⌜ chapter fifteen ⌟

"Okay, now—"

"We're not doing this again." Letty shakes her head as she looks at her older brother. "I've traveled across the country with him, and I can travel with him to Boston without a lecture from you. Thanks, though."

"You had Cory with you then." Alec argues.

"You know what I didn't have then?"

"A relationship with you." Tyler says as he walks behind her in the kitchen, and Reggie laughs as the brunette smiles at her brother.

"How does it feel to know that when it comes to an argument between the two of you, Tyler always takes her side?" The younger of the Price brothers asks as he looks at his best friend.

"Well, someone has to." Letty says. "I can't have you all ganging up on me, I'm already outnumbered as it is. It's nice to keep things even where we can."

"Hey, kid?" Tyler gets her attention, and she looks over at him. "Don't come back pregnant."

"You got it." She gives him a mock salute.

"Now that that's taken care of..." Reggie laughs at the annoyed look on Alec's face.

"And I'm leaving now, before the fight breaks out." Letty says as she starts for the door so that she can walk over to the Matthews' house, and then she and Eric leave for Boston.

They're staying at a hotel, and the two teenagers got one room with two queen-size beds. It's not the first time they've shared a room, so it really isn't that big a deal. And Eric says that it's safer for a girl who's staying so far away from home; he obviously doesn't know about the years of training she received from multiple hunters.

The brunette leaves their room after Eric does — as he had to attend a convention for the store that he and his dad run together — and she sees him as he walks over to the bar where there's a pretty bartender with short, red hair. "Hi." He greets with a smile.

"Hi."

"My name's Dylan Hightower, I'm the C.E.O. of a mid-sized venture-capital group. You might look for me on the cover of next month's Forbes, it'll look something like this." His face turns serious as he points forward, imitating the poses he's seen on the magazine, and she laughs.

"You're just out of high school, you work for your Daddy, this is your first convention, and your chaperone's right behind you." She tells him, and Letty laughs as she walks up beside him. "Now what's your real name?"

"I'm not telling." Eric pouts as he turns toward the brunette who's now sitting down on the stool next to his.

"So, what are you drinking, mystery boy?" The bartender asks.

"Uh, brewski."

"Root Brewski?"

"If that's all you can give me, sure." He nods.

"And for your lady friend?"

"Root Beer's fine." Letty tells her.

"Aren't you supposed to be in school, Miss Black?" A familiar voice gets their attention, and Eric's eyes widen.

"Oh, no." He mutters, and the bartender chuckles as Letty turns.

"My only core class is English, and I talked to Jon. My other classes are mostly electives, it's easy to make up. Plus, the semester just started — I have plenty of time." The brunette tells him.

"Mr. Feeny!" Eric gets up and moves to stand beside Letty as she turns her stool to face their teacher. "You're here. What a remarkable and horrifying coincidence."

"Horrifying indeed. What are you two doing in Beantown?" Feeny asks as he looks between the two teenagers.

"Hiding from you, and we failed." He says, and Letty smacks his arm. "Why must you stalk us so?"

"Sorry to burst your balloon, buster, but I'm waiting for somebody else."

"Cory?" He asks, and Letty stifles a laugh.

"No, not Cory." He says as the bartender walks over then and leaves a napkin in front of him on the counter. "Cabernet." He tells her, and she nods. "I'm waiting for a special lady friend of mine to have dinner in the hotel."

"Ooh, Mr. Feeny. I didn't know you had somebody special in Boston."

"Well, that's because I've never mentioned her to you before, Eric."

"And why not?"

"Probably 'cause it's none of your business." Letty smiles when he shoots her a dirty look.

"For the same reason that you don't talk about Scarlett to me." Feeny tells him.

"It's squeamy?" Eric asks.

"Precisely." He nods. "But now that you've asked..."

"I didn't." He says, and Letty smacks his arm again.

"Elizabeth is someone I've known for, oh, fifteen years, someone I care about deeply, but she lives and works in Boston, and her teaching career is as important to her as mine is to me." Their teacher tells them.

"Female Feeny... Yii."

"Eric..." Letty sighs. "How often do you get to see each other?" She asks Mr. Feeny.

"Three or four times a year." He tells her.

"Hey, that's how often Letty lets me kiss her." Eric chuckles, and she turns her head to glare at him.

"Keep it up, buddy, and that number will dwindle." She nods, and his smile falls as she looks back at their teacher. "Ignore him, tell us about her."

"Every so often, one of us asks the other to give it all up and move so that we can be together."

"But you never took her up on it?" Eric asks.

"Nor she me. No." He shakes his head. "The asking and saying no has become a bittersweet ritual between us. This year it's my turn to pop the question."

"What if she says yes?"

"Oh, she won't." He smiles. "No, she'll just smile at me over her glass of Merlot and ask, can't we just keep things the way they are? and I'll squeeze her hand gently and say, if that's what you truly want. And then I'll go home"

"To us and Cory." Eric smirks.

"You're killing my story."

"But how can you be okay with that?" Letty asks. "If you want a real relationship..."

