Until Harry (27 page)

“Are you hearing this bullshit?” Lochlan snapped at our uncle. “How can you stand there and be so calm when she is talking about leaving the country on her fucking
own
when she is in this state of mind?”

My uncle locked eyes with Lochlan. “Talking her out of it was the first thing I intended to do when she mentioned it, but I saw in her eyes that she was leaving here whether we wanted her to or not. It’s be on board and help her or—”

“Or nothing!” Lochlan snapped. “If she leaves, I’m fucking done. I refuse to worry myself sick over her. I’ve done it all m
y life.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said to my brother. “I never once asked you to bother yourself with worrying about me. I never asked for anyone to do that, but you all did it, and I know it’s because you love me, but you can’t protect me from everything. I have to d
o this.”

“Why?” my father shouted. “
Why
do you have to leave?”

My shoulders slumped. “It’s too hard.”

“You will get over your crush on Kale—”

“It’s not a crush. I love him!” I shouted.

My father narrowed his eyes. “You’re twenty and you’ve never had a relationship. What do you know about love?”

My father’s words cut me deeply.

“I know that watching him be with someone else is
killing
me, do you understand that?” I asked, my voice tight with emotion. “It. Is. Killing. Me.”

“She’s in a state over Lavender and—”

“Nanny, stop,” I said, cutting her off. “I’m not blinded. I’m seeing clearly and I need to leave here.”

“If you leave here, Lane,” my father said coldly, “don’t come bloody back!”

With that said, he left the room, leaving me staring after him with fear swirling around in my stomach. I looked to Lochlan and Layton when they stood up.

“Please
,
”
I pleaded. “I don’t want to leave and be fighting.”

“Then stay and there won’t be a problem,” Layton bit out.

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

“Then I have nothing else to say to you.” Layton walked out, and I looked from him to Lochlan, who was staring at me with a pain in his eyes that I didn’t understand.

“If you leave here, and you cause a rift between all of us, then I am done. Fucking
done
.”

My lower lip wobbled when my mother and grandmother stood and left the room without a word in my direction. Not a curse word, not a farewell. Nothing.

“Oh, my God,” I breathed. “They hate me.”

I felt my uncle’s arms come around me. “They don’t hate you. They’re hurt and scared for you. I told you, you’re precious to us all.”

I hugged my uncle tightly. “They don’t understand me.”

“They will, just give them time.”

I nodded and breathed my uncle’s scent in, remembering everything about him in that moment because I didn’t know when I would next be able to hold him like this.

Do I have everything?
I thought to myself as I scanned my parents’ sitting room for the millionth time. I was flying out to America today to start a new life, and I was a nervous wreck. I was so emotional. Breaking the news to my family had been an utter disaster. I couldn’t lie: it hurt that they didn’t even want to say goodbye to me, but I knew how upset and worried they were for me. They just couldn’t get on board, and the Edwards stubborn trait reared its ugly head when I wouldn’t change my mind for them.

It didn’t help that I had buried my sweet Lavender only a few short hours ago and was experiencing a pain that I had never known until they lowered her six feet below the earth. My trip was a great distraction, though, and I immersed myself in it instead of thinking about my friend.

“Money,” I mumbled to myself, and checked my personal
belongings once more.

My Uncle Harry would be by soon to bring me to the airport, and he would run through a checklist with me. He had travelled hundreds of times and would catch something if I forgot it.

“Lane?” Kale’s voice suddenly called out.

Oh, bollocks.
I paled.
What the fuck was he doing here?

I turned and looked at Kale with wide eyes when he walked into the sitting room. His eyes went directly from me to the two large suitcases that were next to me. He stared at them, hard, before he lifted his gaze to mine.

“What are they for?” he asked, frowning.

Please,
I silently pleaded,
go away.

“What are you doing here?” I asked, dodging his question.

He blinked his whisky-coloured eyes that I loved so much. “Lochlan called me and told me you needed to talk to me and I had to come over right now.”

Anger surged through me. “Lochlan is a fucking bastard!” I growled.

How fucking dare he,
my mind raged.

Kale refocused on my suitcases. “Lane, what are they for?”

Fuck.

“I . . . I have to leave.”

Kale didn’t move an inch. “I don’t understand,” he said after a few moments. “I mean, I get what this looks like, what it is, b
ut
why
?”

I looked away from him. “You know why.”

