Fall to You (Here and Now 2)

The memory flashes through my mind, sizzles. “Yes.”

“Do you know why I kissed you that night?” The blue of his irises thins as his eyes heat.

“You were trying to make me feel better about myself.”

“Not that night,” he whispers softly. “That night, I saw you laughing with the bartender and suddenly I saw you for the first time. Before that night, I hadn’t seen you as anything other than a little sister, a friend. But suddenly, something clicked and I really looked. When I dragged you upstairs that night, I wasn’t thinking about babies or the future. I sure as hell wasn’t thinking about your self-esteem. In that moment, all I wanted was to get my hands on this body, make you scream, and fuck you till you were exhausted in my arms.”

A shiver runs through me, leaving heat in its wake, and my breathing goes shallow. “But I didn’t let you do any of that.”

He flicks his tongue over my earlobe, and one hand comes to my side, his thumb skimming the underside of my breast. “I’m well aware of that.”

I arch toward his touch. “So why’d you stay with me?”

“Because it’s more than sex with us, Hanna. You’re amazing, and I fell in love with you, and I couldn’t imagine being with anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else.”

Suddenly my heart is a twisted mess and my tongue is heavy with words I can’t find. “I’m so confused.”

“I can see that.” He drops his gaze to the magazine still in my hand and sighs heavily. “I hope he’s good to you.” Then he backs away and walks out the door, leaving me scared and confused and lonelier than I’ve ever been in my life.

I DON’T want to talk to anyone, but when I get to my apartment, William is waiting on the balcony in one of my cheap plastic deck chairs with a six-pack of beer.

“What are you doing here?” I sound as exasperated as I feel. I’m pissed and hurt and just fucking exhausted. I don’t want to have a beer with Will. I just want to open a bottle of Jack and drink until I’ve forgotten my own name. Until I’ve forgotten how good she smells and how right she feels in my arms.

“Meredith is telling everyone in town about that magazine.” He pulls a beer from the pack and hands it to me. “I figured maybe you could use a beer.”

What I could use is a fucking scouring pad to scrub my brain. Every time I close my eyes, I see Hanna half nude and draped over Nate Crane. Fuck.

“It’s over.” I take the beer and sink into the chair next to him. “I thought I could win her back, but I was wrong.”

“The wedding is off?” Will asks.

I open my beer and nod. Something clicks in my mind and I release a dark laugh. “Huh. I guess you know all about some rocker asshole stealing away the girl you want.”

Will shrugs. “Maggie meeting Asher was one of the best things that’s ever happened to me. If she hadn’t, everything would have been different when Cally came to town. Cally is all that matters.”

I take a sip of my beer because it’s too dangerous to speak with this tightness in my chest.

“But Hanna’s your Cally,” Will says.

“She is,” I whisper. “And after three months of waiting for her to make a decision, watching her waste away… I thought I’d lost her. And then I get the call about her being in the hospital and I walk in and she’s wearing my ring and all doe-eyed when she looks at me and—” Again, that fucking tightness in my chest, burning behind my eyes. I’m not going to lose it here in front of Will.

“And she didn’t remember what you did to hurt her,” he supplies.

“I’d been given this second chance. She was wearing my ring.” For four weeks, those words were my mantra, and I wanted them etched into stone so I could wrap my fingers around them like a talisman, a reminder. She was wearing my ring.

“So give her some time to digest everything and have faith that she’ll choose you again.” Will clacks his beer bottle against mine. “She’s your Cally. It’ll work out.”

I wish I could be as confident as he is. But I’m in a nightmare stuck on repeat. Tonight’s argument with Hanna felt like one we’ve already had, only this time I know what she was doing with her weekends ou

t of town over the summer.

“How can I compete with Nate Crane? He could give her the world.”

“Sure,” Will says, “but you can give her the life she wants in New Hope. I think we both know which Hanna would rather have.”

“IT’S CALLED broken heart syndrome,” the cardiologist says.

Mom’s hospital room is packed this morning. Lizzy, Maggie, and Krystal are gathered around Mom’s bed, and Max and I are standing in the corner. I was surprised when he showed up at my apartment this morning, but he simply said, “Your mom needs to see us together right now,” and since I couldn’t argue with that, I followed him to his car and let him drive me to the hospital.