I never thought I’d be sad about my father dying.
I certainly never thought I’d shed tears. Not after refusing to talk to him more than in passing for years. Especially not after refusing to see him, while being in the same town and fixing his house. He was there all along, upstairs, being cared for by his nurse but I hardly ever stopped by his room.
My father didn’t want to live in a facility. He was too proud for it. He didn’t want people to know that a brilliant psychiatrist like him was slowly forgetting how to tie his own shoes and if his wife was dead or alive.
I hired the nurse because I didn’t want to pack up my life in Boston and move back home to take care of him myself. I thought he deserved to die alone like my mother did.
But he didn’t. I was there with him in his final moments.
I’ve been there with him for the past three months. I don’t think it’s because I’ve forgotten the things he did or the role he played in my mother’s suicide.
It’s because finally, I’ve forgiven him for my own peace of mind. I have finally decided to be better than him in the ways that count. He wasn’t there for my mom, but I could be there for him.
Although, he didn’t know. He was hardly lucid. It was okay. I wouldn’t know what to say to him, even if he were.
So I said all the things I wanted to say.
I told him all the things about the girl whose heart I broke. Willow Taylor.
Standing in the rain, I watch her walk away. I watch her almost smash through the door and streak out of my sight like a falling star.
Have a good life.
It’s not a question, but I’m compelled to answer her. I told her that she had no right to ask me anything; I was lying. Because when it comes to saving her, I am a goddamn liar.
But as it turns out, she didn’t need saving. All she needed was for me to move the fuck on from the past and accept what she already knew.
That I had feelings for her. I have feelings for her.
I don’t know how long it’s been since she went inside but I’m telling her. She needs to know.
I burst through the door too, words almost bubbling on my tongue. There’s a guy behind the counter and he jumps, nervously.
“C-can I help you?”
“Where’s Willow?” I ask, my words rough and low. Shaking.
He looks to the side quickly before saying, “I, uh, don’t know. She’s not here yet.”
Dickhead.
I wonder if they are friends, this moron and Willow. I wonder if he finds her fucking stunning too.
“Stay away from her,” I warn him, even though I don’t know if it’s necessary. Even though it’s me who has no right to say these things.
He throws his hands up in the air, exasperated. “What the fuck, dude? What’s up with people today? I’m gay, all right?”
I ignore him even as I breathe out, a bit relieved. Not that it means much, his being gay. Willow can tempt anyone, if she wants to. But somehow, she has no clue.
I march across the space without responding to the guy’s protests and make a turn where he glanced at accidentally. It’s a hallway and there are doors on either side. I’m contemplating throwing every single one of them open until I find her.
But a second later, she comes out of one, halting in her tracks at the sight of me. “Simon?”
I gorge on her face, her rounded cheeks flushed with the cold and the rain, her wide eyes red with tears.
When she cries, the blue in her gaze turns bright and liquid, and my body gets emptied out of everything. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. Every little space inside me fills up with this need to put a stop to it. Whatever is making her cry. Or rather, whoever.
Today she’s crying because of me and I swear to God, I want to destroy myself.
And I’m going to do it. I’m going to show her everything that I am so she can break me if she wants to.
“I can’t,” I rasp.
An adorable frown appears on her brow, and she sweeps her bangs off her forehead, stealing my breaths with her innocent gesture. “You can’t what?”
I walk toward her. With every step I notice her eyes getting wider and wider. Her tiny frame is getting stiffer.
I’ve seen her do that a million times before. She did that the day I broke her heart. The day I lied because I thought she deserved better. She deserved someone who wasn’t trapped inside his own head, reliving the worst day of his life.
Someone who isn’t responsible for a death.
I stop a few feet away from her. “Have a good life.”
“What?”
Her face is wiped clean. Pink and soft. There are no lingering droplets of rain or tears, but I can see their path. I can imagine them.
I clench my jaw against the avalanche of pain in my chest. It’s been coming more and more, this cold, icy pain that started as soon as I drove away from Heartstone, leaving her behind.
“You said…” I swallow. “Have a good life.”
Anger flickers in her eyes before it dies down. “So?”
“So, I’m answering you that I can’t.”
“Look, Simon. It wasn’t –”
Her voice is laced with such sadness that I don’t let her talk. “I killed a woman.”
