My chest hurts. I look at him, the earnestness in his face pulling at my senses so I have only grief and regret, and an abiding uncertainty.
‘I’m not saying this is easy. We’re all grappling with this, but Christ, man, let’s grapple with it together. Stop running from us, and let us help you. Please. We love you. Grace and me, Asha and Theo—you’re part of our families. Stop disappearing and let us help you.’
None of this is new. Theo and Jagger have both said this to me a lot in the last eighteen months, and yet when I hear Jagger now it’s in light of Cora’s words.
‘I’m doing the exact opposite. I’m going home, to Sundown Creek. I’m packing up my dad’s house so I can finally move on with my life. That’s not running away; it’s confronting something I’ve been avoiding for years.’
I have been running, and they’ve been calling me on it for years, but it’s Cora’s voice I hear, Cora’s courage that forces me to stop and really listen, to understand. I’ve tried it my way. I’ve run and I’ve drunk and I’ve used every tool at my disposal to ignore what’s happening but now I need to try something different or I’m going to wind up like Cora’s dad, of that I have no doubt.
* * *
The plane will always remind me of Cora. I see her everywhere I look. I stare at the beer in front of me, open but not yet touched, and reach for my phone instead. I didn’t save the photo of her—the one photo I have of Cora, that she sent me via text. I load it up out of our message conversation now, making it the size of the screen.
My heart feels like it’s going to tear out of my chest.
I zoom in on her eyes; my gut clenches. I drop my head back against the armchair’s headrest, closing my eyes. Her eyes are still there, smiling, teasing. Then hurt, accusing, as I told her we were just sleeping together.
‘You want to push away the people who love you? Well, congratulations...you succeeded.’
The meaning of her words was obvious at the time but it’s only now, ten hours out of Sydney, closer to the States than I am to Cora, that I feel the importance of what she said, the beauty of the gift she offered, and I feel the fierceness of my rejection.
‘Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Don’t think about me. Don’t even remember me.’
As if I could ever forget her. I blink my eyes open and stare at the photo once more
, pinching out to full size so I can see her whole face, and the airline pyjamas she was wearing that night.
If I’d been punched hard in the stomach it wouldn’t have hurt more.
I’ll never forget Cora, but will she forget me? Will she look at someone else like this, make them smile, offer them her beautiful, sweet heart? God, for her sake, I hope so. Cora deserves the best, and that’s very far from what I am right now.
* * *
For someone like me, who exists partially through the medium of photography, I find it impossible to believe I didn’t take a single photo of Holden. There are a heap of him on the internet. About a week after I got back from Sundown Creek I made the mistake of googling him. Mistake because the sheer volume of photos of him with other women, strolling out of nightclubs, made my skin crawl. I promised myself I’d never google him again.
In any event, a photo of him that I took would be so different. A photo that captured his eyes specifically as they looked at me, the shadow on his chin, the unconscious shift of his lips when he was lost in thought.
Why didn’t I take a single photo?
It’s been six weeks since I saw last him.
Six weeks and neither of us has broken the agreement we brokered that last day. He hasn’t called me, he hasn’t texted me, for all I know he hasn’t even thought of me. And I haven’t contacted him either, because nothing has changed. I get the futility of it, the uselessness of trying to make this work.
He has too much to focus on, too much to overcome, and while I desperately want him to be happy, I know that happiness can’t come from me. I think about sending him a message, just to see how he’s doing, but I don’t.
Am I afraid of the answer? That if he’s gone downhill I’ll blame myself for walking away? Does he have any idea how much I miss him? How often I think about him? Does he know that I love him? In a real way, not just because sex was great, but because he’s moved into my heart and will never vacate it.
I wish I’d been clearer on that score. I wish I’d told him that I love him despite the fact I can’t be with him. I wish I’d told him that he’s worthy of love—my love, his brothers’ love, that the man who raised him loved him. I wish I’d pushed that point home to him because the idea of Holden Hart being out there and not feeling like he deserves love makes me want to scream.
My photography course starts. I concentrate on that to the best of my abilities, trying to keep Holden and memories of what we shared locked into a small part of my brain. I wonder if in time I’ll come to think of him less.
But, no. That’s not love. I love him and therefore he’s a part of me—my breath, my thoughts, my smile, my sadness. Holden is in me and he always will be.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Three and a half months after meeting Holden
SYDNEY IN SPRING can be a cranky mistress. The sky is an ominous grey, sparks of lightning flashing in the distance, a low rumble of thunder churning in my gut. I push one foot in front of the other, running a little faster, checking my watch. I’m at least a kilometre from home.