In spite of the fact that, in a way, it made her feel so weak, Lydia not only let Isaac pull her into a hug, but she welcomed it, moving naturally and closing her eyes to try to avoid wetting his shoulder too much with her tears. She wondered if they could both have had exactly this, if he'd stayed, as she circled her arms around him, too. Lydia wondered whether instead of both of them suffering in lonely silence if they would have had one another to lean on like this or whether they would've both been too proud to admit that they were in pain when it seemed like everyone else had so swiftly mourned and moved on without them.
Isaac's apologies made Lydia cry even harder because he shouldn't have felt sorry for taking care of himself and doing what he felt he'd needed to do. There was literally nothing left for him in Beacon Hills and she'd always known that her upset with him had been selfish and irrational; they weren't friends. Isaac didn't owe her anything, least of all staying in a town that had nothing but terrible memories of a largely terrible life. It was half the reason she never took it upon herself to call or text him when he'd been overseas. Why? Why drag him back down again when he'd finally gotten away? Just because she was sad and everybody else was so busy hooking up with new lovers — seriously, she thought, even Derek had been getting laid, if their states of undress when they'd answered the door to her prediction of his death had been any indication — to notice that Lydia was still shattered. Scott moved onto Kira almost immediately. Stiles and Malia were developing into something pretty serious. Lydia was the fifth wheel grieving alone while her friends moved on like Allison had never been there at all. Forget talking about Aiden with any of them. Unless she'd wanted to reach out to Derek — she hadn't — she might as well have been talking to a wall. Everyone hated the twins. Nobody but she and, surprisingly enough, Derek had been able to see that they were trying to be better and make up for all the damage they'd done. There was literally no one in the world she could talk to about Aiden, because nobody cared. Good, the guy who helped kill Boyd and probably had a hand in Erica's death was gone; good riddance. Lydia truly suffered that loss alone because Ethan left her, too.
She shook her head against him, sniffling as he lifted her chin. "You did what you had to do," she said softly.