“That’s not funny.”
His face crumpled. “I would have never let them embarrass you at prom, Erin. I agreed to try to get you to like me and to try to get you to prom. I never agreed to let them humiliate you.”
“Not now,” I said. “Wait until you’re feeling better.”
“I need to know that you understand. No, more than that. I need you to believe me. I agreed to get closer to you, but it was just an excuse, Erin. Alder was willing to hand me something I’d wanted for a long time…without harassing you about it. She wanted to get you to prom, so she was going to back off. They all were.”
“What about what happened on the corner that day with the Erins and Brady? What about her stopping by my work?”
“If she completely backed off, she was afraid you’d figure out what they were up to.”
“What you were up to. You keep talking like you weren’t in on it.”
“It was the only way to be with you without making you even more of a target. What kind of chance would I have then?”
“It wasn’t just to keep me from catching hell.”
“Okay, I admit it. I wanted to be with you and just enjoy it. I knew they wouldn’t leave us alone. At the time I thought it was the perfect solution. If you want to get home, sometimes you gotta steal a base once in a while.”
“It’s not a game, Weston. If it hadn’t gone the way you wanted—”
“If I really thought there was no way to avoid what they were going to try to pull at prom, we would have had our own, at our overpass, just you and me. I wouldn’t have risked it. You’re right, I was sneaky about it, and it’s not a game. But at the end of the day, there was no way to break up with Alder to be with you and make that work. It would have been miserable. I would have lost you. You would decide it wasn’t worth it. You would have avoided me like the plague until you left for college, and that would be it.”
I looked up at him. He looked as if he were physically in pain at the thought.
“But everything’s changed. You should have told me.”
“I couldn’t risk it, Erin. I thought I was crazy about you before, planning all that out just for a chance with you. I didn’t think it was possible to love you more, but it’s happened. I panicked. I didn’t know what to do.”
“Tell the truth. Even when it sucks. Even when it’s not about me anymore. Like the Erins being half sisters.”
His chin nearly touched his chest when he looked down at me. “You know about that too?”
“I read all of them. I know everything.”
He thought about that for a moment, shaking his head in awe. “Crazy to think how different things would have been if they had somehow found out without the accident.”
“I don’t want to. It would make me crazy thinking about the what-ifs when there are already so many what-happeneds to deal with. I just want to know the whole truth about what happened, Weston. If I know, I feel like then we can all move forward.”
“Even us?” he asked.
I shrugged against his chest with a small smile. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see his thoughts spinning behind his eyes.
“Okay, here’s the whole truth: I’ve thought about how to be with you since middle school,” he said. “It was our senior year. I didn’t have much time left, and I was getting desperate. You think Sonny was smart enough to come up with that plan on her own? Who do you think planted the seed in that warped brain of hers?”
“So humiliating me at prom was your idea?” I said, trying to keep my voice calm.
He frowned, disappointed that I’d come to that conclusion. “No, of course not. I played into their jealousy. I antagonized Alder sometimes about it. I made sure she saw me steal glances at you. We got into a big fight one night. She said I’d never have a chance with you because you wouldn’t cross her. That’s when it hit me. So the next time you came up in conversation—which was often—I teased them. I said I could totally get you to date me.”
I raised an eyebrow.
His expression pleaded for me to let him finish explaining. “Sonny said the same thing that Alder did, that you wouldn’t have the nerve. That was all I needed. That one moment.
“I bet her that I could get you to go to prom with me. After one discussion with Brady, the Carrie movie came up. That’s when they tried to talk me into it. That’s when I said yes, but it was always my way of getting close to you without being harassed. Just so we could enjoy it.”
“What about after prom?” I asked.
“I was going to ask you the same question. What about after summer?” he said, intertwining his fingers in mine. “I’ll drive to Oklahoma every weekend if I have to. I know you have this idea of what life after Blackwell was going to be. But you can still be what you wanted to be when we started. I just want to be with you. I wanna leave Blackwell behind with you. I want to watch you become whatever you want.”
“We’ll figure it out,” I said. “Neither one of us has a clue what we want to be.”
He squeezed my hand. “All I am is all we are.”
My bottom lip trembled. I’d been so awful to him, and now he was in a hospital bed, trying to make things right. “You shouldn’t be nice to me. I don’t deserve special treatment from you anymore.”
“Do you have any idea how long I’ve loved you, Erin?”
I smiled, tears burning my eyes. “As long as I’ve loved you.”
He pulled me to him, and I lay next to him in his hospital bed, seeing the silhouettes of Veronica and Julianne in the doorway.
Weston wrapped both arms around me and took in a deep breath, resting his head on mine. Soon he relaxed, and the quiet beeping of his heart monitor slowed to an even rhythm.
Veronica hugged Julianne to her side, and they left the doorway, walking down the hall.
I rested my cheek against Weston’s chest. The next weekend was prom, and two weeks after that was graduation. The only thing to worry about was the conversation I needed to have with Gina. Everything else felt like clean PJs and warm sheets straight out of the dryer. Weston and I would have the entire summer to spend together before we left for college, and for the first time, he felt like part of my beginning instead of a happy ending.