I’ve kept this moment away from my imagination, confessing my part in Claire’s death to anyone. To me, confession has always meant acceptance, and I never wanted to accept that I failed.
The only time I’ve come close to saying these words were the day I told Willow about my mother’s suicide. For some reason, I wanted to tell her that day, confess all my crimes, lay myself bare after I fucked her like an animal on my office floor. That was the least I could do after being such a savage with her, hardly showing her mercy, beating up her pretty pussy with my cock.
I couldn’t then. But it’s time now.
I need to accept that I did, in fact, fail, but that doesn’t mean I’m a failure.
Even so, my body tightens up in shame as I see Willow’s lips part. She drags in a choppy breath, and I wait for judgement, horror, anything to cross her face. But it doesn’t.
She looks nothing but heartbreakingly beautiful.
Mine.
The thought pushes my words forward and I say, “Her name was Claire. She was my patient. Bipolar, like my mom. I’ve had a lot of patients like that but something about her reminded me most of my mother. Maybe because she was alone. Her parents had given up on her. Her fiancé had left her. When she came to me, she was very sick, and I wanted to fix that. I did everything I could. We went through a dozen therapists, med changes, dosage changes. I became obsessed with saving her. So much so that I didn’t think it was wrong to let her stay in my apartment a few times or give her money if she was short on her rent. One time I even saved her from this party she went to.”
I rake my fingers through my wet hair. “Christ, it sounds like the textbook case of transference, the exact thing they tell us to beware of. I didn’t see it that way, though. I got so blinded. All I knew was that I couldn’t let what happened to my mom, happen to her. I couldn’t be like my dad. All my life, I’ve been so consumed by that. I’ve hated how he made her feel less because she was ill and he couldn’t stand that. I’ve hated that he was weak. I… When my mom died I… I even punched him at her funeral.”
I chuckle harshly. “He never punched me back. I thought he would. All he did was walk away. I never understood why. Until recently. Maybe he knew he was guilty. Though he never said it.”
Sighing, I put the memory out of my head. “By the time I realized what I was doing with Claire was wrong, it was too late. She’d gotten completely dependent on me. There were rumors everywhere. I told her she should see another doctor. I told her I’d help her with the transition.”
I remember the night I told her that she should see someone else. It was raining. I had a list of the contenders she could see instead of me, and I discussed all her options with her.
She looked fine when she left. She was smiling, even. And then an hour later, I got the call that she’d been in a car accident.
They blamed the poor weather. They said she probably couldn’t see where she was going. Or her tire must have skidded for her car to crash against the tree.
But I knew.
I knew it happened because of me. If I hadn’t been so obsessed with saving her and being better than my dad, she would actually be alive today.
“Simon.”
Swallowing, I focus on her. This brave, innocent girl. Her tears are falling again. I’m making her cry. That’s all I seem to do.
There was a time when I could wipe off her tears, sit her in my lap, smooth down her hair and kiss her forehead, and she’d look at me like I was her hero.
Fuck, that look.
That look made me want to shake her, so she stopped doing it. She stopped looking at me like I hung the moon.
It also made me want to kiss the breath out of her, wrap her in my arms and keep her tucked by my side, slay all her dark thoughts and drink down all her salty water.
“She was in an accident,” I tell Willow. “She didn’t die but she went into a coma. Anoxic brain injury due to severe head trauma. And her parents filed a lawsuit against me when I told them it was my fault. The board asked me to step down from my position until the matter was resolved, and I did. I wasn’t going to stay anyway. Not after what happened.”
“Is she…”
She trails off, her eyes wide and so blue I want to drown in them.
I am drowning in them.
I am drowning in this fucking wait to see what she has to say to my confession. I know it’s a distinct possibility that she’ll send me away after this, and I honestly don’t know what I will do if she does.
“What happened?” she whispers at last, and my next breath comes easy.
I still have time. I can still be in her presence. I can still look at her, hear her voice.
“They took her off life support. I was going to stop them. I was driving up there.” I shake my head. “But I decided not to. I decided to let her go.”
“Why?” she asks, frowning, so fucking perfect in her confusion.
