5. Georgia

5

Georgia

Now

I t's nearly 8:00 p.m. by the time Auden is discharged from the hospital. The front desk was kind enough to call a cab for us, so I'm waiting with her in the small, sterile-smelling entrance of the tiny hospital. I hold her close to me and caress her back softly as she plays on my phone.

Her scans came back normal, and Ian kept his promise of no needles. I haven't seen him in hours. He disappeared quickly after the ambulance dropped us off at the emergency entrance of the hospital.

I shouldn't want to see him.

But watching him jump to action the moment Auden was injured reminded me so much of the Ian I knew all those years ago—the one who always rushed in to fix me when I felt so broken.

I'm still reeling over everything that's happened since Auden fell. I haven't had a moment to breathe, let alone worry about Ian in the hours we've been here. I'm incredibly thankful she's okay.

Now that I'm able to process everything that's happened, I can't help but feel angry—and grateful—that he came storming back into my life like he had never left and helped us during the chaos of today. The ER doctor laughed about the dramatics of it all, but he said it's always better to be safe and overreact than sorry for underreacting when it comes to head injuries and children.

Still, Ian shouldn't have this effect on me. This tug-of-war with my heart and head needs to stop. It's been six years. Whatever help he gave today doesn't negate the fact that he left me six years ago and never made an effort to come back.

I don't want him. I can't.

But I don't know if there will ever be a moment in this lifetime that I'm not entirely in love with him. And I know I'll never be loved again the way I was loved by him. The boy who saved my life in so many ways, while never letting his own light go out. We both endured so much loss in our young years. We both lost Irene, then only two years later, I lost my mother—and the version of my father I loved most. Ian was my best friend, my closest confidant. The one who I leaned on heavily on the hardest days. He was my rock in every way that mattered.

Seeing him again after six years, knowing that we share this beautiful, vibrant, amazing little girl...my head and my heart can't seem to get back on the same page.

A black car pulls up to the front and honks twice.

"Come on, Auden. Our ride is here," I tell her, helping her get to her feet and grabbing the small prescription bag the doctor left with us. Just some pain medicine to help relieve the headache she's guaranteed to have tomorrow.

"Are we finally going to the big mansion house?" she asks sleepily.

I chuckle softly as we make our way to the car. "Yes, we are finally going to the mansion. And you, my dear, need to watch your step this time!"

"I will take the stairs very, very slowly this time. I miss Horton too much when I'm away from him," she mumbles.

My eyes go wide as I process her words. I open the back of the car and help her into the seat before I fit myself in right next to her.

I forgot about the damn cat.

"Don't worry, G. I got the cat safe and sound into the house."

The sound of Ian's voice makes my head snap up. "What are you doing here?" I ask incredulously, my tone slightly angry. My heart starts doing that thing it does when I'm anywhere within five feet of this man, beating furiously against my chest bone. Clawing and biting its way out of my sternum, as if it's trying to return itself to him.

"I figured you'd need a ride back home, and Maggie at the front desk called and told me you were ready to be picked. I think you might have forgotten that cabs don't run here, and good luck getting an Uber in this tiny town," he answers as he puts the car into drive and pulls away from the hospital. "Plus, I wanted to check on my new patient," he says with a smile.

How do I know he's smiling? Because I know this man better than I know myself, and I can hear the smile in his voice. It wasn't always a romantic type of love with him; that came much later. First, he was my best friend, and we knew each other better than we knew ourselves.

"How are you feeling, Auden?" His voice is full of amusement as I catch his eyes in the rearview mirror. My body flushes all over.

"My head hurts a little bit, but I'm mostly hungry," she tells him over the music coming from the game she's playing on my phone. "The food at that place literally sucked. So much."

Ian and I both laugh, and we catch each other's gazes in the mirror again. That invisible string that anchors me to him pulls taut against my heart.

"What's your favorite food?" Ian asks her as he turns left into town, instead of turning right toward the manor house. "There isn't much open this late, but your mom and I used to love the pizza at Lucene's."

"Who's Lucene?" Auden asks as she looks up from her game and out the window. Her face illuminates with all the street signs, making her eyes sparkle more than usual. Her freckles glow different colors from the old-school neon signs hanging in almost every shop we pass.

"I actually don't know who Lucene is, but he makes good pizza. I promise." Ian winks at her in the mirror as he pulls into the small parking lot behind Lucene's Pizzeria. The parking lot is still paved with gravel, making the tires crunch loudly over them.

Ian gets out quickly and comes to my side of the car, opening the door for us. He offers me his hand, but I pointedly refuse it as I turn and help Auden out.

"One of these days, you're going to have to forgive me," he whispers in my ear as we head inside.

"Forgive you for what?" I snap back over the table once we are seated. The booths are still bright red, and the table is slightly sticky, as they always were when we were kids.

"For making the worst mistake of my life by leaving you."

Our eyes meet across the table, the silence between us screaming louder than words.

"Mama, can I have some money so I can play one of the games?" Auden asks, her eyes lit up with hope as she points to the arcade games that are still nestled in the corner.

