Asa’s foot stopped moving, and his head snapped towards his left, staring at Wyatt incredulously. “What does that have to do with anything I just told you about Carmen and me?”
“Listen,” Wyatt unfolded his arms and turned towards Asa, leaning his side against the railings, “I’m saying that you found it in you to see the good in her when nobody else could, that I’m sure she herself couldn’t. Hayden thought you were batshit crazy for sticking by her side for as long as you have; Lyra wasn’t very impressed either but she never commented on it; and the others who knew you on the surface and probably wanted to get to know you better? Yeah, they probably never made a move to build a bridge with you because they wouldn’t have understood your loyalty towards Isla either.”
“I’m still not getting the point, Wyatt.”
Wyatt sighed heavily, shoulders sagging as he offered Asa a small smile. “It takes courage, I think, to be able to have faith in someone the rest of the world has condemned as a lost cause. I don’t think I have that courage. I don’t think I want to, either. That’s extra weight I don’t need in my life. But you took it on, Asa. Even when you knew people considered you hopeless and downright stupid, you stood by Isla for as long as you could anyway. And I think it’s rare to come across someone like that. But you—you got lucky. You found Carmen. You found someone who could understand you in a way nobody else can, and I think that’s pretty goddamn rare.”
“Because she has the same faith in Hunter that I did in Isla?” Asa asked slowly, furrowing his brows and pressing his lips together.
“More or less.” Wyatt shrugged. “And you can understand her in return—where she’s coming from, why she chose to believe in someone you think is a lost cause. Carmen and you are the perfect fit if I’ve ever seen one before, so it just makes no sense that the two of you aren’t grabbing onto each other with both arms and choosing to never let go.”
“But that’s the problem, Wyatt,” Asa stressed, running a hand through his hair in frustration. “I don’t get why she’d choose to want him in her life. When I befriended Isla, it was at a time when she was in a good place, so I’d already known who she was capable of being. It was later on when she eventually began spiralling. And I couldn’t abandon her at a time of need so I stood by her.
“But Hunter’s done nothing so far to redeem himself, has he? He’s not even tried apologising to me. All I’ve seen is the rage and the cruelty. So yeah, when Carmen just announced out of the blue that she wanted to reconnect with him, it hurt. Because she was the one I took down my walls for—walls that she knows Hunter made me build around myself.”
“This,” Wyatt gestured wildly between the two of them, “this is the problem. You’re supposed to be having this conversation with her. With Carmen.”
Asa chuckled humourlessly. “You think I don’t know that? I could even run to her right this second and spill my heart out. But if I start talking, then I’m going to be the only one doing the talking. She’s not going to open up in return. I might as well take my chances talking to a wall and expecting it to respond.”
“So what’s the problem then, Asa?” Wyatt frowned. “Hunter or Carmen’s inability to let you in?”
“Don’t they kind of go hand in hand?”
“Well…” Wyatt’s forehead creased. “Would Carmen deliberately hurt you?”
“No.” The response was swift and sincere. That was one of the few things he never had to question when it came to Carmen.
“Then it doesn’t matter. Hunter doesn’t matter. And you don’t need to go looking for any reason to have faith in him. You don’t owe him that. But you can have faith in Carmen instead. Have faith in the fact that if she wouldn’t do something to deliberately hurt you, there’s a pretty valid reason why she wants Hunter back.”
Asa was quiet for a while, letting Wyatt’s words float around in his head and wondering what it’d be like to tell Carmen it didn’t matter, that they could get past this and go back to how things were at the beginning.
It was a comforting idea, that. It felt so easy to do, too. But that wasn’t how these things really worked, was it?
“I could do that, you know,” Asa murmured, looking down at his feet. “I could just put my faith in her and disregard Hunter.”
“But?”
“But the minute I do that, we’re going to fall into a cycle. She’ll do something that I’d never be able to understand and then expect me to have faith in the fact that she knows what she’s doing. It would only allow her to never let me in.”
“Are you sure about that, though?” Wyatt frowned. “About her never going to let you in?”
“I asked her,” Asa said, sighing. “Before I walked out, I asked her if she was ever going to let me in. I didn’t ask her to let me in right then and there. I asked her to tell me if she was ever planning to.”
“And she said she needed time? Because you could give her—”
“She didn’t ask for time.” Asa’s eyes flickered to Wyatt’s, confusion and hurt swimming in them. “She said she didn’t know.”
Wyatt winced, his head jerking back at the secondhand punch-to-the-gut. “Ouch,” he muttered, averting his gaze.
“Yeah.”
Silence fell on them once again, this time stretching for a little longer than before. A small part of Asa knew lunch break was already over by now, but the