“Because my dad’s nurse called me saying that he was lucid. He seemed to remember me. She told me I should see him.”
“D-did you get to talk to him?”
I smile sadly. “No. By the time I got to him he was… not lucid anymore.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
Even if she hadn’t called, I wouldn’t have been able to make the entire drive, anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to leave Heartstone.
“It’s okay. It was the right thing to do. Letting her go.”
That night when I turned around, I felt the pressure easing off from my chest. I didn’t know it then but the act of driving back to my father was my way of moving on, and letting Claire go.
Maybe that’s what acceptance does. Eases off the pressure, the friction. That’s why Willow started laughing more when she confessed her lies in the group a long time ago.
Beth was right. I tell my patients to fight but I, myself, forgot.
“Well.” She sighs, wiping off her tears and straightening her spine. “I’m happy for you. That you’ve moved on. But I need to get back to work so –”
“I lied,” I tell her, then.
This time when her eyes go wide, there’s more than sadness in them. There’s awareness. An electricity that seems to flare whenever we’re close. I noticed it the first time she came into my office. That was the reason I kept asking her to meet me against traditional practices, against all reason.
“Lied about what?”
I walk closer to her and she steps back. “About everything I said that night.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Actually, I noticed that spark even before that. When she was on her knees, collecting pages of her book. Maybe that electricity was why I knew I had to kneel. I knew I had to help the silver-haired girl.
This is what they call fate, I think. This electricity, this magnetism. This strange call from the gut.
I shouldn’t crowd her and cage her against the door she came out of, but I can’t stop. I put both my palms on either side of her head and whisper, “I do have feelings for you. I’ve always had them.”
She purses her pretty mouth. “I don’t care.”
I keep going, though. “I always thought that my feelings for you were my weakness. I thought every time I watched you walk down the hallways, every time I strained my ears to hear you laugh or talk, every time I called you back into my office I was failing. You were my patient, I wasn’t supposed to feel that. I wasn’t supposed to look for you in the dining hall or on the grounds. I wasn’t supposed to hear your voice in my head or think about your skin when I saw the moon. I wasn’t supposed to imagine touching your hair every time you swept your bangs off your forehead. I thought I was failing.”
“Simon, I told you –”
“I wasn’t failing, Willow. I was living. Waking up in the morning is hard for me too. Sometimes, I don’t want to. More often than not, my first thought used to be of the day I found my mother. It would terrify me, every time I opened my eyes in the morning, going through the same cycle of emotions I went through that day. I always found it better to just not go to sleep, at all. But then I met you.”
Her chin tips up and she arches toward me. Her voice doesn’t have the stern cadence she probably wants to portray when she whispers, “I d-don’t care.”
I lean down, bringing us even closer. “I met you and every thought I had became yours. I started looking forward to waking up in the morning. I started to look forward to going to work. Walking the same hallways as my father did. It wasn’t a chore. Living. It wasn’t something I had to do. Living became something I wanted to do.”
I hear the rustle of her soaked jacket that was draped around her arms falling to the floor. She puts her hands on my chest, pushing me, and despite the situation and the unresolved issues between us, my cold body heats up at our first contact after months.
“I told you I don’t care.”
Taking my hands off the door, I cup her soft cheeks. “I never believed that I could love. I never thought I even knew what the word meant. I was too broken. Too cold and buried inside myself. I was too much in hate with my past and all the things that happened. And then, you happened to me, Willow. I never thought we could have something beyond Heartstone. Every day I counted down the days I had left with you. I was counting down the days of my life. Because I knew the moment you walked out of those gates, I’d die. I’d stop living.”
I wipe her tears but more keep coming, tightening that band around my chest. “You’re… fucking perfect. So perfect and beautiful and innocent. A princess. You deserve a king. A true hero. Someone to fight alongside you. I never thought I could be that hero. Not with my mistakes and hang-ups and my battle with the past. But then, I realized a hero isn’t someone who doesn’t fall. A hero is someone who knows how to rise.”
And then, I say it. The three words I never thought I’d say to anyone. I never thought I’d even feel them. But she knew. She always knew that we had something between us.
“I love you, Willow,” I whisper, raggedly. “I fucking love you so much.”