"Here, take this and go get some quarters," Ian places a five-dollar bill on the table and starts to slide it our way, stopping halfway when he sees the expression on my face. "If that's okay with your mom?"

I take a deep breath and force a smile onto my face. "Of course that's okay. It's perfectly okay after the crazy day we've had. You were so, so brave at the hospital today, and I'm so proud of you." I place a kiss on her forehead and reach out to grab the bill from Ian. Our fingers brush, electricity pulsing up my arm and straight into my soul. I wonder if he feels it, too, as I pull away quickly. "Go win Horton something fluffy," I tell her, earning a megawatt smile in return as she walks carefully toward the games.

"She's a tough kid," Ian says fondly. "Just like her mom, or maybe like her dad?"

I take another deep breath before turning back toward him. His eyes are on Auden as she plays the claw machine behind me. He's changed over the last six years. His eyes still hold my galaxy in them, but they seem sad, distant in a way they weren't before. His dark hair is longer than it was, curling slightly at the nape of his neck, grazing the top of his ears. He's grown up.

This isn't the same boy who stole my heart all those years ago.

This version of him is foreign to me, even if my heart still beats like it knows exactly who he is.

There's a small smile tugging at the corner of his lips when he looks back at me, like he's waiting for me to say something.

"What?" I ask nervously, tucking a stray piece of hair behind my ear and glancing back at Auden. She's still at the claw machine with a look of fierce determination on her face.

"Is her dad the brave one, or did she get everything from you?" he asks again.

"He's not in the picture," I answered quickly. He flashes me a look of confusion, so I continue with the lie. Or at least the closest truth I can come up with. "It was a one-night stand. He never wanted anything to do with me, or her."

"He's a fucking idiot, Georgia."

This time I laugh loudly. I can't help myself as the stress of the day and turn of events that led me here hits. Sitting in this sticky booth with the man I'm in love with, listening to him call himself an idiot, without knowing he's talking about himself.

Because I'm too selfish of a person to forgive him and give Auden the father she deserves.

All because he left me to go live with our ghosts instead of staying with me and healing together. Leaving this town was the best decision I ever made, and I'll be damned if I let Ian's charm and gorgeous smile make me think twice.

"Look, Ian. I appreciate everything you've done for us today. I honestly don't know what I would have done if you didn't come running out of the manor when you did." I brush my hand over my face, breathing deeply as my heart shatters again with the next lie I must tell him. "But I have no interest in being here longer than I have to. I'm here to check on my father and to leave as quickly as I came. I'm not here to rekindle anything. You left me. You made that choice for us both. It's been six years, and I still haven't forgiven you for ripping my heart out and burying it with our dead. I just want to do what I came here for so I can leave and never look back. Okay?"

He leans back and brushes his hand through his hair, making it even more unruly and himself more attractive. "Yeah, okay. I get it. But can I just say one thing?" I nod at him, secretly hoping he never stops talking because the sound of his voice feels like home. "I'll never forgive myself for leaving you the way I did. There's no excuse, and any type of excuse I give will just sound like bullshit. But I never stopped loving you, Georgia. There hasn't been a single day that's gone by that I didn't want to pick up the phone and call you. Hear your voice, your laugh. Hell, I even fantasized about showing up at your doorstep, wishing you could scream and yell at me for being a piece of shit person. Anything to hear your voice again."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I loved you too much to drag you back into this," he says with a strained smile, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

"Drag me back into what? You didn't make my father ill, did you?" He shakes his head. "I didn't think so. This trip back has nothing to do with you, so it's not like you ‘dragged' me back into anything."

He sighs loudly, drumming his fingers against the table. "Do you still have nightmares? Remember the ones you used to get, after your mother died?"

The switch in conversation gives me whiplash.

I look back at Auden, a cold brush of dread seeping into my spine. My hands twist in knots on the table in front of me. "Yes," I whisper. "I remember them. Why?"

How could I forget? The image of my mother standing at the end of my bed in her white nightgown. Blood dripping out of her nose and foam oozing from her mouth— identical to the last time I saw her. Even if I had managed to forget about them, seeing her in the window earlier today would have brought back every forgotten, sleepless, horrifying night.

Ian reaches across the table, places his hand on mine, and squeezes gently, dragging my attention from my daughter to him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up. I just wondered if leaving Crane made them stop. If you had finally escaped her."

My hands clutch Ian's harder, like a lifeline only he can provide as I drown in the memories of my childhood nightmares.

"They stopped the day I walked out of those gates years ago."

Deep breath in, Georgie girl.

Nobody else has ever seen her.

Nobody ever truly believed me when I told them my mother was still walking the halls of Crane Manor, haunting me night after night until I finally left. I thought I was done seeing her, until she showed herself to me the moment I stepped out of the car today. Back on Crane soil.

"Mommy, look what I won for Horton!" Auden comes running back over to the table with a stuffed blue bunny. The smile on her face distracts from the goose-egg-sized bump on her forehead.

I clear my throat and shake Ian's hand off before she sees it. "He's going to love that, Auden." I beam at her brightly, pretending that my every breath isn't trembling with fear as I pull her into my lap.