Page 44 of Under the Same Sky

“Shit,” Thorin reaches for me but I slap his hand away. “Reese, please don’t cry. I know tonight was a shitshow—”

“Ya think, Einstein?”

He scratches at his stubble, and lets out a sigh. “I know you’re upset, and you have every right to be—”

“Upset?” I cry, throwing my arms to the side. “I’m fucking pissed, and you,” I poke at his hard chest, “are not helping. What part of ‘there’s nothing to talk about’ is so hard to understand? I want to be left alone, Thorin. I don’t care if you’re mad that I didn’t call you all day, or let you know about my plans, and I sure as hell don’t care why you left when you did. You left, end of discussion.”

I turn my back, but his next words stop me cold. “Senior prom. I left because of senior prom.”

Well, that makes perfect sense. Leaving in a huff because of senior prom, which by the way, happened nine years ago.

“It’s not because I see you as just the woman I’m being forced to raise a baby with. In fact, I don’t see you that way at all, but yesterday, I realized the Reese I see is no longer there.”

I face him, the tears on my cheeks flowing unchecked. “Of course I’m not her anymore, Thorin. I’ve changed since then, and I’ve worked my ass off to become this version of me. A version who isn’t scared, who doesn’t apologize for who and what she is. And for your information, I happen to like who I’ve become, so if that’s the problem, if you don’t like—”

“I love this version of you.”

I snap my mouth shut. Come again?

“I left because I love a you that I don’t know, and that scares me. Hell, Reese, I’ve loved you since we were teenagers, okay? And maybe the timing of this is off, or maybe losing Ryan and Mel has something to do with it, I don’t know, but when I realized I don’t know you anymore, the guilt and the remorse I’ve kept buried so damn deep it took Ryan and Mel’s death to find it, came rushing back, and I have no idea how to deal with it.” Gone is Thorin’s stoney facade, and in its place, I find the teenage boy who saved my life. I see him there, behind the man Thorin has become, but if it’s pity he wants, he won’t find it with me.

“I don’t understand,” comes out my mouth, but deep down, I think I do.

“I blamed myself for what you did for months, maybe even years,” he says, “but then we went on our first tour, and I kind of blocked it all out. I promised myself, and you, that I wouldn’t try and find you, I wouldn’t look for you or ask Ryan and my parents about you.” He licks his lips, and wipes at something under his eye. Is he… “But, after spending time with you, I realized that I only did those things so that I wouldn’t feel the need to ask you why you did it. I never understood, Reese, and I blamed myself.”

Slowly, sluggishly, my mind starts piecing the puzzle together. Thorin never got closure after he saved me. I made sure he was never allowed to see me at the hospital, and after graduation, he went on his first tour, and I went to college. Sure, he came up in a lot of my therapy sessions, but when I was done, I left him in the past, never so much as looked him up. I may have kept his first guitar, and our lyric book, but those things were—are— reminders that I could, and would, find happiness within myself. In reality, this is something I should have considered talking to him about, under our current circumstances, but part of me was wondering if he’d let it go like I had. Apparently, I thought wrong, because the man in front of me is hurting, he carries a world of blame on his broad shoulders, and takes responsibility for a decision that was never his to make. It was mine, and I made it without thought of anyone else. I didn’t think twice, I just did it.

“Why’d you do it?” He finally asks. “Was it because of me? Did I make you do it?”

My heart lurches forward, reaching for him. His eyes grow wet, and God, it’s killing me.

“No,” I choke out, shaking my head. “It wasn’t because of you. I just couldn’t live with myself anymore, and I made a choice, a choice I learned to take responsibility for.”

“But the things I let happen to you, that made things worse.”

I want to look down, maybe side-step his statement, but there’s no way around it. I keep my eyes on him, and give him the truth. “Yes.”

Thorin hangs his head, his shoulders shake. The last time I saw him tear up even a little was at Ryan and Mel’s service, but even then it wasn’t like this. This is years of repression, years of keeping his own feelings about what happened to me, and the part he thinks he played, in a box. Now, the lid has come loose, and there’s no stuffing what he feels back inside, or ignoring the desolation I see mirrored in his blue eyes. “But, Thorin, things were so much worse than what you saw.” I swallow, and wet my lips, trying to phrase what I need to say next. “You only saw what Jessica did at school, and maybe your mom or Ryan told you about one of the camps my mother sent me to, but that was only a fraction of what was really going on.”

“Why did you—never mind, I know why you didn’t tell me, you didn’t trust me enough.” Thorin’s voice is so raw, so tormented. The only way to absolve him of his guilt is to tell him the truth, the whole truth.

“I didn’t tell anyone. Your parents and your brother only knew of one time, and maybe if my mother hadn’t found out, I would have gone to them for help, but she just,” I inhale, “went crazy, I guess, and if anyone pushed me over the edge, it was her. And then I got the letter in my locker, supposedly from you, asking if I’ll go to prom with you and I thought you remembered the promise you made when I was fourteen—”

“As long as we’re under the same sky, you’ll always have me,” he whispers, almost to himself. “And I let you down. I had no idea Jess slipped that letter into your locker back then, and if I had, I would have fixed it before you…”

Tried to kill myself.

This time, without hesitation, I step forward, and lift Thorin’s head, my palms at his cheeks. “What I did is not your fault, Thorin. You have to let it go. I did.”

“Did you hate me?”

“I thought I did,” I reply honestly. “But I could never hate you, I’ve loved you since I was fourteen, Thorin. Things just happened, and sometimes, we can’t control it, but what I did, the choice I made, I knew what I was doing, I was in control, and only I am responsible for that. Not you, or anyone else.”

“I don’t regret saving you, Reese.”

“And I’m so grateful you did, you gave me a second chance, and now I’m giving you yours. Forgive yourself, and let it go.”

Thorin stares at me, and then his mouth is on mine, the force of it unyielding, bruising. I suck in a breath, and then he’s in my mouth, and I’m holding him to me, praying that he’ll never let go. His nimble hands slip my jacket off, lift my top over my head, and we separate just long enough for me to pull his shirt over his head. Then he’s kissing me again, unclasping my bra, sliding it down my arms. I pull at the drawstrings of his sweats, and push them to the floor, feeling his stomach tighten beneath my touch. He unsnaps my jeans, helps me take them off, and lifts me in his arms. I wrap my legs around his waist, signing deeply into his mouth when his erection gets caught between us. I’m still in my underwear, but they’re soaked, and when my nipples brush against his pecs, the sound he makes is guttural. He walks us down the passage, and I mumble, “last door at the end,” between wet, hungry kisses. He lowers me onto my king-size bed, and breaks away, breathing hard and fast. His chest, glorious in its build and masculinity, moves with every unsteady inhalation, but it’s his eyes that hold me captive. Bright blue, they swallow me whole, my entire being is reflected back at me and God if it doesn’t make my heart want to burst right out of my chest.