Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,117

ceramic plate. I rub my eyes as exhaustion sets in. Kravitz, Lachlin and Veronica were never stoners. They were helping her deal with her pain. Damn. Just damn. No one at school has anything on them right.

Veronica is pure beauty—her blond ringlets rest against the pillow and the soft light glistens off the strands. She’s incredibly still. So much so that it aches, and it’s like she feels my pain as her eyelids crack open.

“Hey,” she whispers.

“Hey,” I say back.

She opens the palm of her hand, her fingers weakly beckoning to me. “Lie with me.”

Anything. I would do anything for her.

Doing as I’m told, I slip off my shoes, slip into bed and close my eyes as she rolls into me and I hold her tight.

VERONICA

“You’re dying.” Mom and I sit on the beach watching the waves roll in and roll out. This is where she takes me when I dream. To the beach. Blue skies. A slight breeze. The taste of salt in the air, but today, on the horizon, there are gray storm clouds.

“I know.”

Mom turns her head toward me. “No, V. I need you to understand. This is real. This isn’t a decision you can take back. You need to tell your father. I know you think you’re okay with dying, but you aren’t. You’re afraid.”

“I’m not. I know what I’m doing.”

Warmth along my other side and it’s not from the sun. My skin tickles. The pleasing kind. A caress. I look and there’s Sawyer. He’s holding me, in my room, in my bed. His fingers run through my hair and I love the gentle pull. “What do you know?”

“That I’m dying.”

“Who are you talking to?”

“My mom.” I glance back at her and she’s watching me as if she’s curious. The wind blows through the palm trees and through her hair. “She never left me.”

“I promised I wouldn’t,” she says. I smile as the fuzzy feeling associated with Mom overwhelms me, but Mom frowns. “I wish you had more time. I wish you could have what I had.”

“What did you have?” I ask, confused, as I have everything I need.

There’s a gentle tug on her lips. “College. Oh, V, you’d love college. I know your father has given you a ton of freedom, but it’s a different taste of freedom there. You get to learn about all the things that fascinate you while trying to pin down who you are without anyone else in your way. And then the feeling of working your first real job—the one you know you were born to do. I want you to laugh. The type of laugh that only comes with experience. The one that is drawn through years of understanding that life is so precious and that laughter is the best medicine for the soul.”

“I laugh now.”

Mom tilts her head as if I don’t understand. “And then I want you to love.”

“I do,” I whisper.

“Not just family or friend love, but soul-mate love. The love your father and I had.”

Have. She’s still here. Their love hasn’t died. “I do love.”

“Who do you love?” Sawyer draws my attention back to him, and I brush my fingers along his strong jaw. I enjoy how he moves closer, as if my touch is water on parched land.

“You.”

“Me?” His blue eyes dance yet there is pain in them. Pain I wish I could take away.

“Yes, you.”

He rests his forehead against mine as his hands tenderly slide along my back. “I love you, too. So much it consumes me at times. Scares me, too.”

“Why does it scare you?” I ask.

“Because I’m broken.”

I shake my head. “You’re not. You’re just a little lost, but that’s not broken. But you’re finding your path. You just have to learn how to be the you I see with everyone else.”

“I’m not you,” he whispers. “I don’t have your courage.”

“Sure you do. You just misunderstand courage.”

“How?”

“You think you have to take care of everyone else,” I say. “You think that’s courage. You have to learn there’s a difference between loving someone and taking care of them. They aren’t one and the same.”

“He’ll take care of you, V,” Mom warns, and I flip my head back in her direction. I blink repeatedly as the wind has picked up on the beach and the thunderheads grow in sizes and roll toward us. “If you get sick, he’ll stay by your side until the very end, and that will break him. It’s what his problem is—he loves everyone else so deeply that he