass, but didn’t stop until I zigzagged through the
familiar path and stopped in the center. Our center.
It was darker in here, the shadows falling from the six- foot-
high hedge even thicker than outside, and with the rain sliding
across my skin and into my eyes, at first I thought it was empty.
But then a shadow moved, there in the corner, and I held
my breath, afraid that if I exhaled, my world would shatter and
the vision would disappear. And I needed it not to disappear. I
needed it to be real.
Nathan.
Gram told me once that there are moments that stay with us
for the rest of our lives. Some of them are beautiful. Some are
painful. And some don’t seem to matter at all until much later.
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But some, like this one, this moment about to happen, had
the potential to be life- altering.
Nate scrubbed at his eyes, and that long hair of his was a
mess of crazy waves that curled around his face and was plas-
tered to his neck. His T- shirt clung to him, wet and trans-
parent, his jeans equally soaked. Rain slid off him the same
way it rolled off my skin, and as he stepped closer, I could see
the pain in his eyes.
He hunched his shoulders forward and looked down at the
ground. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough. “I’ve been here
for hours, but I didn’t know what to do. What to say. So I just
ignored everyone.” He shuddered. “Even you.”
Right now, here in this place that was ours, I didn’t care about
any of it. I only cared about him. About stopping his pain and
helping him the way he’d helped me. Something fierce burned
in my chest, something hot and wonderful and scary.
Something that maybe should wait, but I knew I wasn’t
strong enough to push it back. But was I strong enough to deal
with the fallout?
“I love you,” I whispered.
His head whipped up and he dragged his hand across his
forehead, slicking his hair back out of his eyes.
“What?”
I took the steps that brought us so close I felt the heat radi-
ating off him, and I placed my hands on his chest. I felt his heart beating. Heard the ragged breaths falling from his chest.
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And I looked up into eyes that I could lose myself in.
“I know it probably sounds crazy to you. I mean, we just met
not that long ago, but I love you, Nathan.”
My hands slipped around his waist and I rested my head in
the crook of his neck.
I
love
you.
He shook against me, his body tense, and then his hands
slid around my shoulders and he crushed me to him, his nose
against my neck.
“I need you,” he whispered. “So much. So fucking much.”
He jerked his head up, and then his hands were in my hair,
tugging me until I was forced to look into his eyes.
“I love you, Monroe. God, I’ve never felt this way about a girl
but…I just…there’s so much shit and I don’t know how to deal
with it, and Trevor…he…”
Nathan rested his forehead against mine, and for a few
moments, we breathed into each other.
For the first time in forever, I felt settled— which was crazy.
And yet, it felt as if all the pieces of my life that had been moving, shifting, trying to find their way back, had finally clicked into place.
I was where I was supposed to be, and sure I was battered
and had been beaten down, but I had made it through and I was
whole. I was whole and I was alive and I was in love with a boy
who wasn’t quite there yet. A boy who had held my hand and
gotten me to this place.
“I need you to not do this anymore, Nate. I need you to be
strong, like you were for me, and I need you to forgive yourself.”
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“He could die,” Nate whispered. “I knew it was a possibility,
but I never thought…I thought he was going to wake up. I
thought he was going to wake up and give me hell, you know?
Hit me or yell at me or…something. I didn’t think he would
just…end.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know what to do anymore. I’m so pissed off and angry
and I hate myself for what I did to him. I go over that night.
Over and over. I relive it, you know? And it drives me crazy
because I can’t remember the moment when it went wrong, and
I don’t know how to get past that.”
“Let me help you, Nathan.”
His voice broke. “How?”
Carefully, I pulled his hand into mine and stepped back.
“Do you trust me?” Did I trust myself? When had I become
the expert on healing? Me, the girl who had gone to therapy for
over a year because I’d been so broken. The girl who had cut her
wrists because she didn’t want to deal.
And yet, as I looked into his eyes, I had such a feeling of
rightness
inside me that I was able to push back all the negative thoughts. The ones that said there was no hope. Only pain.
The ones that said I could lose Nathan if I wasn’t careful.
I thought back to that day when I was eleven. To that hot
afternoon on Gram’s porch when she’d told me that I could do
anything as long as I put my mind to it. And suddenly I knew
she was right. She’d been right all along.
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“I need you to trust me.”
Nate said nothing.
“I need for you to let me catch you. Do you understand?”
I touched his cheek again. Traced a line to his mouth and
then stood on my toes so that I could kiss him. It was a gentle
touch— a soft brush of the lips that cemented our connection.
“I won’t let you fall,” I whispered.
He nodded. It was enough.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“Where?”
I swallowed my fear and tried to smile, though I wasn’t sure it
worked all that well. I knew we stood on the edge of a cliff, but I also felt like we could survive the fall.
We had to survive, or what was the point of it all?
“Let’s go see Trevor.”
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The hospital was quiet when we arrived, with only a few cars in
the parking lot and even less on the street outside. The rain had stopped, but the humidity hung in the air like a thick blanket,
covering everything in gray mist.
Monroe slid into a parking spot behind a truck— the Lewis’s
truck— and that sick feeling in my gut churned hard. I didn’t
know if I had the balls to do this. I thought of the last time I
had come here— of the anger that lived inside Trevor’s dad—
and despite Brenda’s plea for me to come, I wasn’t so sure he
wouldn’t kick my ass on sight.
Maybe it’s what I wanted.
Maybe I’d let him.
My cell vibrated, and I yanked it from my jeans. It was a
wonder the stupid thing still worked, considering it had been
wet for hours.
It was my mom. I’d finally sent her a text letting her know I
was all right and that I was with Monroe. I told her that I was
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going to the hospital and that I didn’t know when I would be
home. I glanced down to read her text.
I love you. So does Trevor.
Shit. My eyes burned again and I pocketed the cell, breathing
out hard.
“Hey,” Monroe said softly. “Are you ready?”
No.
“Yeah.”
She leaned toward me and pressed her mouth to mine. It was
just a soft touch, but I tasted the salt from her tears, the warmth of her soul, and the depth of her emotions. I felt that kiss all the way inside me where it settled next to my heart.
This girl had every part of me. Every single part.
“I’m glad you’re here,” I said, pulling back as that sick feeling heaved inside me again. “Because I don’t think I could do this
by myself.”
She threaded her fingers through mine and squeezed my