Chapter 30 #2
“I didn’t want to. Trust me, that was the last thing I wanted to do. My intention was to try to talk to you and get you to trust me, to hash out our differences like we are now so that I wouldn’t hurt her. I was ready to put aside all the animosity and fighting between us for her.”
He slowly nods. “This is . . . this is a lot to take in. Doesn’t change the fact that what your brother did was wrong. Duncan told me it was a Maxheimer; I just assumed it was you given our history.”
“Either way, should never have happened, and I will get to the bottom of it,” I promise. “You deserve an explanation on that.”
“I, uh, I appreciate that,” Dwight says, throwing me an olive branch that I’ll fucking cling to.
“Good,” Bob says. “Now, look at each other and apologize.” When we don’t listen at first, he booms, “Now.”
Startled, we both turn toward each other and say, “Sorry,” at the same time.
“Thank you,” Bob says, pleased with himself. “No more of this fighting, especially in the streets where everyone can hear you. You don’t have to be the best of friends, but you can at least understand each other.”
“I’d like that,” I say.
“Yeah, I mean, we’re not friends, but I don’t have to be a dick to you,” Dwight says.
“Thanks, man.”
“I still don’t trust you fully.”
“I get that,” I say. “That will take time. I’ll have to earn your trust. And I have no problem doing that.”
“Are you saying that just because you like Betty and want to be with her?”
“Honestly, yes,” I say. “If she wasn’t involved, I probably wouldn’t bother trying with you, but I know that she considers you the closest thing she has to a brother, and I’d never want to get in the way of that kind of relationship. So yeah, I want to earn your trust for her.”
Dwight slowly nods. “That’s a truthful answer I can appreciate. If you said no, I wouldn’t have believed you.” He rubs his hands over his thighs. “I don’t know where to go from here.”
“What about Betty?” Bob says. “What are you going to do about her?”
“I need to talk to her,” I say in a panic.
Dwight shakes his head. “She’s not going to want to talk to you. Not right now at least. I think you need to let her sit in her feelings for a moment.”
“I can’t,” I say. “She’s never going to give me a second chance if I let her sit in her feelings, because those feelings will brew, and then she’ll just hate me even more.”
“She’s not going to believe anything you say,” Dwight says.
“He’s right.” Bob sits back in his chair and rubs his beard. “I think you need a bigger plan than just going to talk to her. You can’t just tell her you love her. You have to show her you love her.”
“As much as it pains me to say it, because I don’t like that you love her, he’s right,” Dwight says.
I shake my head. “No, I should have talked to her from the beginning. I went with a grand idea, and it came back and bit me in the ass. I’m going to do the thing that I should have done in the first place. Just talk.”
Cole: Dude, are you okay? I heard what happened. Tanya called Storee.
Max: No, I’m not okay.
Cole: What can I do?
Max: Nothing. I need to fix this myself.
Cole: What are you going to say?
Max: Just beg her to listen to me.
Cole: And what if she doesn’t?
Max: I can’t even think about that right now.
Cole: Okay, well, we’re here for you if you need us.
Max: Thanks.
I stuff my phone in my back pocket and then drag my hands over my face. I can do this. She has to at least give me a second to explain myself, right?
No, she doesn’t. She doesn’t have to give me the time of day. I’ll be lucky if she even opens the door. But I need to at least try.
I walk up to her porch and give the door a knock. I take a step back only to hear her say, “Go away, Max.”
Max.
Fuck, she called me Max.
Not sure she’s ever called me that, which can only mean one thing: she wants nothing to do with me. She’s put up the boundary, and even though I respect that, I need to try . . . before I walk away.
I knock again. “Betty, please, let me in.”
“No,” she says, and I can hear the hurt in her voice.
“Please, Betty, I’m not going to leave until I talk to you. I’ll stand here all day, all night. Please.”
I wait in silence, hoping. I wasn’t lying.
I’ll stand here all goddamn night if I have to, into the next morning.
I can’t have her leave Kringle without knowing that she wasn’t a pawn in a small town’s cruel joke.
People genuinely adore her. But I hurt that trust, and she needs to know I’ll do anything to heal those wounds.
“Betty,” I say as I knock quietly. “Please.”
