Falling for Hadie (29 page)

I nodded absently, relishing the taut stomach muscles that I was lying against. Oh my, was Lincoln
fine
. He was fine in so many ways that writing a list would take too long. He was gorgeous on a physical level, but that’s not what made him so special.

What made Lincoln special was the way his personality called out to me. It was like he’d come here just for me, like we were meant to meet and heal each other. He was kind, generous, caring, and everything he said touched me in a way I couldn’t explain.

If he’d been the ugliest person on the planet, I still would’ve fallen for him because he was gorgeous on the inside in a way that not many people were.

I sat up, taking a deep breath. My thoughts were scattered and I was trying to compose myself before I spoke and rambled on and on like I normally did.

“Um…I’m finding it hard to focus on one single thought.” I bit my lip and twisted around to watch him as he shifted into a position that allowed him to recline against the seat.

Lincoln watched me with curious eyes. “Come on, tell me what’s going through that pretty head of yours.”

It made me giddy and, quite honestly, a little light-headed to hear Lincoln say that I was pretty. Once I was done acting like a kid who’d just hit puberty, I wet my lips and managed to find my voice again.

I met his gaze with hesitance, feeling anxious. “I’m falling for you in a way I never imagined. I don’t know what happens next, I don’t know if this feeling will last, but I find myself not wanting it to end.”

Lincoln was silent, his whole body rigid. He didn’t look at me as he stared straight ahead at the seat in front of him, his eyes unseeing. A muscle was working furiously in his jaw and I’d never seen him look so tense. His lack of response sent a thrill through me, and I actually felt fear snake its way through my body.

“Lincoln?” I prompted, almost afraid to hear what he would say next.

He turned his head to look at me. His face was blank and there was a deadness in his eyes that I’d never seen before. It, quite honestly, terrified me.

“Nothing lasts forever, Hadie,” he said, his voice low. “Not you, not I, not anyone. Nothing is permanent—everything changes.”

The fear seized ahold of me and constricted around my heart painfully. I was finding it difficult to breathe, to think straight. Those were not the words of someone optimistic and in love—they were the words of someone who had given up and lost all hope. It was so unlike the Lincoln I had come to know and grown to love.

“What are you saying?” I managed to choke out. “That we won’t last?”

It was hard to believe that the sweet, spontaneous Lincoln was now staring at me like there was something wrong with me. I couldn’t figure out what was going on. We had just shared one of the most intimate moments that two people could ever share. He had just shown me how to let go of the things that were holding me back—to scream my frustrations out on the world and move on. Was he now trying to move on from me?

“I’m saying that I let this go too far. I should never have done
this
with you.” He gestured between us as if to emphasize his point. “I told you once before by the lake that I was no good for you. I warned you to stay away from me, but you didn’t listen. Now, it’s too late. The damage is already done and I can’t take back any of it. I can’t do a goddamn thing!”

He punched the seat in front of him, seething with rage. His chest was heaving from whatever he was keeping bottled inside. I couldn’t figure out if he was angry at himself or angry at me for saying that I was falling for him.

“You don’t mean that,” I said, in a state of semi-shock. “You just told me you loved me.”

Lincoln’s face was twisted in a mask of pain and regret. “I do love you, more than you know, but this should never have happened between us. This was a mistake.”

His words were like a slap in the face. My eyes were stinging and my chest was so sore that it felt like I’d slammed straight into a brick wall. It was the same feeling I’d experienced when I’d caught Bennett kissing that hoe bag from Penthill High. The pain washed over me in crashing waves—it was crippling.

I kept making the same mistakes; I kept falling too hard without any thought for the consequences because I expected someone to love me as much as I loved them. Was it too much to ask to be loved wholeheartedly by someone? Was it impossible for a girl like me who was plain, boring, and bookish to find someone who wanted to be with me for me?

I hadn’t learned anything from my disastrous relationship with Bennett. I was still naïve and foolish. I kept thinking that maybe I would find someone who loved me the way the characters in my favorite books loved each other. The kind of love that is unconditional and undemanding. The kind of love that is epic and sweeps you off your feet. The kind of love that keeps you on your toes and makes you swoon.

I thought I’d had that with Lincoln. I thought we had the kind of love that would last forever. But I was wrong. I was delusional. I was in a fantasy world where I couldn’t see the truth if it bitch-slapped me across the face.

As much as I was hurting inside, I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. I’d tell him to go to hell, and then I’d drive home and cry myself to sleep.

Feeling suffocated, I opened up the door and climbed out on shaky legs. The door shut behind me and I knew Lincoln had followed me out.

I slowly turned to face him and found him staring down at me with devastation clear across his face. I imagined that I looked pretty similar to him.

Taking a deep breath, I tried to stay calm. “I’m going home now. I’m sure you can get Samantha to pick you up since she seems to want to be with you so bad. I bet your mom would love for the two of you to get together since she hates me so much!”

Turning on my heels, I marched towards the driver’s side door but was forced to stop when Lincoln wrapped a muscular arm around my waist and spun me around to face him.

“Let me go!” I cried, struggling to escape from his hold. I sounded pathetic and I was acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum, but I wanted to be far away from him so I could cry in peace.

“Stop it, Hades.” Lincoln’s brow creased as he waited for me to calm down and act my age. “What are you talking about? What about Samantha and me?”

I stopped thrashing around and fixed him with what I hoped was a steely glare. “Don’t act like you don’t know. Obviously something went on between the two of you in New York. I noticed the way she looked at me like I wasn’t good enough for you or something. It’s the way your mom looks at me.”

Lincoln sighed and relaxed his hold on me. His hands came around to rest on my shoulders as his azure gaze pierced right through me. “I already told you that my mother is shallow and judgmental. It’s sad that regardless of the crap that our family goes through, she will never change. It’s the same old bullshit over and over again with her.”

