Chapter Thirty-Two Maddie
Chapter Thirty-Two
Maddie
Veronica Balentine is so mad that her lips barely open as her words grit through her teeth. “Please tell me I did not just watch my leading candidate buy Bram Loe a PLANT DADDY key chain after she canoodled all over this establishment with him.”
“Ah,” I say, in an attempt to lighten the mood. “I much preferred you in your role as the Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
Beside us the automatic doors keep opening and closing, unable to decide if we are going in, out, or staying put.
“This has gone beyond playing with fire.” She shakes her head, features hard and unforgiving. Nothing about her feels almost warm like it did on Halloween night. “You’re done,” she says, and turns for the door.
This time it’s me who is yanking her elbow, forcing her to turn back. “No,” I tell her. “You can’t do that.”
She pulls away from me but still stands there in the open door. “You received strict instructions, and you were unable to follow them. Not only were those instructions—oh, I don’t know, actually important, but what does this say about your ability to cooperate in the future?”
“I’m not your fucking puppet, Veronica.”
“Oh, trust me,” she says, “you’ve made that very clear, and it’s actually what I like about you.
But there is a game to be played, and either you’re willing to play or you’re not.
If Bram Loe and his years of baggage are worth throwing away everything at your fingertips, then that’s for you to decide. You’re a big girl, Maddie.”
I cross my arms over my chest in an attempt to appear confidently defiant, but squared up against Veronica, I look defensive, like I have something to apologize for.
And the truth is that I do. Veronica is right. She never lied to me about the rules of the game. I let myself get to this point knowing full well that Bram and I would never be able to be anything more than—
“Physical,” I blurt. It’s a lie the moment I say it, but the truth I do know is that the only person who can guarantee my future is me.
Even if I do love Bram Loe and I tell Veronica to move on to the next most eligible candidate, Bram and I could simply just not .
. . work. It’s cruel, but it’s true. It’s a gamble I can’t afford.
At this moment in my life, I am not in the position to say no to someone like Veronica and the people she works for.
I wish I had the luxury of exploring what things could be with Bram, but after four years of belonging to someone to the extent that it was the first thing and most important thing to know about me, I can’t spend another moment making a decision that is not entirely for my own future.
“It’s just physical, Veronica. I’m—I was stupid and I let things get out of hand.
I never should have gone out in public with him.
But I’m done working for him in less than two weeks, and then we have no reason to even be in each other’s proximity.
You can rest easy—Bram Loe and I will basically be strangers by December. ”
She shifts from foot to foot for a moment and then rubs her eyes with the heels of her palms.
“I don’t give second chances,” she says, her gaze trained on some point beyond me, like she’s thinking of every version of this going south.
She snaps back to me and points a finger, nearly poking me in the chest. “Do not make me regret showing you mercy. End it with the moss doctor. If you don’t, I will personally see to it that you are unelectable, and I don’t just mean in certain natural gas or big donor circles.
I mean everywhere. There’s plenty of skeletons to choose from.
Your brother marrying a sex worker. Lying on your mother’s medical forms several times.
The video of you yelling during your lecture that I scrubbed from the internet.
I could ruin you for the most mundane reasons, and I promise I would enjoy it. I don’t break promises, Maddie.”
“Neither do I,” I tell her. My heart hardens into a fist, and I want to hate her, but I see too much of myself in her narrowed eyes. I know that her sharp edges were all born out of necessity. “It’s over, Veronica. I promise.”
She gives me a single nod before disappearing into the parking lot, where I spy her son and her wife loading up a very shiny and very expensive SUV with pumpkins and gourds of all sizes.
I look down at the key chain that I’d been rubbing between my fingers for our entire conversation and I tuck it into the pocket of my jeans.
This is fine, I tell myself. This was never permanent. This was always about feeling good in the moment. Neither of us promised the other the future.
I walk outside through the electric door that’s been wide open for a few minutes now and as I turn the corner, Bram is standing there with his arms crossed over his chest. The same chest covered in coarse hair that I’d run my fingers through just hours ago.
“Strangers by December,” he echoes, his voice low and rumbling.
“Bram—” I start.
But he’s already turning around and heading toward the truck. “We should get back.”
The car ride is agonizingly silent.
I want him to be mad at me. I want him to scream.
But Bram is focused on the road ahead. His mouth is pressed into an unmoving line, and it’s not until we are parked at the back of the driveway next to the shed when he unbuckles his seat belt and turns to me.
“I can understand,” he says, his words slow and steady, “if what you told Veronica Balentine about us being physical was just words. I can understand if you didn’t actually mean it but needed something in the moment to say to her.
I know what my reputation means to the donors she works with, and I understand the position it puts you in. We can set this aside and move on.”
I am desperate to tell him that I didn’t mean it.
That what I said to Veronica meant nothing.
He wants to hear it, and in so many ways, so do I.
But I can’t continue to hurt Bram like this.
I can’t make him believe in something that we can’t have.
“And then what?” I ask quietly. “And then I’ve lied to her and she either ruins me, or we have to exist in the shadows for how long, Bram?
That’s not fair to you. Or the girls. Or me. ”
The rise and fall of his chest has become more rapid. “Is it just physical, Madelyn? Answer me that, at least.”
“I know what you want me to say, Bram. I do. And there’s a version of me who wants that too, okay? A version of me who wants to be yours to keep. But that’s just the problem. That would be only one version of me. One version among many.”
“And I’m pretty sure I love every version of you,” he says, and it’s the kind of thing that you would die to hear spoken to you, but his words are dripping in sorrow.
“You can’t love me, Bram. You can’t love something you don’t know, and I don’t even know myself.”
“Learning yourself isn’t something you have to do alone.
” His voice turns stern when he adds, “And don’t you dare tell me I can’t love you, because I do and I have and I will.
If you’re changing and growing, I want to be there to witness it.
Can’t you see that? I don’t want to stifle you.
I want to be the one who creates the perfect conditions for you to flourish.
I want to be there to watch you germinate as much as I want to be there to watch you bloom.
Those aren’t different versions of you. Those are stages, Maddie, and each one of them requires specific circumstances and conditions.
But above all, it is you at the heart. You are Maddie in every form. ”
My eyes are burning with tears. I hadn’t cried in years until that day when Bram caught me getting out of his shower, and now the threat is there all over again.
I count to ten and swallow back the sting in my throat. I can’t cry, because if I cry, he will comfort me, and if he wraps his arms around me, I will never allow him to let go.
“I can’t give you what you want. You need someone to be there for you too.
You need someone who can give you the environment that you need to grow.
You can’t just be the gardener. You can’t just give and give until you have nothing left, Bram.
And selfishly, I cannot join your life at a time when mine is so uncertain.
Because the world you’ve created—this beautiful fucking life of yours—is too big for me to not simply be consumed by it.
I will never know what could be if I’m absorbed by the life you’ve spent years nurturing.
It’s a life, by the way, that you should spend with someone who deserves you and can give you what you deserve in return. ”
He grips the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white. “You never answered my question. Was it just physical? Is that what we were to you?”
The difference between Bram and me has been and always will be that I understand just how crucial it is for someone to be the bad guy. I understand that sometimes the road of truth is paved with lies.
It takes sitting on my hands to stop myself from reaching over and touching him.
I want to be greedy. I want to live in this bubble for just a while longer, but I know that the longer this goes on, the more it will hurt for the both of us.
And so, once again, I decide to do the hard thing. The thing no one wants to do. I break Bram Loe’s heart with one single word.
“Yes.”