Starless Nights (Hale Brothers Series Book 2) (38 page)

It’s been two weeks. I’ve been lying here in this hospital bed on my stomach and I am completely bored. I miss Leila something fierce, and right now there is no end in sight. These burns are taking forever to heal and no one will give me any answers about when I’ll get to go home. This just sucks.

I’m realistic to think, that Leila has probably already moved. Their plan had been to leave the day after the fire. Even if they were delayed a few days, too much time has passed. I don’t know why she didn’t come say goodbye to me. I know I’m hanging onto just threads here but I’d like to give her the benefit of the doubt and just think that maybe she didn’t have anyone to drive her here. I suppose she could have called. There has to be a reason.

Mom walks into my room and very solemnly hands me a letter. I’m not sure why she looks like this, but whatever. I’m overjoyed when I see Leila’s handwriting on the outside.

Finally!

I needed something from her and it’s finally here. It’s like a lifeline and instantly I feel better than I have in the last two weeks. I’m ecstatic, I’m smiling from ear to ear, and my hands are shaking.

Flipping the envelope over, I carefully open the flap. I don’t want it to rip. Pulling out the letter, I can tell from the thinness that it’s only one page. I’m slightly disappointed about this, but that quickly evaporates because I’m holding a letter from her.

Unfolding the paper, I scan the writing—there’s not much here.

Dear Beau,

I had been hoping to get to say goodbye to you in person, but obviously that was never going to happen. We are getting ready to leave, but I couldn’t go without telling you thanks. I know that spending so much time with me, a girl, probably wasn’t the easiest for you, but I appreciate all the fun times that we had together. You are my childhood and because of you it is filled with great memories, so thank you.

I want you to know that I am realistic about how our friendship is going to play out. These things never last. Maybe one day we’ll move back, or maybe we won’t, but in the meantime I want you to know that it’s okay to forget about me because that is what I’m going to do with you.

I had planned on giving you my new address, but I’ve changed my mind and now I think that it is best if I don’t. It’s just easier this way. I am no longer your responsibility. Consider yourself set free.

I wish the very best things in life for you.

You’ll never know what you meant to me…

Your friend,

Leila

What?

That’s it?

I don’t understand!

The excitement that I had felt, instantly turns to nervousness. My stomach starts to ache and my blood begins to thunder through my ears.

This is the letter that she leaves for me?

Upon seeing the envelope, I thought that it was a goodbye letter, but never did I think it was this type of goodbye. After all of these years and all of the time that we have spent together, I am just paralyzed with disbelief.

I flip the letter over and look at the back, there’s nothing. I look inside the envelope, and again nothing. How can every word and every promise we made just be dismissed? Completely dismissed as if they never even happened or took place?

Panic floods through me and I can’t breathe. My eyes flood with tears and one drops out onto the letter.

“Sweetheart?” It’s my mother. I didn’t realize that she hadn’t left the room, and that’s when I hear the beeping from the machine that monitors my heart rate has picked up too.

“You need to leave!” I say to her without looking at her.

“What?” Confusion is in her voice, I know she doesn’t understand and I just don’t care. I don’t want anyone to know, see, or hear what I am feeling right now.

“Leave me alone!” I yell. Squeezing my eyes closed, I picture Leila in my mind. My mom lets out a sigh as she opens the door, and it closes behind her.

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.

Sobs burst out of me. I can’t stop the crying, and I don’t even care. I’m staring down at the letter reading it over and over as another tear falls and hit the paper. I fold it back up and put it in its envelope. Clutching it under my chest, I lay on it realizing that most likely this is the last thing I will ever have from her.

I just don’t understand. She has to know that I was burned in the fire pulling her out, saving her, and that every day I’ve done nothing but lay here and wait for her to come and visit me. Each day I have felt more and more anxious. What’s ironic is that somewhere, somehow, in the back of my heart, I knew she wasn’t coming. How can she do this to me? She is my best friend and I am hers. Or should I say was?

She’s going to forget about me.

I have loved her for every second of every minute of the past six years. She had to of known this. I just don’t understand.

Was I not nice enough, sincere enough, or thoughtful enough?

Is she mad because I kissed her? Did I mess things up with us by doing that?

I turn my head to lay it down on the pillow and pain streaks across my back. The skin is still so weak and sensitive. These scars are going to be an endless reminder of her, the girl that I loved who didn’t love me back.

I feel like the world is laughing at me and testing me at the same time.

My father hates me, my mother doesn’t love me enough to make my life better, Drew and I hardly ever talk anymore, I now have what is going to be the ugliest scars ever, and the one person who I thought was mine no matter what just left me—she wants to forget about me.

I cover my face with my hand, the only hand that I can use, and cry. I cry for hours.

How could she just leave me like this? She was the one person who I thought that I would always be able to count on. I never in a million years thought that this would happen.

I don’t want to be here anymore. This was the last straw. She broke me. I don’t want to be in this room, in this town, on this earth. I have never been one to give much thought to suicide, but really I just want to die. I don’t want to live anymore. I have nothing to live for. I’m not wanted or really loved by anyone. What is the point of all this? Please can’t someone just put me out of my misery?

“What is this?” Drew asks still looking over the page.

“It’s the letter that Leila left for me when she moved to Atlanta. Mom gave it to me when I was in the hospital. I had already been there for two weeks waiting for her to come and visit me.”

Reliving the way that letter made me feel has me pacing around the loft like a caged animal. I’ve never shown the letter or talked about it to anyone. But then again, who was left for me? No one.

