Chapter 12 Garrett #2
Not cleanly. Not in order. In fragments and half-sentences and long pauses where she pressed her face into my shoulder and tried to breathe.
"After the miscarriage, I couldn't—" She stopped. Started again. "You were so good to me. You were so good, Garrett, and I hated it."
The words landed somewhere deep. A place I'd stopped letting myself reach.
"Every time you held me or told me we'd get through it, it made it worse. Because you were still whole. You were grieving but you were functioning, and I was—" A ragged breath. "Drowning."
I closed my eyes.
"I couldn't explain it. I just knew that every time you looked at me with all that love, all I could feel was how broken I was."
I closed my eyes. The dark apartment pressed in around us.
"When you asked about the wedding—"
"I know." Rough. "I shouldn't have."
"You didn't do anything wrong." She pulled back enough to look at me. "You loved me exactly right. I just couldn't receive it. The depression made everything feel like pressure."
She swallowed.
"Like I was failing at being loved."
Eight years I'd spent turning it over. What I'd done wrong. What I should have said differently.
And she was telling me it was never about what I said.
"Leaving felt like the only thing I could do that wasn't hurting you," she whispered. "I told myself it was temporary. A few weeks. I'd get better and come back."
Her hand was still pressed against my chest. I don't think she realized it.
"Your letters kept coming. And everyone made me feel worse. Because you were keeping your promise and I was this... shell. This empty, broken thing who couldn't even pick up a phone."
Her voice splintered.
"And then your letters stopped."
I remembered the last envelope. Addressed. Sealed. The walk to the mailbox. My hand on the handle, knowing that if I sent it and heard nothing back, I'd have to accept it was over.
I'd sent it. Heard nothing. Accepted it.
"I couldn't write back without lying," she whispered. "And I couldn't tell you the truth. So I just—stopped. Everything. I thought I was saving you. I thought you'd move on and find someone whole and be happy, and that would be—" Her breath hitched. "Enough."
I couldn't swallow. Couldn't get air past whatever had locked in my throat. Eight years of silence pouring out of her like poison from a wound that had never been cleaned.
I would have done anything to take it from her. Carried it myself. Burned it down. Anything.
But there was nothing to do except hold her and let the pain run its course.
I covered her hand with mine.
"I went to DC to heal." Tears streaming. "But I didn't heal. I just... survived. Day by day. And by the time I could breathe again, I'd been silent so long I didn't know how to reach out. I'd abandoned you, Garrett. I'd promised you forever, and then I disappeared."
"Sloane—"
"And then I came back." Her voice cracked. "Five years ago. I was going to find you. Explain everything. See if there was anything left. And I saw you."
I went still.
"Outside a restaurant in Midtown. With a woman. She was laughing at something you said, and you looked... happy." Her breath hitched. "I thought you'd moved on. So I walked away."
The restaurant. Five years ago. A date that ended with her telling me she couldn't compete with a ghost.
"I've spent eight years hating myself. For leaving. For the silence. For not being brave enough to come back." She looked up at me. "And when I read about Rebecca, I saw myself. Not the arson. But the destruction. The way pain can make you into someone you never meant to be."
She looked up at me, tears still falling.
"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I put you through hell, and you didn't deserve—"
"Stop."
She froze.
My voice came out rough. Raw.
"That woman." I cupped her face in my hands. "The one you saw me with. She was breaking up with me that night."
Sloane's breath caught.
"Because I was still in love with someone else." I held her gaze. "Every woman I dated for eight years... none of them were you. They knew it. I knew it."
Her eyes searched mine.
"I never could move on."
Silence. Her eyes searched mine.
"I couldn't." My voice cracked. "I never could."
Something shifted in her expression. Hope and terror and eight years of longing, all tangled together.
"I still love you." My thumb brushed the tear from her cheek. "I never stopped. Not for a single day. Not even when I was angry. Not even when I convinced myself you weren't coming back."
I held her gaze.
"It was always you."
She kissed me.
Eight years of silence crashing into eight years of longing.
Her mouth on mine. Fierce. Desperate. Shaking.
I froze. One full heartbeat where I couldn't move. Couldn't breathe.
Because she tasted the same. After everything, the years, the distance, the silence, she tasted exactly the same. Coffee and salt and something underneath that was just her. The thing I'd been chasing in every kiss that came after and never found.
My hands moved before my mind caught up. One in her hair, pulling the tie loose, fingers threading through dark strands. The other pressed flat against the small of her back, drawing her closer.
Closer. Like I could erase the years by eliminating the space between us.
She made a sound against my mouth. Half sob, half relief. Her hands found my hair, my jaw, the back of my neck. Holding on like I might disappear if she loosened her grip.
I kissed her harder. Slower. Trying to memorize what I'd spent eight years forgetting.
The way her bottom lip fit between mine. The way she tilted her head just slightly to the left. The soft sound in the back of her throat that I used to hear in my sleep for months after she left.
She was shaking. Or I was. Both of us, maybe.
Salt from her tears on my lips. The desperate edge underneath the softness, her fingers pressing into my skin like she was bracing for this to be taken away.
I pulled back just enough to breathe. Barely an inch.
Her lips chased mine.
"I'm not going anywhere," I murmured against her mouth.
She kissed me again. Softer this time. Slower. Like she was choosing to believe it.
When we finally broke apart, she pressed her forehead to mine. Both of us breathing hard. Both of us shaking.
Her thumb traced the line of my cheekbone. I closed my eyes.
The weight of her. The warmth. The impossible, terrifying reality that she was here, in my arms, after all this time.
She was here.
She came back.