She sobs, and her hands become fists in my shirt as she tries to push me again. “Then why did you leave? Why the fuck did you leave? Why did you say all those things to me? Why did you break my heart to the point where I lost my mind?”
Her words make me bleed. Her words make me think of all the times I wanted to knock on her door and apologize. The times I’ve wanted to confess, to tell her everything.
“Willow –”
“No, stop talking.” She shakes her head, trying to control herself. “Just stop talking. You don’t get to come here and say all these things to me and expect everything to go back to normal.”
She slaps my chest. “You broke my heart, Simon. You fucking shattered it. Do you know I looked for you? The next morning. I fucking looked for you. I waited for you every night in my room. Even after you said all those things to me. I waited for you. But you never came back. Not once did you come back. So I don’t care if you love me because I hate you. I fucking hate you so much.”
She pushes against me again, for the third time, her cheeks red with her emotions. I don’t like to see her struggle like this, and I would’ve moved away. I would’ve let her go, taken my punishment without a word.
If it were true. If she hadn’t said that one thing.
That one thing makes me push back. It makes me reach behind her and find the knob on the door, opening it. I maneuver her body with mine and she stumbles on her feet, gasping. I grab her arm to keep her standing and close the door, at the same time.
“What the fuck are you doing?” She glares up at me before swiveling her gaze to the door.
Stepping closer, I block her view of anything but me. I back her up against the sink – apparently, it’s the washroom – and put my hands on the counter on either side of her so she can’t escape.
“Simon!” She pushes at my body but it’s hardly any pressure. “Get away from me.”
“I did come back.”
“What?”
“The night I came back for my dad,” I reply. “I drove back to the hospital. I stayed the night. By your bed.”
“W-what?”
When I reached home, my dad was already gone. Before I could figure out my next move, Dean found me. His father was out of town again and he texted me. I took him and his sister out for dinner, and then I watched them until they went to sleep, leaving them with my dad’s nurse. Because apparently, their father forgot to hire someone to watch them.
And then I made my way to Heartstone. Back to her. During the entire drive, I kept thinking how stupid I’d been to run to my past when my present is full of people who not only need me but want me too.
“Yeah. I left before you woke up. I didn’t think you’d want to see me after what I did. But…”
For a miniscule fraction of a second, I think about how much to reveal. How much to tell her? But it’s ridiculous – beyond ridiculous – to even wonder that.
I’ll tell her everything.
Every fucking thing.
I soak in her features, her body, her emotions.
The agitation in her eyes, her loose, wet silver hair, her panting chest in her Harry Potter t-shirt, the mounds of her breasts punching through. Her pouty, cherry red lips turned down in anger.
She’s a fucking princess. She’s my princess. Let her see how sick and twisted I am for her.
“But what?” she snaps.
“But I underestimated how much I loved you. How much it would hurt to stay away from you, even if you hated me.”
“What does that…”
She trails off when I move away from her. One step, two. Three.
I yank my tie off. Next off comes my sodden suit jacket. I throw them both on the floor.
“What… What are you…”
“I’m telling you everything. Everything that I am. Everything that’s inside of me.”
I unbutton the top three buttons of my shirt before yanking it off my body. Staring into her eyes, I put my palm on my chest where my tattoo is. Exactly like the one on her wrist. The only difference is mine is on my heart.
“So I came back again. The day you went to the beach.”
Her eyes go wide. Wide and blue like the ocean she went to see all those months ago. She grabs the counter, leaning against it.
“H-how,” she stumbles over her words, her gaze glued to the matching tattoo on my chest.
“I watched you,” I confess. “I looked through your records and I know I shouldn’t have. It’s confidential, invasion of privacy, but I-I wanted to know if you were doing okay. I drove into the city, insane with the thought of just holding you once. I thought I’d tell you everything you wanted to know, all my ugly parts, my anger, my mom, Claire. Everything. I wanted to tell you that you had the right to everything that I am. But then I saw you. You were with Renn and the rest of the girls. You were just coming out of the building where you live.”
Pressing my palm over my chest, I rasp, “You were so fucking beautiful. So white and glowing under the sun and… and my heart started beating. After days. Weeks. I followed you like some fucking pervert. You went to the beach. I saw you on the sand. You had glasses on. A hat. I know you hated being out there but you still went. You stayed as long as your friends wanted. You looked up at the sky, as if you were not afraid of the sun anymore. And even if you were, you weren’t going anywhere.”