“Why would she write this to you and why didn’t you show me this before?” He holds it up and looks dead at me.

Stopping in front of him on the couch, I throw my hands out, and give him an exasperated look.

“I didn’t know why she wrote it, that is, up until last weekend and as for not showing it to you, what was the point? You and I, we didn’t share things. We didn’t talk about our feelings. You never asked me anything about my life. It just wasn’t what we did.
She
was all I had. I laid in that hospital bed waiting and waiting for her, and she never came! Then I got this,” I say pointing to the letter.

Drew runs his hand through his hair and glances back down at the letter. “You need to start from the beginning.”

“The day before everything happened, we were down at the beach like always and she gave me this as a gift.” I walk over to the desk, pick up the journal, and wave it at him.

He recognizes it and nods at me.

“I was so moved and so in love with her that I leaned over and kissed her. That was our first kiss. I don’t know . . . I was both elated that she kissed me back and seriously pissed because she was moving away. That’s why I was so angry when I got home. It wasn’t fair. She was all I had. She was my everything.”

Drew continues to look at me and he frowns knowing where this conversation is headed.

“I got home and just needed to be by myself. But no! He had to come into my room and beat the shit out of me too. You’ll never understand what it was like for me. God, I didn’t think that life could get any worse. Mom took me to the hospital, they wrapped up my arm, and gave me some pain medication which knocked me out. I was supposed to call her that night, but I fell asleep and didn’t. The next day, I was in and out of it. Mom took me to the orthopedist to have the cast put on and sometime late afternoon I started faking taking the medicine. My arm hurt so bad but I couldn’t miss her. I had to see her. I hadn’t talked to her and we had plans to campout that last night in her house. The time finally arrived. I snuck out of the house and that’s when I found her house on fire. You know the rest from here. The paramedics came and we were both taken to the hospital. I waited and waited.”

“I knew you were waiting for her,” he says still frowning. “Did you ever ask her why she sent it?” He starts rubbing his chin, piecing it all together.

“First off, she didn’t leave me a way to; there was no phone number and no address. Second, she made it clear that she didn’t want me to contact her, and third after everything that I had just gone through over the last couple of weeks, would you have? I mean, Dad was always telling us how no one would ever love us. I felt everything had come full circle.”

“Back then . . . probably not. But now, most definitely. Go on . . .” He leans back into the couch, stretching his legs out, and crossing them at the ankles.

Taking a deep breath, I walk to the window and look out. I don’t want to see his reaction. “I paid for her to go to Parson’s.”

Drew gasps. “What! What do you mean you paid for her to go to Parson’s? All of it?”

“Yep.” Turning around to face him, his eyes are huge and his jaw has dropped open.

“Why?”

“Because it was her dream, and despite everything, I still loved her. It was her dream and I wanted it to come true. You would’ve done the same for Ali, so don’t look at me like that. Whatever, it’s just money.”

“I don’t know what to say little brother . . .”

“Nothing to say. I didn’t really intend for her to ever know but she found out the other day from the school who her “benefactor” is and that’s what started this entire shit storm.”

The look on his face is one of shock and awe. He rubs his hand through his hair and watches me as I walk back to my desk.

“You know my journal,” I pick it up and look at. “I dropped it, she found it, and read it. That’s when she showed up at your house saying she didn’t know.”

“Okay . . . go on.”

“Turns out, she didn’t know anything at all about that night. When I had found her in the house, she was already passed out and no one ever told her exactly what happened. She didn’t know that I was the one who found her and pulled her out. She didn’t know that I was burned in the fire. She didn’t know that I was in the hospital. She just thought that I didn’t care enough anymore to say goodbye to her.”

“How did she not know that? Why didn’t anyone tell her?”

“That’s the part I couldn’t wrap my head around either. She just assumed it was a fireman, and everyone else assumed she knew. It never came up in conversation. So after she went back to Aunt Ella’s, I never showed to say goodbye, and she thought I didn’t care.”

“See that’s the part, after reading the letter, which I just don’t understand. Why would she think that? She was your best friend.”

“Mom told her I was glad that she was moving away, that I could finally spend some time with other boys my age, like Grant.”

“What!” He gets to his feet and his eyes narrow. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Apparently, she did! I don’t know. The whole situation is so messed up. It has been for so long. And honestly, I can’t see Leila making all this up. That’s not who she is.”

He walks over to my desk and picks up the picture of Leila and I at prom. “You know that you are the only one for her. We can all see it, and have for years. She loves you.”

“Well, then what was that shit you and Ali were trying to pull a couple of months ago with Camille? Both of you were pushing her my way.”

He puts down the picture and looks at me. I’m angry and can feel heat spread up my neck. “Truth, she really does need friends and Ali thought that if Leila saw the two of you together she might finally step up and say something.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s terrible! Did either of you think for one minute how it might make that girl feel?” Heat spreads into my cheeks. This entire conversation with Drew is putting me on edge.

“Trust me when I say you are not even a blip on her radar. That girl has so many things that are so much larger than what you and I have going on, it doesn’t make a difference.” He shoves his hands into his pockets.

“Well, Leila doesn’t love me enough or she would have come to me and demanded answers.”

“The same could be said about you.” He pins me with a know-it-all look.

This pisses me off and I start pacing back and forth. “That’s not fair. I didn’t leave her. She left me! Don’t you remember how bad it was for me? Even if I had wanted too, I was stuck in that hospital, then the rehabilitation center, and by the time I got out, I was so emotionally and physically depressed . . . I just didn’t see the point!”