Inspire (29 page)

I laugh, and bend awkwardly to squeeze her shoulders.

“Good to see you too, kiddo.”

She leans sideways, looking behind me. “Where's Wilder?'

“He had to run into work to take care of a problem. He asked me to pick you up for him. Is that okay?”

She squeezes my legs again in answer, and I marvel for a moment at the sight of her small hand just above my knee. Her short little fingers and tiny palm reveal just how young she really is. I smile down at her.

“You ready to go? I thought you and I could go have some fun.”

She pumps her fist in the air. “Yes! Let's go.”

Grabbing my hand, she tugs me toward the parking lot as if she knows exactly where she's going. I call a polite goodbye to her teacher, even though he's still staring at me.

“Slow down, princess. My car is this way.”

She calms, if only slightly, and lets me lead her in the right direction.

“Where are you taking me? What are we doing? Can we get ice cream?”

I laugh.

“Well, I remembered that you said you loved to swim.” They had a pool at the house they lost, and it’s one of the things Gwen talks about the most.

“
We’re going swimming
?” she yells, drawing a few stares from parents walking their children through the parking lot.

I chuckle. “It's still a little too cold to swim outside. But there's an indoor pool at the university rec center. We can get you a guest pass, and yeah … go swimming.”

She screams a little more, hugging my legs again, and my heart feels full enough to burst at her excitement. We make a quick trip to the Bell apartment to get her bathing suit, and then head back to campus.

I take care of her guest pass, and we get changed in the women's locker room. I hold her hand as we walk past the lap pool where a few swimmers are training in the lanes. We bypass it for the regular pool on the far side of the complex, and I have to keep a tight hold on Gwen's hand to keep her from running off. At its shallowest, the pool is still four feet deep. So we brought arm floaties in addition to Gwen's swimsuit. She insisted she didn't need them, but I made her wear them just to be safe. Wilder trusts me with his little sister, and I have no intentions of damaging that. We play for an hour or so, and I find myself sticking close to her even when she proves to be as competent a swimmer as she promised. At her suggestion, we pretend to be mermaids, and I play along as she invents a wild, fanciful story about our life under the sea as mermaid sisters.

I eventually drag her out of the pool for a break to make sure she drinks some water after playing so hard. I know I'm probably being paranoid, but I can't help wanting to protect her. While we're on our break, Wilder calls to let me know he's home. I explain where we are and tell him to take a break and relax, that I'll take care of Gwen for a little longer.

I only intend for us to stay another hour tops, but it's two hours before I finally manage not to buckle under Gwen's begging. We dry off and change, and then hop in the car to return to Gwen's home.

The front door is open when we arrive, so Gwen pushes in before I knock or ring the doorbell. Cautiously, I follow her inside the living room, my eyes scanning for Wilder. Instead, they find his mother, leaning against the wall right outside the kitchen, smiling.

There's music playing, something acoustic.

“Mrs. Bell, we're—”

Her eyes snap to mine and she holds a finger to her lips, shushing me. I press my lips together, and she beckons me toward her as the music quiets. I cross toward the kitchen, and when I'm standing right behind her, I see she has a foot keeping the door from swinging closed. She pushes her foot out, widening the crack a little, and my whole body turns to stone when I glance inside.

Wilder is sitting on a tall stool, guitar laid over his lap as he bends to write on a piece of paper on the island counter. He scribbles for a moment, and then pushes the pen behind his ear, returning to the guitar and starting the music that I'd heard when I entered.

He closes his eyes, and his fingers move quickly over the strings. Sound pours off the instrument, and even though I hear it, it’s somehow silent in my head at the same time. Something divides inside of me, peeling apart. Half of me stays here in the moment watching him, and the other half retreats, pulling deeper and deeper into myself, trying to hide.

No. Gods, no. Please.

Wilder opens his mouth and begins to sing, and at the sound of his deep, raspy voice, the dizziness implodes and I don’t know which way is up or down or in or out. I don’t even know if there’s still a world beneath my feet.

There was a moment when you laughed and your eyes met mine

Your cheeks were flushed, eyes bright from the wine

That’s when I felt it start, not quite a twist in the heart

But a step, a leap, over some imaginary line

Is this how it feels to fall?

Not so complicated after all.

I expected a tempest. Relentless. Maybe even senseless.

Is this how it feels to fall?

Inevitable. Immeasurable. Unforgettable.

But born in a moment so small.

The music picks up speed, and I swear I can feel every pluck of the string like a whip against my skin. I flush cold and then hot, and my insides feel like they’re being wrung out, twisted and pulled inside by some imaginary grip.

“It’s been nearly a year since he’s played,” his mother whispers to me. “He had a band and everything. I told him he didn’t have to give it up for us, but he wouldn’t listen. He was working so hard to care for Gwen and me. I only wanted him off the road. I didn’t want him to give up music completely.”

I lose all my words when I’m with you

It might frighten you baby, if you knew

How you own my heart, have from the very start

And it’s yours til time is through

Is this how it feels to fall?

Not so complicated after all.

I expected a tempest. Relentless. Maybe even senseless.

Is this how it feels to fall?

Inevitable. Immeasurable. Unforgettable.

But still so small.

“It’s you,” his mother continues, unaware that I’ve forgotten how to breathe, how to speak, how to do anything but stand here and listen to my heart break between gentle thrums. “He’s been so different since his father’s arrest. He was here and supportive and wonderful, but there was always something a little hollow in him. I thought it was the music. But he’s been different since you came along. I’ve never seen him as happy as he is with you. He’s become stronger and more vibrant these past few weeks, like you’ve opened his eyes to a whole new world, and he’s finally learning to move on. He loves you.” Her hand touches my shoulder and slides over my back as she pulls me into a hug. “Both my children love you.”

