Chapter 6. Alex #3
“You wrote it,” I counter, regretting the low blow immediately. She doesn’t need any more guilt over what happened. She’s already taken a share of the blame. I can see it in the slope of her shoulders, in the shadows beneath her eyes, in the reddened, raw skin around her fingernails.
I know she didn’t release it. Seeing her now, I don’t know how I could have ever doubted it, too untrusting of the world to let myself believe that good things are genuine, that good people won’t let me down.
“Yeah, I wrote it,” she whispers, like a dying confession.
I can hear the pain in her voice, and despite my effort, I can’t drum up any anger over it.
Not anymore. I don’t know what it is—maybe it’s watching my mother’s health slipping down the drain, maybe it’s the defeat in her eye, but I just can’t waste another hour resenting Ophelia when I could be loving her instead.
“I wanted to break your father. I wanted him to lose everything. I wanted his family shattered, his business bankrupt. I wanted this. All of this. I wanted your mom to suffer because I wanted him to suffer.”
“You didn’t.”
She whirls around to face me, eyes alight with anger. “I did. Don’t you see? This is exactly what I prayed for, night after night. I wanted your family to break.”
“Not like this. You didn’t want it like this.”
“It’s no different, Alex. You and I are doomed.”
Her pessimism is usually charming, but not now. “Stop saying that.”
Her teeth sink into her bottom lip to stop it trembling. “And I was wrong. But you left me. You didn’t give me a chance to speak, to explain. And now you’re asking me for the exact same thing.”
The second sentence is so full of anguish, I almost hear her heart crack when she says it. “I had to do what was right for the girls.”
“But you could’ve just woken me,” she says, raising her voice.
Her eyes are glassy, shrink-wrapped by unshed tears.
She’s fighting so hard not to cry in front of me, to save it for someplace else, someone else, and that might be the only thing worse than watching her fall apart.
“We buried a body together, Alex. We killed someone, and then you left me to cope with that alone.”
Fuck. If she notices me wince at her words, she doesn’t let on. The list of ways in which I failed her grows longer, the regret that’s eaten away at me for weeks gets heavier.
Maybe the monster my father nurtured inside me is bigger than I’d hoped, because I hadn’t considered that at all, hadn’t really considered Bancroft as anything more than a photo that needs burying.
I hadn’t thought about how she’d cope with what happened to Bancroft, how it’d affect someone who isn’t used to all of this … mess.
“Just tell me how I can fix this.”
“You can’t fix this. I’m trying to just … I’m trying to move on with my life and now you’ve shown up here and ruined what little progress I’ve made.”
I shut my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest. “I can’t move on.”
She wraps her jacket tighter around herself. “That’s not my problem. You’re living thousands of miles away. It’s hardly been any time.” She wipes her nose on her sleeve, and it pulls my chest tight. “We just need to give it more time.”
I don’t want to give it more time.
I just want her.
I think back to that dreadful morning, waking up beside her with the first few streaks of sunlight washing their way across the valley. It was so serene. So quiet. With Bancroft buried, I’d woken up with an unfamiliar lightness.
And then I’d checked my phone, seen the chaos. It’s that moment, those horrible next couple of hours that cost me this. Cost me her.
I did what I knew to be best for my family, but it feels so wrong.
I ball my fists to stop myself from touching her.
“Ophelia, I don’t think I ever really believed you published the article. Maybe for five minutes, before I’d given it any thought—”
“That’s not what this is about.” She rubs her forehead, smoothing out the lines of her frown.
It’s something more and more people seem to do in my presence, lately.
Her bitter laugh fogs the window beside her.
“God, Alex … how can we ever trust each other again? How could you survive being asked to choose between your family and me again?”
“I won’t choose.”
She turns to face me. Her feet have slipped from her boots, white knitted socks perched on the edge of the seat, and my traitorous heart decides now is the time to fall in love with her for the hundredth time.
With her chin resting on her knees and my pulse a stuttered, desperate beat, I think she might be about to agree. To give me the second chance I don’t really deserve. But she opens her mouth and says, “Please can you drive me back now?”
I let out a defeated sigh and turn the car around in silence.
“How’s … how’s work?” she asks.
“As shit as I always knew it’d be. How’s Sorrowsong?”
“It’s okay,” she says, quietly. She hates it there, I know. “It’ll do.”