His words did nothing to reassure me because as hurt as I’d been by his mother’s behaviour, that wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to know about him and Samantha. I wanted to know if there was anything between them. I wanted to know why she looked at Lincoln and me as though we shouldn’t be together.

“Fine, your mother is shallow and judgmental, but what about Samantha? Why does she look at me like she hates me?”

“I didn’t want to do this here, not like this, but I guess fate had something else in store for us.” Lincoln sighed, pressing his fingers to his forehead as though his thoughts were overwhelming him. “Samantha doesn’t hate you, not in the slightest. If anything, she is angrier with me than you could ever know. She thinks I’m playing a game with you, that I’m going to ruin your life.”

He halted, studying me as though to gauge my reaction.

I wasn’t sure what to feel or think. My mind was cold and numb like a block of ice. I still didn’t understand where Lincoln was going with this or what he was trying to say.

“Are you playing a game with me?”

“No, I’m not.” Lincoln shook his head. “But I never wanted things to get this serious between us. This was never supposed to happen. I came here to get away from my relationships, not to make new ones. And definitely not to fall in love.”

My heart sped up at his words. He did love me. He’d said it more than once, yet he still wasn’t making any sense. “But you said that we were a mistake; that falling in love with me was a mistake.”

Lincoln’s eyes were conflicted as he nodded. “Falling for you was a mistake, but it was the best mistake I ever made.”

“Then why does Samantha think that you’re going to ruin my life?”

“Because I am,” Lincoln breathed. “I am going to ruin your life so completely that you won’t know what hit you. Samantha doesn’t like seeing us together, not because she wants to be with me, but because she knows that there’s no way for our relationship to work. It’s something that can’t last.”

“Why?’ I demanded, placing my hands on my hips. “Why can’t our relationship last? If we love each other then…”

Lincoln was shaking his head as his face turned pale. “It can’t last because there’s something I haven’t told you, Hadie. Something that got harder and harder to tell you the more time we spent together.”

My heart stopped, and a feeling of dread settled in the pit of my stomach. “What is it?”

Lincoln squeezed his eyes shut as though he was being tortured. The pain was so raw, so real, that I could practically feel it radiating from his body and curling itself around me.

“Hadie, I don’t have much time left.” He opened his eyes, fixing me with a helpless look that ripped my insides apart. “I’m dying.”

Lincoln

The truth I’d been keeping from Hadie this whole time, finally spilled free from my mouth, taking with it the weight that had been holding me back for so long. But now it was out in the open. Hadie knew the truth and there was no going back.

I tried to keep my voice steady as I spoke. “I was diagnosed with stomach cancer about a year and a half ago. By the time the doctors found out and started chemotherapy, it was too late. The cancer had already spread too far for me to heal. The only thing the chemo was doing was delaying the inevitable, so I refused to have the treatments any more. I was done with the side effects, done with losing my hair. I was just waiting to die.”

Hadie swallowed and stared at me with glassy eyes. She nodded as if to tell me to continue.

“That’s why I came here. I couldn’t stand the way my friends looked at me, like I was a dead man, like there was no hope for me.  Moving to Statlen gave me a chance to start fresh, even if it was only for a short amount of time. I wanted to be away from the people who knew me. I never planned on meeting you, on finding someone like you. You gave me hope…” I trailed off as bitter tears stung my eyes.

Goddamn. I wasn’t going to cry. I hadn’t cried yet. I was not going to cry now when I was telling the girl I loved that I couldn’t be with her for much longer. I was going to keep it together. I was going to…

A sob racked through my body, and my chest shook as the weight of everything hit me all at once.

No matter how hard I tried to pretend that everything was okay, it couldn’t be further from the truth. One day, very soon, I was going to lose everything. One day, I would be gone. I wouldn’t be “me” anymore. I would only be a vague memory—someone to be remembered.

Hadie started forward and wrapped her arms around me. My head fell onto her shoulder and I let the sobs rip through me as I finally got all the grief out of my system. Hadie cried right along with me, her small frame shuddering against mine until our sobs, our pain and our helplessness were one and the same.

She rubbed my back with her hand, and just that small gesture made me feel like I could unburden all my deepest, darkest fears onto her—like I could tell her absolutely anything.

“I’ve wanted to tell you for so long,” I finally said, my voice raspy from all the crying, “but I kept putting it off. There was never a right moment to do it. I was so scared, Hadie, so scared when I went to bed every night; scared that I wouldn’t wake up the next day and get to see you.”

Hadie’s grip on me tightened and her nails dug into my shirt. I didn’t care though. The slight pain was a nice distraction from the pain that was scorching me inside.

“Every day I woke up, I woke up alone. I couldn’t talk to you. I couldn’t tell you the truth. You must hate me for doing this to us. You must absolutely
hate
me.”

Hadie shook her head. “I could never hate you. I love you. I understand why you didn’t tell me. At first you didn’t tell me because you didn’t know me well enough. And then you couldn’t tell me because you knew me too well.”

I nodded, amazed that this girl who hadn’t been a part of my life up until two months ago understood me so well. She understood me better than my family and friends did. Each and every time she spoke, it was like she spoke only to me; like she’d peered into my soul and understood everything that was going on inside.

“I love you,” I whispered, pressing her as close as she could get and inhaling the sweet scent that always drifted around her. “I love you and I don’t want this moment to ever end.”

Hadie lifted her head up, her lips trembling. “There must be something, anything, the doctors can do for you. Maybe if you tried chemo or radiation therapy again there’s a chance you’d make it.” She sounded desperate, grasping at straws, trying to figure out a way for me to stay with her just a bit longer.