After our night at the cliff, I felt insanely closer to Ella. It was like we’d clicked on many different levels. I still don’t know how it was possible that I’d met someone like her, let alone called her on the hotline, too.
When Ella said it was fate, I just bit my damn tongue. But maybe she was right. And maybe if I’d never called that hotline, I’d still have been inspired by Ella to become a better version of myself. It was like I’d been drowning and she’d come along and saved me. But she wouldn’t have agreed with that summation. She’d say that she’d encouraged me to save myself.
And she was right. Because I had. But she’d been the catalyst, that was for damn sure.
And maybe, just maybe, I had found some small way to save her, too.
“You ready, pretty girl?” I said, slinking her hair away from her neck. I restrained myself from kissing her soft skin because then we’d never leave the car.
She gave me that adorable smile that softened my insides. “Let’s go.”
She led me toward the row of tombstones across the way until she found her brother’s.
She smoothed her hand across the stone where his name had been etched. And then she sank down to her knees and I followed suit.
“Hey, Christopher, I want you to meet someone very special. His name is Daniel Quinn.”
I had trouble finding my voice. Suddenly this had become very personal and very real. I squeezed her hand. “Hi, Christopher.”
“You would love him, Chris.” She swiped a tear from her cheek and I felt the back of my eyes prickling. “And guess what? The dude will play Minecraft with me for hours.”
I grinned at her comment. “She practically forces me to, Chris.”
We sat on the ground for maybe twenty minutes more while she told Christopher about school, the suicide hotline, how we’d met, and how the family was holding up.
As we headed out of the graveyard, my stomach tightened in anticipation for our next destination. I hadn’t been there since the funeral, and I didn’t know how I was going to deal with it now. But I had Ella with me. She provided me with strength and hope and incentive to face my demons head-on.
The ride to Lakeside Cemetery was mostly quiet. It was a comfortable silence as Ella held my hand and sang softly to the songs piping through my stereo system. It reminded me how much I looked forward to plugging in my earbuds and working in my garage later. Ella kept pushing me to fix Fire so we could take her for a ride.
My parents were out of town for the weekend and Ella planned on staying the night. And it felt so damn good to have her with me.
As I pulled in the driveway of the cemetery, I inhaled a deep breath. I knew the section and lot number, but it hadn’t occurred to me that the patches of grass would have filled in around his plot and the tree planted near it would’ve grown taller.
“Do you want me to wait in the car for a bit to give you time to yourself?” Ella asked. I wanted to say, No, please, I need you. But the fact of the matter was that I did need to do this by myself.
She traced her thumb across the inside of my wrist, over the tattoo I’d gotten from Bennett at Raw Ink the weekend before. It was simplistic—a baseball with Sebastian’s number 7 inked inside. But it was a huge and powerful step for me—to acknowledge him in a way that hadn’t brought forth a tremendous amount of guilt.
This was getting easier. Better. I was finally able to breathe more freely.
I nodded. “Give me a ten-minute head start.”
As soon as I saw his name imprinted in the stone along with his birth and death dates, my legs practically gave way. It all came rushing back to me, and I heard a roaring in my eardrums that ended up being my own heartbeat.
I remembered how they’d lowered his casket into the ground to be sealed for eternity and how the very idea of that had been staggering. Now I sank to the ground and allowed all of the memories to flood my brain.
How none of my classmates seemed to be able to make eye contact with me that day. Maybe they sympathized or even pitied me. And they should have, because I was pretty damned pitiful. I was lost and broken and hadn’t even known how I’d get through the rest of the day.
The rest of any day going forward.
“Bastian, I loved you like a brother,” I told him. “I’m so sorry. So damn sorry that you’re not here anymore. And for as long as I live I will never forget you—you’ll always be with me.”
Shudders rolled up my back and pulsed through my shoulders until all of that emotion transformed itself into ugly sobbing. My whole body shook as I remembered everything.
Every damn thing. Just like Ella had encouraged me to do.
“But I’ve got to move on. If anything, to honor you,” I panted out. “Because right now, I’m just doing whatever it takes to get by.”
I placed my head in my hand and rocked forward. “It’s fucking hard trying to be you. But you were good at it, Bastian. And I need to get better at being my own damn self.”
I felt Ella’s heat behind me, so I tugged her onto my lap, encircled her in my arms, and held her tightly against me. “Thank you,” I said against her ear, more than once.
I felt Ella’s tears dripping onto the back of my hands, her gaze fixed solidly on Sebastian’s grave.
“Thank you, Sebastian,” she whispered. “For bringing Quinn into my life.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Ella
At Quinn’s childhood home, we cooked burgers and ate them on the deck along with the margaritas he’d concocted for us, with salt around the rims. We sat together in a reclining chair, me propped between his legs, looking out at the view together.
His parent’s property extended into the woods and when you sat back here you felt like you were in a secluded oasis. Even though Quinn grew up lonely in this house, its gardens that were filled with lush hydrangea bushes, dogwood trees, and weeping willows were impressive. Lined along the back of the land were strapping pine trees that acted as a barrier between properties.
Between us and the outside world. And there was no other place I’d rather be. Maybe tonight could be the beginning of new memories for Quinn. For us. Here. Together.
Quinn’s mouth swept over mine while the crickets chirped, coyotes howled, and the fireflies lit up the night sky. I licked the salt from his lips and tasted the tequila on his tongue and felt so relaxed and at peace with his arms around me. Protecting me. Keeping my heart safe.
But he didn’t own me completely. Not yet. Nor I him. Not according to the conditions he had set before he’d made his confession to me. And mine to him.
But if he wanted to take me right here in this chair, I wouldn’t object.
He removed the margarita from my hand and set it next to his on the side table. Then he flipped me around so I was facing him, my legs dangling on either side of his thighs.
“Before we head out in the morning,” he said, nuzzling my chin, “would you mind stopping at my aunt and uncle’s?”
“I’d love to meet them,” I said, honored that he’d even ask. I knew how much they meant to him and now that he’d begun forgiving himself, maybe he’d let them back into his life.
He cupped my cheeks and stared deeply into my eyes. I felt a fluttering in my chest, like a hatchling testing its new wings.
Brushing his thumb against my lips, he said, “Gabriella Abrams?”
He was distracting me with the lips and the eyes and the breaths, so my voice faltered a bit. “D . . . Daniel Quinn?”
“I’m in deep. So very deep,” he whispered against my lips and a bolt of lightning shot straight to my core. “With this girl—who rocks my world with her amazing lips and her brilliant mind and her generosity.”