Deep, hard, utter and complete love.

And he was still leaving. And he still wouldn't look back.

Maybe I'd be leaving, too. Anxiety and worry moved through my body whenever I considered it. It wasn't only the confusion of the scholarship and how it would impact Kyland if I won it, it was also the thought of leaving my home. I'd dreamed of going to college for so long and, suddenly, leaving my mama, leaving Marlo, leaving everything I knew and . . . yes, loved—for I did love Dennville, Kentucky despite the fact that misery lived here, too—suddenly, all of it filled me with fear and panic.

Maybe it also had to do with the fact that my mama was doing so much better since she'd been on the new medications. She seemed almost normal, and I had never, ever used that word to describe my mama. She was better, and she was worse, but she'd never been normal. It was like Marlo and I were getting a second chance with her. But what would happen when I left? We were barely scraping together the money it took to buy her prescriptions as it was. When I left, there'd be that much less of an income, as small as it was. Of course, they wouldn't have to feed me anymore either.

But when I thought about not winning it, my heart plummeted to my feet. What would I do then? Would I work full-time at Al's like Marlo did? What other choice did I have? There were no jobs here that paid more than minimum wage, and unlike Kyland, I didn't have the courage to start hitchhiking across the country with little more than a knapsack on my back. Plus, I had people here tying me to Dennville. Kyland didn't have anyone . . . well, anyone except me. And despite the fact that we'd gotten very close, he couldn't stay for me. And I wouldn't ask him to.

Sometimes I caught him looking at me with this strange expression on his face—a mixture of pain and decisiveness. I wasn't sure what it meant, but it made me feel jittery and nervous.

Could I handle getting any closer to Kyland only to have him leave and never look back? Could I handle loving him more deeply? Or could he . . . would he change his mind about cutting all ties now that our relationship had deepened to . . . well, to more than it was?

Stupid Tenleigh, I muttered. I'd gotten myself in this situation despite the fact that Kyland had done everything in his power to warn me away. But I couldn't regret it. I couldn't. I loved him. He was a part of my heart and I hoped desperately that I had become enough of a part of his that it'd be impossible for him to simply leave me behind.

Persuasion by Jane Austen:

"But when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure." Do you believe this, Tenleigh? – KB

I leaned back on the library bookshelf and put my pen to my lips, considering. Finally, I wrote:

I think that when enough time has passed, when you've survived that which you didn't imagine you could, there's a dignity in that. Something you can own. A pride in knowing the pain made you stronger. The pain made you fight to succeed. Someday, when I'm living my dreams, I'm going to think of all the things that broke my heart and I'm going to be thankful for them. – TF

Even you, Kyland.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Kyland

Things were out of hand with Tenleigh. I couldn't stop myself from craving her—her voice, her thoughts, her laughter, her smell, her taste, her delectable body, her lips—just her. I'd done the exact thing I'd vowed not to do—I'd formed an attachment that I wouldn't be able to simply leave behind in a couple months. An attachment? Hell, I was practically obsessed with her. I was screwed, completely royally screwed. And yet, I would leave her behind. That's exactly what I'd do. Because anything else was unthinkable. I felt like I was drowning in her, and just like a drowning person, my instinct was to thrash and resist—fight. Fight this thing that had taken over my body and my heart. Fight her.

I sat staring blindly out at the town below from the hill Tenleigh and I had sledded on months before . . . the day I'd started something with her, there was no turning back from.

From here, the town far below looked like it could offer a life to Tenleigh and me. From here, you couldn't see the garbage and the poverty, the misery, and the unspeakable things that went on behind closed doors in the dark of the night. I put my head in my hands and raked my fingers through my hair. I was crumbling.

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.

Oh yes.

I had read those words in Persuasion and I'd almost repeated them to her as I gazed at her tender face, her lips swollen and red with my kisses, her eyes full of something I knew was love. I'd stopped myself. It wouldn't be fair. I'd let her in, in ways I'd never let anyone in. But I hadn't made love to her. And I hadn't told her I loved her or let her say it to me. I vowed to let that be the barrier between us that would allow me to walk out of here with at least a part of my heart intact, still in possession of at least one part of me she didn't own. That'd be the part that would spur my feet forward, away.

I had tried so hard to resist her, but I was too weak and too selfish. And now we were both going to pay the price when I left.

Maybe we could be together . . . someday. Someday when I'd seen the world, when I'd found out what type of life I could have away from here. There had to be places filled with happiness, with hope. Although, if I was completely honest with myself, Tenleigh had given me just a little bit of that back. For so very, very long I'd pushed the memories of my parents and Silas away. They were too painful, filled with too much grief. And with the bad, I'd had to push away the good. I couldn't separate them in my mind. But then she'd come along, and she'd helped me do that . . . somehow without even meaning to. And now these hills felt different for the first time in four years. A few weeks ago when I'd been walking home from school, I'd caught sight of a bunny scurrying under a bush, and a memory hit me all at once, so suddenly that I halted and stood there staring off into the woods as if I'd been hit over the head. One year when I was about ten and Silas was fifteen, we had seen an injured baby bunny hopping across the road. We'd caught it and brought it home, keeping it in the old shed behind our house. We fed it milk from an eye dropper and eventually, soft vegetables. We named him "Bugs," and once he got strong enough we let him out of the shed, dropping him off on the side of the road near where we'd found him. Silas had said that he'd have a better chance of finding his bunny family that way. I'd cried and Silas had called me a big ol’ baby, but he'd put his arm around my shoulders as we'd walked back home.