She had a white bikini on, so virginal, so pure.
Like her skin.
Like her.
“And then, you went to the tattoo shop. I went in after you’d left. I paid the guy at the counter extra to give me the same tattoo that you had. Two Ws.”
It’s written in a thin and tiny script, one W overlapping the other.
“W-why didn’t you…”
“Because you were living. Despite everything, you were fighting. You didn’t give up. What if I came back into your life and broke you again? What if seeing me brought back all the pain of that day? I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t take away your one chance to be happy, to live a life. So I kept myself away. But I kept coming back. Every day since then.”
At her stunned expression, I take a step toward her. “Every morning you leave your apartment at 8:30AM. You go to the coffee shop on the corner and order a large cappuccino. You smile at the barista and he smiles back. Because he has a crush on you. He watches you when you leave. He doesn’t take his eyes off you until you have completely disappeared.”
I fucking hate the sight of him. One of these days, I’m going to break his jaw.
Another step closer to her. “Every Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday you come here. When the kids arrive, you laugh. Though I can’t hear it because I am always far away, always across the street, always outside looking in.”
There’s disbelief in her eyes, on her face, along with something that doubles up my hope. Yearning.
My confession is a balm to her. She likes it. She likes the fact that I’ve been watching her.
She always loved that. Being watched by me. I was so ashamed of it, tracking her movements, searching for her, knowing her habits, her quirks.
But she loves it. And I love her.
I love her with every goddamn piece of my heart, my soul.
I reach her and cup her cheeks again, tilting her neck up. “And today I was praying, hoping, fucking dying for a chance that you’d show up. I didn’t want to believe it when Beth told me that she’d invited you. I was mad at her. I told her that she should leave you alone. She should let you live your life, but on the inside, I wanted you to come. I wanted one chance, Willow. Some indication that you can still stand the sight of me. That you can still stand to be close to me after I broke your heart.”
Her breaths are choppy, her mouth parted and I wish I could kiss it. I wish I could bend down right now and put my mouth on her, taste her lemon flavor, lick her softness. Bite it. Make it mine.
But I can’t. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Christ. I don’t know what I would do if it really turned out to be not ever.
“Willow –"
She speaks over me, “I knew about Claire. Before I came today I asked Renn. She told me about the rumors, about the lawsuit, everything. She told me not to go. She told me that you’d broken me enough. I don’t need any more grief from you. You know why I showed up?”
“Why?”
“Because I thought you’d be alone. And because I didn’t believe a word they said about you and Claire. I’m stupid, aren’t I?”
My grip flexes on her cheek, trembles, like my heart, my fucking body. She doesn’t believe the rumors. She doesn’t believe any of it.
“You’re fucking breathtaking.”
She peers up at me through her lashes and warmth stirs in my gut. “What would you have done, if I hadn’t shown up?”
“I would’ve kept coming back. I would’ve kept watching you. I would’ve kept watching you fight and live, and you would’ve kept inspiring me to do the same. And maybe, one day I would’ve gathered enough courage to come talk to you.”
She shakes her head, sighing. “That was the hardest day after I got out. The beach. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t even want to open my eyes. I was missing you so much and everything else just piled on from there. Renn told me I had to. In fact, all three of them came into my room, dragged me out, put me in the shower. They reminded me that I have to live. Because every day I live, I win.”
They are right. Every day she lives, she fights, she wins.
She stares down at her tattoo, caressing her wrist. “Two Ws mean Warrior Willow. I thought I’d make a play on Weird Willow and really get a tattoo. So I did.”
She throws me a wobbly smile, and I rub my thumbs around her mouth, hoping to soak that smile in. “They were assholes. They don’t know what the fuck life is all about. I’m going to find them and I’m going to break every bone in their body. I’m going to…”
I trail off when she touches my chest. My tattoo, to be exact. She chases away the chill from the winter and the rain with only a flick of her fingers on me.
“You’re not going to do anything,” she says, and I try not to think about how my heart fucking leaps, trying to bust out of my chest and touch her.
“What if I’d gotten a princess or something?”
“Then I’d have a princess on my chest.”