After a few seconds, there’s movement in the cottage, and then to my utter surprise, the door opens to show Betty on the other side with tear-stained cheeks.
Fuck.
My heart sinks, and my initial instinct is to pull her into my arms, to protect her, to shield her from the hurt she’s feeling, but unfortunately, I’m the one who brought on the hurt.
“Betty, I—” My voice gets caught in my throat as she shakes her head.
“I can’t do this.”
She goes to shut the door, but I stop her, my hand to the wood. “Please, Betty, can I just explain?”
“Explain what?” she asks, her voice rising. “How you used my feelings against me? As a weapon?” Her eyes well up with more tears, and it nearly splits me in half, seeing her this upset. “You made me trust you, believe you, only to . . . to use me.”
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“It wasn’t?” she shouts. “So you didn’t set out to try to hurt me?”
“To be fair, you were setting out to hurt me as well,” I say.
“You were trying to put my family out of business. It wasn’t like I was just going to be a dick for no reason.
You were attempting to end the farm my family built, that they rely on as a source of income, as a place that provides income for many others.
It’s our livelihood. It’s a place where they’ve grown traditions over the years.
I was in a panic, Betty. I was scared, so I did something stupid. ”
She pauses, her mind thinking about it.
“And listen, I understand where you were coming from. You didn’t know me.
All you knew was what Dwight told you, which was unflattering at best. There was vengeance on your mind, and I was .
. . I was caught off guard. I didn’t know how to handle you on so many levels, from your plans to take down the farm to your fucking smile to your gorgeous eyes.
I was out of my goddamn mind and just . .
. just settled on the most obnoxious idea, which was to try to woo you to get you to stop planning to hurt the farm.
” I scratch the back of my head as she crosses her arms in front of her.
“It was stupid, and if I could, I’d take it all back.
If I could do it over again, I’d just talk to you, try to reason with you, and then . . . ask you out on a date.”
She shakes her head. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“Betty, I mean it.”
She continues to shake her head. “No. Dwight said you were a manipulator. And he was right.”
“He wasn’t,” I say, feeling desperate. “I’m not that man. I told you that. You believed me—”
“But you were lying!” she shouts. “You were lying the entire time. You weren’t interested in me. You were trying to distract and divert me from planning. And you succeeded. You tricked me, made me fall for your every word.”
“But that was real,” I say. “Betty, I don’t know how to explain this to you, but it was real.
The intention was to distract you, yes, but the minute I set the plan in motion, I realized that I liked you.
That’s what I’m trying to say. And the friendship you grew with Storee, that was real.
Everything about it. The relationships you’ve built with the people of this town, those are real too.
They love you here. They want you here.”
Tears stream down her face.
“And the feelings we grew for each other, to me . . . they were real. The kisses under the mistletoe, there was nothing fake about them. Wanting to see you day in and day out, that was pure desperation to be close to you. The nights we spent together, the days, the conversations, everything about it was real. Please”—I take a step forward—“please, you have to believe me.”
She swipes at her eyes, avoiding eye contact with me.
So I take another step forward, testing her boundaries.
Then another step, and when I’m an inch away, I wrap my arms around her, and to my surprise, she leans in.
A wave of relief washes through me right before I feel her hand at my chest and she pushes me away.
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “No, you can’t just .
. . come over here and act like . . . like everything is okay.
Like the entire town didn’t have this master plan to trick me.
” Tears stream down her cheeks as her gaze finally meets mine.
“Do you know how that makes me feel? Like a fool, Atlas. Like a fucking fool. And I’ve been there before.
Been the object of condescending comments.
No one supported me when I failed before, and it looks like Kringle is just as mean. ”
“It wasn’t like that—”
“It wasn’t? Because two people I never even met until today were in on it, so you can’t tell me it wasn’t like that. The friend I thought I had was in on it. The coffee shop owner, probably even Santa Claus, they all knew you were fooling me—”
“They didn’t,” I say, trying to get my point across. “I need you to understand that—”
“I need you to understand that you need to leave.” She points to the door. “Go, Max.”
“Betty, please—”
“Go!” she shouts, a sob following. “Just go.”
I don’t want to make things worse, so I take a step back toward the door. “Betty, I’m . . . I’m sorry.”
She shakes her head, not wanting to hear it, so I take that as my sign to leave. Fuck.