I should be rejoicing at her worlds, at her acceptance of me (especially considering how we first met), but the weight of the moment slams into me, pressing down on my shoulders. Everything about my time with Wilder that lifted me up—the love, the joy, the hope—those things turn to stone. And I want to them to crush me, want to die beneath them because I don’t know how to live with
this
.

His mom is still talking. Her mouth is moving, and so is Wilder’s, and I want to hit pause. I want to stop and rewind. I want to never know this about him. I want to never … gods, I want—I want—

I want everything to stop.

“I’m going to be sick.”

I don’t know how I move, but I do. It feels like I should have to learn how to walk all over again. Like my body should be as crippled as I feel. I don’t understand how gravity still exists, and the sun is still in the sky, or how my heart is still beating.

How is my heart still beating?

I throw open the bathroom door and dive to my knees moments before my stomach convulses. Everything is stripped out of me then. Not just from my stomach, but from all of me. I lose my hope in that bathroom. My faith. My future.

This is what it is to die.

Maybe not in body, but in spirit.

“Kalli?”

Oh gods, please no. Please don’t do this to me.

I don’t realize I’m sobbing until he kneels beside me and says, “Sssh, sweetheart. It’s okay.” Then I hear it, the awful noise coming from my chest, and
finally
something in this world matches how I feel. His hand touches my back, and I throw myself sideways, slamming into the hard porcelain of the tub. I don’t feel the pain. I’ve got too much of that already in me.

“Kalli? What’s wrong?”

“Don’t touch me.” The words break up as they leave my mouth, sprinkled between gasps and sobs.
I cannot let him touch me
. All this time, I thought I had it under control. I thought I was keeping him safe.

“Kalli, you’re shaking. What’s wrong? Does something hurt? Mom, call 911.”

“No!” I have to get out of here. I have to get far away from Wilder. From his family. I climb to my feet, and he’s right. I am shaking.

“I need outside. I need air.”

I flinch away from first Wilder, then his mother as they try to help me.

Out in the hallway, I nearly run into Gwen. She’s combing out her wet hair, and she looks up at me with wide, confused eyes.

I can’t do this. I can’t.

I ignore her when she calls my name, pushing through the pain to tell myself to
walk, just keep walking
.
Get to your car, and you can leave. You can drive and keep driving.

I stumble over the stairs leading down from the porch, and I hear Wilder shout as I barely manage to stay on my feet. Once I start running, it doesn’t seem so hard. In fact, it makes it easier to breathe. So I run down the sidewalk, through the parking lot, and to my car. I throw the thing into drive, and slam on the gas.

Just keep running
.

And if I look in the rearview mirror and see Wilder jogging after me, I don’t let myself acknowledge it. I scream to fill up the small cab with sound so I don’t have to hear him yelling. But I keep screaming long after I’m out of the parking lot, out of their neighborhood, out of the city. I scream until my throat is too raw to make a sound.

PART FOUR

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed, there was something tragic.”

Oscar Wilde

Chapter Twenty-Two

Kalli

Three months later

My apartment smells musty when I push the door open. I flip on the lights. Or try to anyway. They don’t work. I knew I should have set up auto-pay billing. The floor creaks beneath my feet, and it feels both odd and normal to push the door closed with my heel. There’s a sweatshirt on the couch, still pulled inside out from the last time I shrugged it off as I sat there working on homework. Books are piled on the table. My laptop is still plugged in and open, the screen dark.

This place is a museum for the life I lost.

A trip through the kitchen reveals more reason for the smell. There’s a moldy bag of bread on the counter. Unwashed dishes in the sink. I don’t even want to open the fridge to discover what the last three months have done in there.

I drop my purse on the floor, and lean against the counter. I thought it would hurt more coming back here. I’d anticipated it being like a knife to the chest, which is why I’d gone to a bar first. Maybe I had a little more to drink than I thought. That would explain the numbness.

I’d never had to be drunk to face my past before.

“To new experiences,” I mumble, raising an imaginary glass.

Exhausted, I sink down onto the floor right there, leaning against the kitchen counter. Specks of dust float in the beam of light coming in through the window, and I watch them through dry eyes.

Three months ago, I left this apartment behind. I cut ties and ran because I couldn’t face him. I knew if I came back to my apartment, he’d follow me, and what could I have possibly said?

I knew if I saw him, if I talked to him, I would be tempted to stay. I told him once that I was selfish enough to want him despite the risk, and that hadn’t changed. Still hasn’t. Three months, and I still wake up thinking about him. Go to sleep wondering what he’s doing. I pick up my phone, hovering over the screen. I can’t even put a number on how many times I’ve thought about calling him, hoping I’d get his voicemail, just so that I could listen to words,
any words
, out of his mouth.

I spent the first week after I left practically catatonic. I checked into a hotel, and I never even left it long enough for them to clean the room. I stayed in bed, raiding the mini bar or ordering room service when the hunger pains got strong enough to break through the haze I was in. The next week I spent driving. I’d head back toward Austin one day, and then change my head and drive in another direction the next day. It wasn’t until the third week when I sat down and began to think.

First, I wrote down as much of Bridget’s prophecy as I could remember. She said something about my keeping secrets, and that I would lose
him
to them. That I knew well enough already. But she’d also said something else about a
reunion
.

And the line I clung to, even though I knew it was foolish and harmful to hope:

To be made whole, all must first be lost.

I was intimately acquainted with the all being lost bit. It was being made whole that I wanted to know more about. Because as hard as I tried to leave this place behind, as many times as I’ve told myself that Wilder is better off without me, that we’re both better off, there’s one thing I just can’t shake.