Chapter Fifteen #3
“This isn’t what I wanted.”
“Then what did you want? You said you wanted to try this. What did you think it would be? What did you think marriage would look like? Did you honestly want me to never have any feelings for you? Did you think that was the key to happiness?”
“No. I didn’t think. I just wanted to keep you trapped. I wanted to keep you mine. You’re right, though. It has nothing to do with you.” The lie tripped off his tongue, because he knew that it would keep him safe. Because he knew that it was exactly what he needed to push her away.
To keep the walls safe inside of him.
“What I wanted was for you to be that perfect version of yourself that you are when you’re pleasing everybody. What I wanted was your trauma, Verity, because it helps cover mine. That has nothing to do with you. It isn’t right for me to keep you with me.”
He could tell that he had done it. That he had taken a verbal knife and stabbed it straight through her heart.
She took a deep breath. “Okay. I’m not going to debase myself for the privilege of more rejection.
But I’m also not going to make this easy for you.
Because if that’s true, then you’re everything you said.
You’re a liar, you’re cold, you’re heartless.
But I don’t think you are. I think what you are is a coward.
Do you know how I know that? Because you said you didn’t feel anything when I made you that dinner, when I made you a birthday cake, but I think you did.
The way that you prowled around the kitchen like a hungry dog looking for scraps.
You want it so much and it scares you. You’re afraid to admit it.
All of the stories that you’ve told me of the boy that you were don’t make me think of a man with no feelings.
No. You’re just still that terrified boy.
Waiting for someone to love you, and now that it’s happening you don’t know what to do.
Even worse, I think you love me. I think it scares you. ”
“No,” he said. “Because I don’t know how to love, and I never have.”
“I just think you don’t know what it is.
This terrible, awful, clawing feeling inside of you, that’s love.
It’s uncomfortable. It pushes you, it challenges you.
Love does not ask you to sit comfortably, it asks you to do things.
To sacrifice. It isn’t a warm, fuzzy feeling that makes you feel a sense of euphoria.
It can be that, it has been that. When we’re together and you tell me that I please you, it is that.
When I can be perfect for you and you can be perfect for me, and we are naked, but that’s the honeymoon.
Then we have to bring it into the real world, and that’s when it’s hard.
We have to confront the things about ourselves that aren’t whole.
And that’s hard. You’re going to have to change.
That’s hard. But that doesn’t mean that it’s wrong.
It doesn’t mean we aren’t supposed to have this.
“I learned this from loving you. I know you can feel something,” she said.
“You’re just going to have to risk your feelings.
I think you have them. I think you have more than most people, not less.
You just need to be brave enough to let yourself have them.
” She reached forward and knocked on the divider between them and the driver.
The divider went down. “Stop the car,” she said.
“Verity? What are you doing?”
“I’m getting out. I’m not going back to Athens. I’m not going back to work with you, I’m not... Whatever you think is happening—”
“You aren’t getting out here in the middle of the city.”
“Yes, I will. I can. I don’t care if you’re mad at me.
” She took a deep breath. “I don’t care if you’re mad at me,” she repeated.
“You deserve to be uncomfortable. You’ll have to figure out why.
And I’m not going to make it easier for you.
I’m going to make you do the hard work. Because I deserve that.
Don’t you understand? This, this thing we have, it’s real.
We didn’t just take care of ourselves, we took care of each other.
And it could be the most wonderful... It could be everything. If you would just let it.”
She pushed open the car door and got out, stumbling onto the street. He unbuckled and followed her. “You’ve lost it,” he said.
“Who cares?” she shouted back, walking away from him.
“And you’re making a scene.”
“I don’t care about that either. You can keep your money.
You can keep everything. I always had a choice.
And now I’m choosing myself. My self-respect, if nothing else.
And I’m choosing to value what I feel. I’m not going to squish it down, squeeze it, contort it into something to make you feel better.
I’m not. I have my own money saved up. And I can get another job.
I walked away from a situation that didn’t fit me before, and I made it out the other side.
I’m going to keep doing it. I really wish.
.. I really wish you would let yourself be happy someday, Alex.
Even if it isn’t with me.” She turned away, and kept walking.
Then she paused. “Just make sure you eat a salad every once in a while, please.” She lifted her hand and wiped a tear away from her cheek, and kept on walking.
He wanted to go after her. But something stopped him.
The very thing that had told him to send her home in the first place.
It stopped him now; all he did was stand there.
Yes. He was a billionaire. With all this power.
Left frozen by a woman.
By that woman.
And he did not think he would ever be the same.