He felt the nails of his coffin driving into him, even though he’d already known that he had to let her go. Let them both go. But Harper was doing it for him. Because they both knew what the result of her reevaluation would be.
“Right, I understand,” he said, even though he didn’t understand a damn thing—especially not how he could have lost something so precious. So amazing.
Jeremy waved at him from the front door. “’Bye, Will. ’Bye, Benny.”
As Harper rolled her case away, Will climbed into the car and watched her through the window, her back straight, head high.
“Where to, sir?” Benny turned the mirror slightly to look at him.
But there was nowhere to go. Because everything Will had ever truly wanted, he’d just had to leave behind.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“We have to talk, Jeremy.”
Harper sat him down in the living room almost as soon as Will left them.
Left them.
She closed her eyes for one brief second, the impact of it hitting her as though her heart were being crushed inside her chest. There’d been something so final in their parting.
But she couldn’t think about that now. Couldn’t think about Will, couldn’t want him, couldn’t need him anymore. She had to think about Jeremy. He was her number one priority.
“You’re going to yell now, aren’t you?” Her brother slumped down into the sofa they hardly ever sat on in a room they rarely used.
It seemed like a metaphor for all the parts of her life she’d closed off when her parents died. And, like a metaphor, it was also the room Will had carried her to that morning he’d surprised her with a sexy visit. God, she really needed to stop thinking about him. Especially now that he was gone...and it felt like her heart had broken into a million, billion little pieces.
Turning back to Jeremy, she said, “Is that how you see me? Always yelling?”
“No.” His brow knitted as he thought. “You don’t yell.” Then he shrugged. “You just tell me what to do all the time.”
She did. She took him to school, to work, nudged him to do his homework, to clean his room, to go to bed because it was late and he’d be tired in the morning. But when he was with Will, they’d had fun. They’d raced around Laguna Seca a few days ago and ridden the Giant Dipper at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk a couple of weeks ago on one of Will’s fun Sunday excursions after the Saturday work on the car. Whereas she’d never even taken Jeremy to the Exploratorium.
She could suddenly see that Jeremy had been starving for some fun. Harper wondered how much more guilt—and how much more sorrow—she could handle before her heart collapsed beneath the weight of it.
“I’m not going to yell at you today, but we have to talk about your phone.”
“I know. I was just so excited. And Ronnie—he works in the supply room—drew me a map of how to get there. And it was so cool and there was so much stuff to do that I forgot the time. Until they were closing, and they said I had to leave.” He had done all that himself—found the museum, paid to get in, wandered the exhibits.
“I’m glad you had fun,” she said, and she truly was. Still, she needed him to know how serious the situation had been. “Your phone is your lifeline. You could have called Will, and he would have told Benny where you were.”
“I’ll take it next time. I promise.” He nodded expansively.
Next time? “You can’t go wandering off by yourself like that. You got lost. You need to wait for me to come with you on your next adventure.”
He frowned. “I should have had Ronnie draw me a map of how to get back, too.” Then he brightened. “I showed Benny the map, and he said I would have been fine if I’d just turned right instead of left when I came out of the museum. That’s what I did wrong. I can do it, Harper. Next time, I won’t turn left.”
He’d followed the original map. Jeremy had figured out the streets and he’d walked there. He’d made only one small mistake that had thrown him off. A simple mistake that plenty of people could have made in a part of the city that was new to them.
It was astonishing...and also horrible to realize that she, the sister who loved him and would do anything for him, was the one who didn’t think him capable.
Will did. Ronnie did. Benny did. She was the only one who doubted him.
More tears welled up and spilled over before she had a chance to stop them.
“I’m sorry, Harper. Please don’t cry.” Jeremy’s eyes grew wet, too, in empathy. That was the kind of boy he was. No, he was a young man, not a boy. But she’d never treated him that way.
Harper swiped at her tears. “I’m just glad you’re home and you’re okay. But we need to go over a couple of rules. What’s the first rule?”
When she stopped crying, he did, too. “I have to take my phone everywhere.” His voice echoed in the nearly empty living room.
They would have to start hanging out in this room again. Her mom would want that.
“And the second rule,” Harper enumerated, “is that you don’t leave work or school unless you talk to me first.”
He was practically bouncing on the sofa. That was her brother, overexcited, racing toward the next fun and interesting activity, forgetting the fright as if it had never happened. “Or Will? Can I call Will?”
Will. She’d told him she needed to reevaluate whether Jeremy should work for him. Until this moment, she’d been positive she’d never let her brother go back there. Now, she wasn’t sure what to tell Jeremy.
“For right now, let’s just keep it that you call me, okay?”
“Okay, but Will always tries to help me. Always wants me to learn stuff. Always wants me to have fun.”
She swore her heart swelled a thousand times bigger as she looked at him a long moment—really looked. Her brother had the exuberance of a child, but the look of a young man. He smiled wide, he loved big. He could forget the bad and move on to the good. She was supposedly his teacher, the person he learned from. But she’d never stopped to think that Jeremy had things to teach her, too.
Like how to stop living in the past. How to trust. And, most important, how to love without holding anything back out of fear.
“Were you scared last night?” She’d never even thought to ask. She’d just assumed. Because she’d been terrified, and because Jeremy didn’t like the dark sometimes.
“I was scared.” He nodded hard. “But then I found a cop. And he was really nice.”
He’d been scared. But she didn’t think he’d been terrified. He’d gotten through just fine. Yes, things could have gone horribly wrong. He could have met bad people. But he’d actually done quite well.
Will had always believed that Jeremy could do more than anyone expected. He’d never seen Jeremy as handicapped. Until that moment in his London flat, Will had never used the word disabled. And she’d seen then how it hurt him to say it.
Whereas she’d constantly set limitations, never let Jeremy expand, never made him test his capabilities. She’d confined her brother. And she hadn’t trusted him to learn from both his mistakes and his triumphs. She’d been afraid that Jeremy wouldn’t need her one day. So she’d forced him to need her.
It was Will’s faith in Jeremy’s abilities that had made him stronger.
And Will’s love.
Will had showered her with that love, too. Every time she’d doubted his promises, he’d made them anyway. He kept on believing in her. He’d bared his soul to her, revealed all his dark secrets, trusted her to keep them and accept him. And when she’d shut him down from the moment Benny called to say Jeremy was missing, he’d still taken care of her. Taken care of it all.
Everything was suddenly so clear. Clearer than it had ever been before.
She’d been wrong, and she needed to make some changes.
Starting now.
She put her hand over Jeremy’s. “Here’s what we’re going to do. First, we’re going out to breakfast. Waffles—what do you think?”
“Yay, waffles.” Jeremy punched the air. “Can I have whipped cream and stuff?”
“All the stuff you want.” She smiled at him, feeling her heart fill. “And after that, I have an errand to run. It might take a few hours. Can you stay home and hold down the fort?”
His eyes went wide with wonder, a look he’d probably displayed with every new and exciting exhibit he found in the Exploratorium. “All by myself?”
“All by yourself.”
She had to start trusting Jeremy.
She had to stop being afraid.
And she had to tell Will everything that was in her heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Completely hollowed out inside, Will stared at the frame in his barn. After nearly three thousand rivets, it was starting to resemble a car rather than a birdcage. Over the past weeks, they’d worked on Saturdays and saved Sundays for fun.
And his nights had been entirely Harper’s.
But he didn’t have the heart to finish the car without them. Not when it had lost its meaning.
Not when everything had lost its meaning.
Everywhere he looked, in everything he touched, he saw Harper and Jeremy. He couldn’t be here without wanting Harper. Without loving both of them.