Now I do.
And if somehow being with Astor is one of the terms of Victoria’s trust, it was actually quite selfless of Astor to be with her through everything. The easy thing would have been to screw her over. It’s what I would have done.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask.
“Anything.”
The gap between us feels like a chasm.
“How did you do it?”
There’s a pause. “I don’t know what you mean,” Astor says.
“I mean … how could you stand by and let it happen? After Wills left, then Blair?” I shake my head. “It killed me to watch you three separated. I can’t imagine how it made you feel.”
Astor lets out a long stream of breath. It billows from his mouth like steam from a dragon’s mouth.
“It didn’t hurt as much as letting you go,” he says. “I knew they’d be all right without me. I knew you would too. Eventually.”
“And you?”
Astor laughs darkly. It must be something in the air tonight.
“Teddy, don’t you see?” he says. “This was never about me. My happiness, what I wanted … it was never part of the equation.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head. “For just a little while, when we first met, I let myself just be. With you, I was happy. I was just … me. Not Astor. Not a Hawthorne.”
I stare down at the ground now. “Not an heir with overwhelming responsibilities.”
Silence follows.
That chasm between us only grows wider by the minute.
There’s a choice now, and I see it. I can either bridge the gap … or I can close the door on Astor Hawthorne forever.
He won’t be the one to try to cross it. He’s tried, and failed, too many times before. It’s my turn.
“Astor,” I start, and suddenly, the words don’t come so easy. “Can we just start over?”
And then, just as suddenly, there isn’t a gap between us anymore. My hands are in his, his eyes boring into mine.
“Only if starting over means starting up exactly where we left off, last year, before I ruined everything,” Astor says, his voice barely daring to go above a whisper.
I look up into Astor’s face, the face of the boy who tried to ruin me. The face of the boy who tortured me, bullied me, made me an outcast—and yet still, a boy who I cannot help but love.
“Yes, Astor Hawthorne,” I say. “Let’s start back where we left off.”
There’s still a long road to redemption, for both of us, but that’s a road I’m willing to take.
Because, for the first time, we’ll be doing it together.
Epilogue
I’d nearly forgotten how it felt to be wrapped up in their arms together; all three of them. Wills, Blair, and Astor too. There’s a wholeness, a missing piece returned.
But here I am, looking down at their sleeping faces with their bodies sprawled out around me on the bed of my new 5th avenue condo in Manhattan. Of all the things I inherited from my father, it’s by far my favorite.
It’s more than the sweeping cityscapes and private elevator; it’s what it represents.
In just a few short months, all three of my boys and I will start college in the same city. NYU might not be Columbia, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s pretty damn close.