The Promise by Melody Grace

Author:Melody Grace
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-08-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

One more day gone. One more night I was never getting back.

I would tell him, I promised myself, watching the sun rise across his body the next morning, his breath so steady, that sleeping face so unaware.

Next year.

It wasn’t far now, a week until the clocks turned over, and that fresh calendar page sat waiting, full of resolution and promise.

A week to savor him, enough to last my lifetime. A week of half-truths I couldn’t admit were lies. Didn’t the universe owe us that much, however desperate it may be?

I would tell him, soon.

Just not today.

“You’re awake.” His eyelashes fluttered, then his mouth spread in that sleepy smile. He crushed me closer and let out a yawn. “Did you sleep OK?”

“Enough.” I smiled, sitting up. In the light, I could see his room for the first time, the teetering bookcases and simple lines of his furniture and desk. A laptop, light winking, a lamp beside the desk. There were no photographs, I realized, no souvenirs. It was as blank a slate as my own attic room, before the sketches and canvas frames expanded to claim every last wall. I twisted my head to look at him, still splayed there, half-dreaming. “My parents are coming to the café today,” I said slowly. It was the first time I’d ever mentioned them to him; it felt like breaking a secret, and worse still, breaking it far too late.

Theo played with my left hand, tracing gently in the crevice between my fingers, and twisting his thumb around mine. “Is that OK?” he asked, measured.

No.

“I guess.”

I hated lying to him, hated every sharp guilty word. But still, he didn’t ask, that wasn’t his style. Instead, he just watched me, waiting for me to want to share enough that I opened my mouth and offered up my half-truths, carefully weighing every almost-word.

“I ran away,” I admitted. “Not, really. I mean, I was nineteen. An adult. I left a note . . . God, how pathetic does that sound?” I caught myself right away. “A note. But I couldn’t tell them I was going. They would only have found some way to make me stay.”

Theo kept tracing my hand, the fine fortune-teller lines of my palm. I closed my eyes. “I needed to get away, make my own life, but they don’t understand. They want to keep me safe.”

“And they’re worried about you? I know it’s a big city, and you’re far away, but . . . you can take care of yourself.” Theo’s grin spread. “You can be pretty bad-ass.”

I smiled. “It’s not so simple. After Hope . . .” I paused, my voice fading to a whisper to remember it, the months stretching in a haze of black and grey and slashes of vivid red. “I was in a bad place. So, I understand why they worry.”

“But you’re doing better now?” His voice lifted, a careful question.

I nodded and squeezed his hand with a smile. “The best I’ve ever been.”

It was true. Sure, my tumor was twisting and writhing through my brain, spreading one cancerous cell at a time.

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