He sucked in a breath. “Please don’t tell me this is because
of
us
?”

Was there ever an “us” to begin with?
my mind taunted.

“I’m leaving because I need space, a lot of space, to clear my head. It’s been clouded with you for years, and I just need to get you out of my system. Lavender is gone too, and I just can’t be here without her. I buried her today and it’s hitting me that she is gone. I need to get out of here.”

The muscle in Kale’s jaw rolled back and forth as I spoke. “Where will you go?” he asked.

“New York,” I swallowed. “I found an apartment with cheap rent in a good neighbourhood.”

I watched as Kale let my words sink in. “America?” he whispered. “You’re leaving for
America
?”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, but I have to leave.”

“And I only find out now?” he angrily snapped. “Right before you walk out the door to up and move out of the country, you decide to fucking tell me?”

Anger was good; I could fight it with my own.

“Yeah, like how you knew Drew was pregnant for weeks and never told me until a few hours
after
I found out my best friend was dead?”

Kale reeled back like I hit him. “That’s different.”

“How?” I snapped.

“Because I was figuring out a way to tell you without hurtin
g you.”

It was always going to hurt. Always.

“You’re having a baby with someone else. How could that ever not hurt me?” I asked as my shoulders slumped.

Kale licked his lip, and instead of answering my question, he said, “This is so fucked up.”

Finally, something I agreed with.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “It is.”

He remained silent in the doorway of the sitting room, blocking my exit. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and checked the watch on my wrist. When I saw the time, I cursed. “I’m not going to make my flight if I don’t leave now,” I said to Kale. “
I have che
ck-in and security to get through, and my gate opens in an hour.”

He stood rooted to the spot.

“Kale,” I said with impatience. “Move.”

“No,” he replied firmly. “I won’t. We can figure this out. You don’t have to leave the bloody country, Lane.”

I didn’t want to hear any of this, so I gripped my cases and tugged them over to the doorway and tried to get by his lean body. I angrily shoved at his chest when he wouldn’t budge.

“Move!” I pleaded.

“Lane!” he shouted and grabbed hold of my arms. “What the hell do you want from me? Nothing I do is good enough for you. What the hell do you want?
Tell
me, because I don’t fucking know.”

I dropped my guard and unleashed the feelings I’d bundled deep down for years.

“You, Kale!” I bellowed. “I just want
you
!”

Kale stumbled back a step or two from me like my words hit him with the force of a train. When he balanced himself, he stood motionless as he stared at me. The silence between us was deafening, but I used it to get everything I had wanted to say all my life off my chest. I needed to tell him how I felt, even if it meant the end of everything.

“I’ve always wanted you, but I couldn’t have you,” I cried, breaking down as fat tears fell from the brim of my swollen eyes and rolled down my flushed cheeks. “I have to leave. It’s ripping me apart watching you be happy with someone else. I want you to be happy, I swear I do, but it’s hurting me that I’m not the woman making you smile. I’m so tired of being sad, Kale.”

Kale didn’t speak; he just continued to stare at me.

“I love you. I’ve always loved you . . . just not in the way you love me.” I looked him in the eye. “I’m
in
love with you. I have been forever.”

Kale opened his mouth to speak, but when nothing came out, he closed his lips.

I held my hand up. “You don’t need to say anything – you don’t even need to feel any type of way about this,” I assured him. “This isn’t your issue; it’s mine.”

Kale blinked his eyes a couple of times.

“You love me?” he whispered, his eyes wide and distant.

I swallowed. “Yes, I love you.”

Kale blinked his eyes back into focus and trained his gaze on me. “But . . . but you told me it wasn’t like that between us – you told me it wasn’t. I asked you, and you told me no. You told me no.”

My heart shattered once again.

“I was terrified what I felt was wrong. I tortured myself for years because I thought I was dirty for loving a person who everyone considered my brother.” I cast my eyes downward to try and gain control of my tears; if I didn’t look at him maybe I wouldn’t hurt as bad.

“We have been around each other since the day I was born. You were the first man that wasn’t my father to hold me.
I k
no
w y
ou were little too, and at that time it was friends
hip th
at sparked, but it changed for me, Kale. I’ve loved you since t
hat ni
ght wh
en I was ten years o
ld and you slept outside my wardrobe all night with a baseball bat to keep the monsters away.
I ju
st didn’t realise you keeping them away would awaken new ones with
in me.”