For the first time today, I see her smile reach her eyes. “You’re crazy.”
“Yes.”
“And a pervert stalker.”
“Yes. That too.”
“Do you know what else it means? Two Ws?”
My Adam’s apple bobs. “No.”
“Two Ms. When I read it upside down on my wrist, which let’s face it, I do several times a day.” She gives me her eyes. “It means medicine man.”
I cover her hand with mine and press it against my chest, trying to imprint her touch on my flesh. “Give me a chance, Willow. Just one.”
“Why?”
“So I can make it right. So I can do what I should’ve done that day. I should’ve taken back my words and I should’ve told you that I loved you. That you’ve been right all along. Let me make it right, please.”
She shakes her head, digging her nails in my chest. “No. I don’t want you to make it right. I want you to leave.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t make me leave, Willow.”
“I don’t need you. Even though I cry every night. Even though I dream about you every night and I don’t listen to my therapist who tells me to date. I’m still fighting. I’m still living. I’m a fighter. You taught me that. So why should I care?”
Twin tears stream down her eyes and seep into my fingers. “You don’t need me, yes. You don’t need anyone. You can be whatever you want to be, Willow. But I do know one thing.”
“What?”
I wipe her tears off, as I say, “When you smile, it doesn’t reach your eyes. When you laugh, you don’t throw your head back and do it with abandon. So I’m asking you. Begging you.”
“Begging me for what?”
“To let me be the man who can make you smile not with your lips, but with your eyes. I am asking you to let me be the man who makes you want to laugh with abandon.”
She trembles. You do know that nobody and no one has ever made me happy, right? What makes you think you can?”
I rest my forehead against hers. “I can because I am not no one. I am me. I believe. You make me believe. In magic. In fairy tales. In fate. In falling and rising. In the fact that I can do it. I can be what and who you need me to be. You make me believe I was born for you.”
She gasps like she can’t comprehend that I remember her words. I wish I could laugh at the absurdity of it. Absurdity that I could ever forget anything she’s ever said to me. I’ve filed it away, her words, her expressions, her touches in the furthest corners of my heart.
“I never should’ve attacked you. That wasn’t right.”
“I never should’ve said those things.”
“I didn’t know how to deal with what you said to me,” she whispers, brokenly.
“Let me fix it.”
She licks her salty lips. “That’s what you do, don’t you? You fix everything.”
“Not everything, no. Not anymore. Just the things I broke.”
“Like my heart.”
“Like your heart.”
Sighing, she rests both her hands on my chest and whispers, “Just one. One chance.”
“Fuck…” I groan, clenching my eyes shut, as if she breathed new life into me.
She digs her sharp nails into my flesh and I open my eyes to find her glaring at me. “But if you blow it. If you fucking blow it, Simon Blackwood, then I’ll hate you forever.”
I smile, finally. “I won’t let you hate me. I’d die before that.”
She swats at my chest. “Don’t talk about dying.”
Her glare widens my smile, and I ask her what I should’ve asked her right from the beginning. Maybe I would have, if she weren’t my patient and I wasn’t too trapped in my past.
But as I said, I’m going to fix it.
“Will you go out with me?
Her eyes search mine, as if again she can’t believe I said that. I can’t fault her. I haven’t been fair to her. I’ve let her fight alone for too long but I’m going to change that.
She slides her arms around my neck. “Out as in?”
“Out as in out. On a date. With me.”
“Haven’t we had this conversation before?”
“No.” I shake my head. “Because like an asshole I never asked you. But I’m doing it now.”
All my life I’ve wanted to be better, more, but I’ve only now realized that being better isn’t materialistic.
It isn’t about achievements on the outside. It’s an inside thing. Being better or more is personal, individualistic. It’s about growth. It’s about me.
“You’re not an asshole. You never were. You’re just an idiot.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, I’m that.”
As I look into her pretty eyes, I know that every day I’ll strive to love her better than I did yesterday. Every day I’ll strive to be a better man than I was yesterday and that’s the only better I care about. Loving her is my purpose. It’s the thing that runs in my veins, alongside my blood.
Loving Willow was what I was born to do.
Slowly, she smiles and says, “Fine. Pick me up at seven tomorrow night.”