Love you forever,
Andy xx
I handed the letter to Seth and curled up on the sofa, the bracelet still balled up in my fist, my arms hugging my stomach. I missed him so much. Why did he have to write me that? I couldn’t do this without him.
“Em…” Seth knelt beside me. He pushed the hair from my face, his blue eyes filled with concern. “It’s okay, Em.” He put his arms around me and whispered in my ear over and over. But it wasn’t. It would never be okay.
“It’s not okay,” I cried, pushing him away. “He’s gone and I can’t love you, no matter how much I want to. I just can’t! Everything about you makes me think of him,” I sobbed.
His hands gripped my wrists firmly as he fought me. Loving Seth meant forgetting Andy. Guilt tore through me as I began to hyperventilate.
“Calm down, Em,” he ordered, his voice thick with emotion. He held me to his chest. “Breathe. Forget about everything and just focus on breathing. Everything will be okay.”
How could he be so calm? How was he always so in control? I so badly wanted to be with him, but it couldn’t…I just couldn’t…
“Do you love me, Em?”
“It doesn’t matter!” I jerked away from him. Why didn’t he get it? “We can never happen. The memory of him will always be there, lurking in the background, as a reminder of how selfish and greedy I am.”
“Selfish?” he laughed. “You devoted your life to caring for him, Em. How is that selfish?”
I breathed in sharply as his fingers pushed my hair from my eyes. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“You didn’t ask one,” I muttered.
“Do you love me?” he whispered.
“How can you ask me that after we just buried him?” I cried.
“Because it’s what he would want me to do, Em. He loved—loves you more than anything. Knowing you’re going to be okay is the only thing that mattered to him. Your happiness was all he ever cared about. Even when he realized he couldn’t make you happy anymore.”
“How can I ever be happy again?” I whispered.
He pulled me into his arms as I cried, stroking my hair.
Chapter Thirty
Emily
Seth glanced my way and squeezed my hand. I smiled at him. We were on our way back to the beach house. It was the place I felt closest to Andy, and right then that was what I needed. Once again, Seth had dropped everything for me. I felt like I was the only thing that mattered in his eyes and that was something I could never repay him for.
Having Seth back in my life didn’t make dealing with the loss of Andy any easier, but having someone by my side, that felt my pain, did help. In his own way, I could see Seth was suffering too. It was so easy to trap myself away in my little bubble, believing that nobody else was as affected as I was. But that wasn’t true: Andy’s death had hurt lots of people, and people dealt with things differently.
With my head leaning against the window, I began reading. Every day I read through each page, some days two or three times. I was so desperate to feel closer to him and I felt like my memories—and now my bracelet—were the only ways I could do that.
October 2005. First sexual experience.
I crawled onto Andy’s bed carefully, not wanting to hurt him. He chuckled and shook his head, his dark eyes sparkling at me.
“I’m not going to break, Em,” he said.
“I know. I just don’t want to hurt you.” I kneeled over him, one leg on either side of his waist. He grinned, his hands running up over my thighs.
“I think this needs to go,” he said, tugging at the oversized T-shirt—his shirt—which ran down to my mid-thigh.
“I thought you liked this on me,” I pouted playfully, my fingers lifting up the hem.
“I like it better off you,” he murmured, eyeing my bare thighs.