The Best of Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

cheeks still damp.
    “Where?” he asked her. “Here? In the garage?”
    “I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.”
    Dawson remained silent, studying the floor. “You need to go to college,” he finally told her.
    “I don’t care about college,” Amanda protested. “I care about you.”
    He let his arms fall to his sides. “I care about you, too. And that’s why I can’t take this from you,” he said.
    She shook her head, bewildered. “You’re not taking anything from me. It’s my parents. They’re treating me like I’m still a little girl.”
    “It’s because of me, and we both know that.” He kicked at the dirt. “If you love someone, you’re supposed to let them go, right?”
    For the first time, her eyes flashed. “And if they come back, it’s meant to be? Is that what you think this is? Some sort of cliche?” She grabbed his arm, her fingers digging into him. “We’re not a cliche,” she said. “We’ll find a way to make it work. I can get a job as a waitress or whatever, and we can rent a place.”
    He kept his voice calm, willing it not to break. “How? You think my dad is going to stop what he’s doing?”
    “We can move somewhere else.”
    “Where? With what? I have nothing. Don’t you understand that?” He let the words hang, and when she didn’t answer, he finally went on. “I’m just trying to be realistic. This is your life we’re talking about. And… I can’t be part of it anymore.”
    “What are you saying?”
    “I’m saying your parents are right.”
    “You don’t mean that.”
    In her voice, he heard something almost like fear. Though he yearned to hold her, he took a deliberate step backward. “Go home,” he said.
    She moved toward him. “Dawson—”
    “No!” he snapped, taking a quick step away. “You’re not listening. It’s over, okay? We tried, it didn’t work. Life moves on.”
    Her expression turned waxy, almost lifeless. “So that’s it?”
    Instead of answering, he forced himself to turn away and walk toward the garage. He knew that if he so much as glanced at her he’d change his mind, and he couldn’t do that to her. He wouldn’t do that to her. He ducked under the open hood of the fastback, refusing to let her see his tears.
    When she finally left, Dawson slid to the dusty concrete floor next to his car, remaining there for hours, until Tuck finally came out and took a seat beside him. For a long time, he was silent.
    “You ended it,” Tuck finally said.
    “I had to.” Dawson could barely speak.
    “Yep.” He nodded. “Heard that, too.”
    The sun was climbing high overhead, blanketing everything outside the garage with a stillness that felt almost like death.
    “Did I do the right thing?”
    Tuck reached into his pocket and pulled out his cigarettes, buying time before he answered. He tapped out a Camel.
    “Don’t know. There’s a lot of magic between you, ain’t no denying that. And magic makes forgettin’ hard.” Tuck patted him on the back and got up to leave. It was more than he’d ever said to Dawson about Amanda. As he walked away, Dawson squinted into the sunlight and the tears started again. He knew that Amanda would always be the very best part of him, the self he would always long to know.
    What he didn’t know was that he would not see or speak to her again. The following week Amanda moved into the dorms at Duke University, and a month after that Dawson was arrested.
    He spent the next four years behind bars.

2

    A manda stepped out of her car and surveyed the shack on the outskirts of Oriental that Tuck called home. She’d been driving for three hours and it felt good to stretch her legs. The tension in her neck and shoulders remained, a reminder of the argument she’d had with Frank that morning. He hadn’t understood her insistence on attending the funeral, and looking back, she supposed he had a point. In the nearly twenty years that they’d been married, she’d never mentioned Tuck Hostetler; had