“Did you pass your exams?”
“Yeah.”
I can’t help my smile. I glance down at her while I drive. “You did?”
The little bit of pride in her expression makes my grin widen. That’s my girl. “Yeah.”
“That’s amazing, Twist. You’re amazing.”
She’s stronger than she gets credit for, just like Harwood reassures me.
“I need you not to come back again, Alex,” she says calmly.
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I lost my parents, and I said I’d never open myself up to that sort of loss again, and I understand why you felt like you had to leave that day.
And I’m not angry at you. I forgive you, even.
But my heart can’t take it happening again.
And you deserve not to have to choose between us ever again. ”
“I won’t leave.”
She shakes her head. “In what alternate universe do you and I get a happy ending, Alex? One where you don’t have a family tying you to New York?
And I don’t have a whole load of baggage and a complete inability to open up to you?
One where I’d be comfortable dating someone in the spotlight?
One where I’d be happy to just hop on a plane and move to New York?
Or Paris? One where you wouldn’t resent me for what happened over the past few weeks? Where we really trust each other?”
“You’re giving up on us before we’ve even tried.”
She looks like I’ve slapped her when I glance to my left. “We’ve tried. This year won’t be the only time in our lives that things get hard. Other terrible things will happen, and I don’t trust that you won’t leave me again. That’s it. That’s all there is to it.”
I keep my gaze fixed on the road ahead, letting her words sink in.
She wants someone more stable. She needs someone more stable. She needs to look after her mental health, and I, of all people, can understand that.
“Okay,” I whisper. We’re plunged into silence. Not awkward this time, but final. Neither of us is scrambling for things to say.
I pull into the Sorrowsong parking lot a short while later. It’s raining again, harder this time. I kill the engine, pull an umbrella from the back seat, then round the front of the car to open the door for her.
She steps out of the car and under the umbrella I’m holding. I hate how sad she looks. “We’re just in the wrong universe, Alex.”
“Yeah,” I say, flatly. I force a small smile, hoping it makes her feel better. She doesn’t bat me away when I brush the tear from her lower lashes before it has a chance to fall.
“I love you,” she whispers, like a goodbye.
I smile, letting my thumb trace her jaw. I swallow my own tears down. We didn’t get a goodbye in January, but this feels like it. It’s agony. “I love you more, Twist.”
She shakes her head, lip trembling beneath my fingers. All I can think about is kissing it. “You don’t.”
“I do.”
“It’s because I love you that I can’t do this.”
“I get it,” I say, because I do. She’s protecting her heart and mine the only way she knows how. “And it’s because I love you that I’m letting you.”
I let myself touch her. A featherlight touch over her cheeks, her neck, her nose, her lips. I let myself brush the damp hair from her forehead. I can’t live without her. The thought is insurmountable.
Her eyelids drift shut, face leaning into my touch so lightly that I wonder if it’s a product of my hopeful imagination. Her lips part on an exhale that seems to leave her lungs in slow motion.
It would be so easy to press my mouth to hers, to glide my hands beneath her wet jacket and press her against me.
Her hands tighten where they grip my shirt, her tongue darting out to catch a raindrop from her bottom lip.
I swallow my groan down, completely drunk on desire without so much as a kiss.
Her pulse drums beneath my thumb, hard and fast and in perfect time with mine.
She looks back up at me, and the look in her eyes lets the penultimate thread of my self-control slip.
The cold, stiff air has turned hot and humid, thick with tension.
Fuck. I glance to the back of the car. The windows are tinted, back seat more than big enough.
She must feel my arousal, because her thighs press together beneath her skirt.
We’re teetering on the edge, toeing the border between goodbye and hello, tame and feral, respectful and something so much more tempting.
My lips hover over hers, separated by half an inch.
Time seems to grind to a stop.
But that half an inch between her and me holds so much. So much trauma, so much reverence, so many reasons that closing the gap would hurt her heart. Desire is like a drug in my veins, dizzying my thoughts, shortening my breaths, but my respect for Ophelia overpowers it all, so I step back.
The tension bursts like an over-inflated balloon, running into the waterlogged earth at our feet.
The air goes back to frigid and bitter. My mood fades back to gray.
She catches herself, eyes wide like she can’t believe we almost kissed. The look she gives me is grateful.