I could tell by the look on his face that he was in shock. He couldn’t begin to think about the weight of my words until he had time to process what I was telling him. He needed space, and I was going to give it to him.

“You told me no,” he whispered.

I sobbed when his eyes filled with water.

“You told me no. I wanted you, and you told me no. I hurt when you refused me your heart, God knows.” He wiped his tears as they fell onto his cheeks. “I hurt so bad, Lane, but I learned to live with it. I learned that there was never going to be a Kale and Lane together in the way I wanted. I learned to love you without needing you. I learned to move on from you.”

I didn’t think I could hurt more than I already did, but hearing the words “move on” come from Kale broke me into a million pieces. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.

“I’m with Drew, and I love her. She is an amazing woman, and she’s stood by me for as long as I can remember.” I looked up as he spoke, even though it was killing me. “I’m going to have a baby with her, I’m going to marry her one day. But I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at her and feel the way you made me feel.”

“Made”, not “make”. Past tense.

“Kale, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, and gripped onto the arm of the sofa next to me to keep from falling to my knees.

“I’m sorry too,” he replied. “You have no idea how much.”

He took a step backwards, then another, until he was out in the hallway.

“Take care of yourself, okay?” He swallowed. “I’ll always be here if you need me.”

He turned then and walked out of my life, destroying what was left of my heart in the process. Before the hall door clicked shut,
I h
eard him say three words that would haunt my dreams every night for the next six years.

“Goodbye, Laney Baby.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Day four in York

H
ey, Lav,” I said, smiling down at the picture of my old friend on the front of her beautiful grey marble headstone.

I reached out and brushed my thumb over the image, then sat down on the cold grass of her grave and criss-crossed my legs.
I p
laced the bouquet of lilies I brought her in front of the cute little ornaments on her grave and sat, simply staring at her picture.

“I’m sorry this is only my second time to come and visit you,”
I b
egan, then frowned, guilt gripping me. “After your funeral things kind of went to hell.”

I could practically hear her voice in my head say,
“No shit,
Sherlock
,”
and it made me smile.

“Things with Kale went really bad, Lav, and then they went even worse with my family when I packed up and high-tailed it out of here.” I swallowed and looked down at my hands. “I ran away and stayed away for six long years.”

I sighed and shook my head.

“I was so heartbroken when I found out you died, and then I found out that very day that Drew was pregnant with Kale’s baby. It was all too much, and I figured if I was thousands of miles away, it would somehow help, but it didn’t. My mind is my own worst enemy. Even though I couldn’t see Kale, I would envision him and Drew together with their baby all the time, and it killed me.” I frowned deeply. “When I wasn’t thinking about them, I was thinking about you and what would have happened if you hadn’t died. I don’t think you would have let me leave . . . I don’t think leaving would have even been an op
tion if you had still been here. Losing yo
u pushed me over the edge, Lav.”

I licked my dry lips and looked back up to Lavender’s
headstone
.

“Everything ended up being a nightmare, though. Things panned out worse than I ever could have imagined. Kale’s poor baby boy died, and now he is alone. I can sense the change in him. I see it in his eyes. He’s like me, just existing, and I hate that. I don’t want him to feel like that because I know how empty and cold it is.”

I picked a few blades of grass from the ground and broke them up with my fingers.

“I think about you all the time too, Lav,” I said, just in case she thought I didn’t. “You’d know what to do if you were here; you always had the best advice.”

I glanced around me then, checking whether anyone was close to me. I was glad when I saw there was no one around; it made me feel better knowing my conversation with Lavender was private. Talking to her made me feel better. Even if she didn’t reply back to me, I knew she was listening.

I could feel her.

“Are you with my uncle?” I asked in a whisper. “If you are, can you tell him that I really miss him?” I smiled as a cool breeze swirled around me. “I think I’m still in a state of shock, because I have moments where I completely forget that he is gone, then I realise he is, and my heart breaks all over again.”

I rubbed my nose with the back of my hand. “I thought burying you was the hardest thing I ever had to do, but my Uncle
Harry’s
death hurts on a whole other level. He was all I had from home after I left, and now he is gone.”

I rubbed my eyes.

“I made things right with my family again. Being away from them, from here, was solving nothing. It was only causing more unnecessary heartache. And after all that shit that went down with Jensen when I was a kid, I really shouldn’t have upped and left the country in the first place. Layton told me how much they would worry for me, but I didn’t listen. I’m home now, though, and I’ve made things better.”