"It is real, Miss Black. It's not perfect, but it is very real." He tells her.

Later that night, Letty's sitting in a chair at a table a few feet away from Eric, who's at the bar again with another Root Beer. The brunette's looking through some pictures that she had printed up just before they left Philadelphia, and she vaguely hears the bartender ask him to get dinner with her. He politely declines, and then the redhead points out Feeny.

Eric walks over and sits down across from Mr. Feeny at the table he sat at, which isn't far from where Letty's sitting. "Hello, Eric." The older man greets.

"Are you alright?" He asks.

"You know, every year, I look forward to seeing her, and every year we part company...knowing that we care for each other, but not quite enough to give up the lives we've made and find comfortable." He tells him.

"She said yes. You popped the question, and she said yes. She said yes, and now you're stuck good." Eric says as Mr. Feeny finishes his drink.

"No, no. She said no. We always say no." He looks at him. "Why do we always say no?"

"Because you don't really love each other."

"Now, how would you know that, Mr. Matthews?"

"Because if you truly loved each other, you'd risk anything for that love." Eric says. "Even the lives you've made and find comfortable."

"I just wonder if, at this stage of my life, my risk-taking days are over. Or perhaps I never appreciated the value of taking a risk, and that's why I've missed the chance at true love."

"I believe true love can come at any time." He tells him. "Even to a seven-year-old on the playground who'll waste ten years before he finally asks out the love of his life." He says, and Letty smiles where she's sitting behind him.

"Well, until then, I will continue my life teaching my students." Feeny says.

"You got more than your students, Mr. Feeny. You got your friends."

"If you kids haven't had your dinner yet, I thought we might grab a bowl of pasta on the north-end." He suggests.

"Pasta, my love?" Eric turns his head in Letty's direction, and she nods as she looks over at them.

"Yeah." She takes a deep breath as she gets her pictures together. "I could eat."

That night, the two teenagers are back in their room, now both in their pajamas, and Eric walks over the brunette's bed. She's laying on the blanket as she looks at two pictures. "You've had those with you all night. Admiring your work?" He asks, and she smirks as she looks up at him.

Letty takes the top picture and holds it out toward him, so he reaches forward and takes it from her fingers. He smiles as he looks down at the picture in his hand. It's of the two of them a few days after Christmas. Letty was helping Mrs. Matthews put away all of the decorations, but Eric stole his old plastic mistletoe back from his dad and kept trying to get the brunette to kiss him again. Eventually, he stopped taking no as an answer, and he wrapped his arms around her so that he could kiss her cheek. His mom picked up Letty's camera and captured one of the many kisses that he planted on her face.

"Alright, so maybe it's not always the worst thing when someone takes my picture." Eric says, and she smiles. "As long as you're next to me, smiling like that." She was all giggles as he kissed her that day.

"I thought I was thirteen the first time you ever kissed me." Letty says, and his eyebrows furrow as he looks back at her.

"What are you talkin' about?"

She holds out another picture, and he takes it from her — it's from the day that they met.

"Oh, I remember this." Eric says. "You came over with Jason, and... You know, you should hear my mom tell this story. She likes the word smitten."

Letty chuckles. "Was I that obvious?"

"Not you. Me." He tells her. "Where'd you get this picture from anyway?"

"Your mom gave it to me this morning." She tells him as he hands it back to her.

She smiles as she looks at the six and seven-year-old versions of themselves. They met that day at school, and then afterward she went to his house with Jason. Letty was upset because the kids at school were being mean to her all day, and she'd started crying because no one there liked her. Eric told her that he liked her, and then he kissed her cheek, which made her smile. His mom luckily happened to have her camera with her at just the right time.

"You knew what to say to make me feel better even back then." Letty sets the two photos aside and then reaches out toward him.

"Is this the part where you finally tell me what's been bugging you all day?" He asks as he lays down beside her, taking one of her hands in his. "You know, so that I can make it better."

"I'm scared."

"Of what?"

"You." She offers him a small smile as she turns onto her side as well, wanting to lay facing him as they talk. "You are the one person in the entire world who can completely break me. I mean, that's what love is, right? Giving someone the power to break you, and trusting them not to? God knows I've got trust issues."

"You're afraid of love?"

"The people that I love always end up leaving me." She tells him. "I'm not afraid of love... I'm afraid of being broken again by the people that I love... My being a child in my childhood is practically nonexistent, I was forced to grow up so fast. And I grew up broken."

"You're putting the pieces back together pretty well." He says, and a sad smile spreads across her face as she looks at their intertwined fingers.

"I put the pieces of a broken childhood back together just in time to turn eighteen... Just in time to become an adult." She says. "And love like this...isn't something that children feel. I say it, and everything becomes so much more real."

"I'm not asking you to give up anything, and I'm not asking you to say anything that you're not ready to say." Eric scoots closer to her, and she lays her head on his shoulder as he turns onto his back. He then wraps his arms around her, and she cuddles into his side. "And I will never ever leave you. Not before you say it, and certainly not after." He presses a kiss to her forehead.