respond, just looks at where Brent’s hand connects with mine.
With a heavy sigh, Brent leans in and kisses my forehead. “I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says, but I haven’t taken my eyes off Leo. It’s as if it physically pains him to see what he’s seeing.
“Okay,” I say to Brent and squeeze his hand once before letting go. I watch until he’s in his truck and the truck is out of the driveway before sitting down on the porch swing next to Leo. “You came back early.”
“Yep.” His feet are planted to the floor, so there’s no swing in the seat. His back is hunched, head between his shoulders, as he stares at his hands. His hands are big, bigger than Brent’s, and I mentally compared them the first time Brent took mine in his. I liked Leo’s hand more. The way it fit. The way it felt. “How was it?” Leo asks, turning his head slightly. He won’t meet my eyes, and it’s… it’s terrifying.
“It, uh…” I blow out a breath. “It wasn’t what I was expecting.”
Leo’s eyes widen when they lock on mine. “Did that fucker do—”
“No,” I cut in, wincing at his curse. “I just… I wanted…” A million thoughts run through my mind, but I’m having a Leo moment. I know what I want to say, but I can’t seem to verbalize it. “Wait here, okay?”
Eyebrows arched, he nods once. When I get in the house, Papa’s on the couch, half-asleep. “Papa,” I say from behind the couch, my hand on his shoulder as I lean over, kiss his cheek. “I’m home. You can go to bed now.”
He pats my hand. “Okay, baba. Goodnight.”
Up in my bedroom, I unpin the photograph from the corkboard and run back down to the porch. Leo is precisely where I left him, how I left him. I hand him the picture before sitting down. “This,” I tell him, bringing my legs underneath me as I sit sideways to face him. “I wanted to feel this.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Leo
I’m staring at a picture of the water tower back home. It’s taken from the ground, just as it comes into view when you walk toward it from the hole in the fence—something Mia and I had done too many times to count. I haven’t seen it in years. Not since the last time we were there. It didn’t feel right to me—to be there without her.
“I wanted to feel this,” Mia says.
The breath I release is like loosening a valve: slowly, slowly, slowly.
“The way I felt with you up there, the nerves and the butterflies and the constant waiting for the next moment of the same nerves and the same butterflies… that’s what I wanted to feel tonight, and I didn’t.”
My eyes drift shut at her words, like an accusation, a poison-tipped arrow aimed right at my heart.
“And it scares me, Leo. I worry that I won’t ever be able to feel that way with anyone ever again. And I hate it. I hate that the person I feel that way about is you. Because I won’t ever be able to shake how it never even began before it all ended, and I’ll never forget how it ended.”
My eyes snap open, but I can’t stand to look at her, to see the pain and devastation in her eyes—eyes that lead to a false nirvana. “Do you have a pen?”
“What?”
“Do you have a pen?” I repeat, louder, clearer.
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a pen, handing it to me. I flip the picture over, put pen to paper, but no words come to mind. Or maybe too many do. “When I was little…” I start, pushing through the sharp ache in my chest. “I had problems expressing my feelings. I let my emotions take control, but I’d never do anything about it until it was too late. I’d have these… outbursts.” Mia’s breathing becomes shallow, but she doesn’t say a word. There’s nothing to say. So she listens. “My mom, when she was alive—” My voice cracks, and I clear it, still unable to look at her. “She’d give me these photographs. Most of them were of my family, some were just random, and she… she asked me to write three words on the back of them; adjectives, emotions. Whatever it was to describe how I felt looking at those pictures.” I lick the dryness off my lips. “One of the first days you were at the house, I took a picture of