I sighed and pushed loose strands of hair out of my face.

“I’ve yet to have my proper talk with Kale, and I’m honestly quite scared about it. I have absolutely no idea what will happen after we do talk, and the not knowing is terrifying, but no matter what happens, we need to clear the air. He needs to know how I still feel about him, and he needs to know why I couldn’t be here anymore.”

I was silent for a long time after I finished speaking. I just sat there as still as a statue while the magnitude of loss swept over me. It was a part of life, but it sucked. I was grateful to finally be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. I needed my family now – I saw that clearly. Their love and concern wasn’t overbearing anymore. It was comforting.

I wasn’t staying to please anyone else, I was doing it for myself, and I couldn’t help but smile because of my uncle’s sneaky hand in it. I’d do right by him. I’d talk to Kale because I needed to speak to him for
me
, not for an inheritance. At the thought of Kale, I looked in the direction of Kaden’s grave, and I froze when I saw who was standing before it.

Drew.

I watched her for a moment, and before I knew it, I was on my feet and walking towards her. I had no idea what I was going to say to her, but I needed to say something. Anything.

I approached her with the gravel crunching under my feet.
I s
tood a few feet from her and exhaled a deep breath. “Hey, Drew,” I said softly.

I startled her, because she jumped and looked at me with surprised eyes. “Lane?” she breathed, and placed a hand on her chest. “You scared me.”

“I’m sorry.” I frowned. “I thought you heard me walking up.”

She shook her head. “I was in a world of my own.”

I shoved my hands into my coat pockets. “I was visitin
g Lavender
and saw you down here. I wanted to come and say hello.”

She flicked her eyes over my shoulder before sliding her eyes back to mine. “I never got a chance to say it, but I’m sorry about your friend. Kale told me how devastated you were when she died. He said he lost you that day in the hospital.”

I stared at her, surprised she’d revealed that to me.

“He said that?” I questioned.

Drew nodded. “He used to have nightmares about it. He’d sit up in the middle of the night apologising to you and trying to
con
sole you, but then he’d wake up and realise you weren’t there.”

My stomach churned because I knew that he had been trying to make amends and comfort me because that was when he had told me he and Drew were going to have a baby together.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Drew blinked. “What for?”

“For being on his mind when he was with you.”

Drew smiled then, and I couldn’t help but notice how pretty she was. She was older now, but she was also still the nine-year-old girl I’d first met in the school playground all those years ago.

“Lane, you were always on Kale’s mind. He’d talk about you without realising what he was doing. We’d be watching a film or having a random conversation, and you’d pop into his head, and everything would become about you.”

Shame filled me.

“I’m so sorry.”

She laughed. “Why are you sorry? You couldn’t help that he thought about you.”

I knew that, but I felt guilty all the same. “I owe you a massive apology, Drew,” I said, keeping my gaze on hers.

She blinked her emerald-green eyes. “What for?”

I swallowed. “For how I treated you growing up when you were nothing but sweet to me. I was petty, childish and plain horribl
e t
o you for no other reason than you had Kale. I was out of order t
o e
ver be rude to you, and I should have known better. I’m so sorry; I hope you can forgive me.”

Drew stared at me for a moment, and then the corners of her eyes creased as she smiled. “You don’t have to be sorry.”

My mouth fell open, and it caused her to laugh.

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Of course I do. I was awful t
o you.”

“I forgave you years ago.” She shrugged. “You were heartbroken, and I now know that people do things beyond their control when they are heartbroken.”

I looked at Kaden’s picture.

“He was a little stunner, Drew. You and Kale created someone incredible, and I’m so sorry that he died.”

“He’s still with us.” Drew looked from me to Kaden’s picture on his headstone, and she smiled. “He was a hoot – you’d have love
d him.”

“I would have,” I said quickly.

She sighed. “I miss him every day. He’d have been nearly six if he were alive now.”

“Six,” I whispered.

“He was a mini Kale,” she mused.

I smiled. “Kale showed me videos and pictures, and I said Kaden was the double of him, but he was adamant that he looked like you.”

That made Drew chuckle, and then a long stretch of silence unfolded before Drew looked at me and said, “You need to hel
p him.”

I blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Kale,” she said. “You have to help him. I’ve tried for years to help him find peace about losing Kaden, but he is trapped in time. Every day it’s like he relives the day our son died. It took time, but
I now relive th
e other memories we shared with o
ur boy. I remember the good times. When I thi
nk of him, happiness fills me, but I know when Kale thinks of him, he’s filled with sadness.”

“I don’t know how to help him,” I admitted. “He isn’t the same Kale I knew. Too much has changed between us.”

To my surprise, Drew touched my shoulder and said, “The pair of you are two sides to the same mirror. You’re the same but reflect different things. You
know
him, Lane, better than anyone. If anyone can help him, it’s you.”

I didn’t know if her faith in me was well placed.

“I’ll always love Kale, Lane,” she continued, “but he was never mine.”

My hands began to shake. “Of course he was.”

She shook her head. “He was yours. He just didn’t know it.
I k
new it, though, and I fought tooth and nail to have him when I knew I should have let him go to be with you. He chose you over me, and I know that if I’d never gotten pregnant with Kaden, he wouldn’t have stayed with me as long as he did. Kaden bonded us together, but our son was never going to
keep
us together. We loved each other, but he loved you more.”

“Drew—”

“The night of your uncle’s birthday party, when I threatened you to leave him alone, I followed him back to your house, an
d I heard him tell you he lov
ed you and that he wanted to be with you.”

Shock tore through me.

“You did?” I whispered.

She nodded. “Instead of being mad at him, I started to hate you like you hated me. I hated you because you had his heart and I could never get it, and you hated me because I had his body an
d attention.”

I didn’t know what to say so I stared at Kaden’s headstone.

“I can’t believe things have wound up this way,” I said after a few minutes of silence.

Drew chortled. “Trust me, I’ve thought that for
years
.”

“I’m glad we’re talking about this, though,” I said to her. “I ran away to America to escape these kinds of conversations.”

“How did that work out for you?” she asked, sarcasm laced throughout her tone.

I laughed. “Not good. I still feel the same as I did six years ago.”

“
Tell
Kale that then, Lane,” she pressed. “Don’t leave anything to chance. You don’t know what’s around the corner for anyone. You could be here one minute and gone the next.”

I nodded. “I thoroughly believe that.”

“I’m sorry about your uncle,” Drew said, as if she sensed me thinking of Harry. “He was a sweetheart and was great with Kaden when Kale brought him around.”

I smiled. “I’ve no doubt. He was brilliant with me and my brothers when we were little. I think that he spoiled us because he never had any kids of his own.”

Drew linked her arm through mine. “I want to be your friend. I want to get to know the Lane that Kale always went on about, because she sounded pretty cool. A little crazy, but still pretty cool.”

I laughed as I turned to her and gave her a tight hug. When we separated, Drew walked up to Kaden’s headstone and kissed his picture. “See you later, sweetheart.” She turned to me and winked. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I nodded. “I won’t. You’ll see more of me, I promise.”

Drew left then, and I could have collapsed with the weight that lifted off my chest. Never in a million years would I have thought a conversation with her could turn out that way, but I thank God that it did, because I didn’t realise how much I needed to resolve things with her.

I looked at Kaden’s sweet picture once more before I turned and walked back up to Lavender’s grave, where I retook my seated position on the grass.

“Dude,” I breathed, “I just made up with Drew Summers.”
I s
hook my head in disbelief. “She wants to be my friend and wants to get to know me. She wants me to help Kale too – can you
believ
e
that?”

I exhaled a deep breath because
I
still couldn’t quite believe it.

“Lane, is that you?”

I looked over my shoulder when a man called my name.
I p
ushed myself to my feet and brushed my clothes down when I saw a familiar face walking towards me.

“It
is
you,” he said, smiling wide, his eyes gleaming.

I gaped at him in utter shock. The moment he smiled, I knew exactly who he was. There was only one person, besides Kale, whose smile I thought was stunning, and this man was rocking it.

“Daven?”
I gasped. “Daven Eanes?”

He gestured to himself with the large bouquet of flowers he had in his hand.

“The one and only,” he chuckled.

It was the strangest thing, but I felt like I needed to hug him, so that was exactly what I did. I moved to him, threw my arms around him and hugged him tightly. For a few moments he did nothing, but he eventually hugged me back, and laughed when I stepped away from him with wide eyes.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” he mused.

I blinked. “I feel like I have, I haven’t seen you since . . .”