Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Aspen
Only just.
“After everything, you go to my brother first?”
“I didn’t go to him. I was in a meeting when they were going over pictures of the relic they were looking for.
When I saw the sword, everything came flooding back.
The sword. The relic. They’re one in the same.
It wasn’t a decision to tell him first or tell you first. It just came out because he needed to know. ”
“And I didn’t need to know?”
“You did, and you do. That’s why I’m here now.”
“Yes, here now. A day late, a dollar short. Day is generous though. Months. Years late. You’ve had so many chances. I can understand this being a hard thing to discuss and needing time to pull your thoughts together, but this doesn’t feel like needing time. This feels like avoiding consequences.”
“I’ve been living the consequences for years, Aspen.
I lost you. I lost my best friend—nearly for good.
I lost all the people I thought of as my family.
I’ve never known my own daughter. Didn’t even know she existed.
Everything that mattered in my world was gone, and I’ve lost moments I can never get back. ”
“Don’t put that at my door,” I warn him, feeling my stomach churn as I try to process everything he’s told me.
“I’m not. It’s my fault. It was my decision to leave.”
“Your decision to run.” I make myself clear.
“Do you know how much that hurt? To wake up one day and just have you gone. You were the one person for so many years who I felt I could trust. Who I could confide in. When I needed someone, it was always you. I loved you so much it hurt. More than that, I thought I was your person. I thought I was all those things for you. I knew you weren’t one to talk about your feelings.
I never asked that of you because I didn’t want to push for anything until you were ready.
I knew you hadn’t had it easy. Your dad being who he was.
Losing your mom. I knew you didn’t believe in marriage or relationships, and I understood why, so I never asked for them.
But I thought if I waited long enough, eventually you’d be ready, and you gave me every reason to have hope.
And then you left me. No note. No goodbye. Just gone.”
He scrubs a hand over his face and turns away from me for a long moment before he looks at me again. His eyes are rimmed with redness, and I can see how distraught he is. But it doesn’t fix the fact that he tore my heart out and took his sweet time figuring out how to tell me.
“I couldn’t say goodbye. I wasn’t ready. I wanted all of those things too. I wanted you. I wanted us. I wasn’t ready for a world without you in it, but I couldn’t live with a world where you were hurting, and I caused it.” His voice wavers, and I can see the hurt reflected in his eyes.
“And yet here we are.” I set the water bottle on the table and cross my arms over my chest. “I guess I should thank you for not taking advantage of me tonight. Because you’re right.
I don’t think this works, knowing all of that.
How long you held on to it. How many times you’ve been in the same room with me, had the opportunity to tell me, and then just kept letting us exist with that secret between us. ”
“You weren’t hurrying to tell me your secret either.”
“Because you were gone for over fifteen years. I didn’t know who you’d become in that time. If you were someone safe for our daughter to know. If you’d break her heart the same way you did mine, by showing her who you are only to disappear from her life.”
“I would never do that.”
“No? What happens if you and my brothers get into a mess you don’t want to confess to?
I’d like to believe they wouldn’t. I love them.
But I loved my father too. I thought my father loved his brothers the same way they love each other, the same way he loved us, only to find out all of this.
Then what? You lie to me then too? Keep Levi apprised, and maybe someday tell me when you get around to it. ”
“That’s not fair.”
“You’re right. It’s not.”
“Aspen, I’m sorry. For all of it. For leaving you without an explanation, for the time it took me to confess, for everything that came in between that hurt you.
It’s my fault for not coming to you sooner.
I know that. I just wanted a chance to tell you when you’d know without a doubt that I’d never do anything to hurt you or Fallon.
I want you to believe me when I tell you I’d do anything to fix it. ”
“I don’t know if this is something that can be fixed.
It was going to be difficult as it was. Tonight was a mistake from the start.
I shouldn’t have. We shouldn’t have. Not when we’re still figuring out what you being back means for Fallon.
” I’m embarrassed at the way I behaved. Inviting him up to my room.
It’s even worse than when he rejected me.
And now I have to wonder if that was all just playing along to have this conversation.
To put me in a vulnerable position and then rip the Band-Aid off.
“And this—I don’t know how to get past this. How can I trust you now?”
There’s a long pause then. A silence that falls over us like a funeral shroud.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you know you can trust me. I’m sorry. Truly sorry. All I want in the world is to make it right with you. You tell me what you need from me, and it’s yours.”
“You can start by leaving this room. I don’t know when I’m going to be ready to talk to you again.” If it was just me, I might never talk to him again. But for our daughter’s sake, I can’t erase him from our lives.
“I understand that.”
“Good. Then go.”
He nods his understanding and leaves the room without another word.
No sooner does the door shut than I burst into tears. Hard, body-racking sobs that have me collapsing onto the bed. I grab a pillow and tuck it under my head, curling up into the fetal position and letting myself have the cry I’ve been wanting to have since he first got here.
This wasn’t how I saw this night ending when I started. I thought it would be freedom. A new chapter. A fresh start. Instead, all I have to show for it is a fresh wound from an old heartache.
Trying to process all the grief I’ve had over him leaving, with all the shock of finding out my dad wasn’t the hero I’d always imagined him to be, is threatening to tear me in two. I can feel it in my soul, gnawing away at me, tearing its teeth into the wall around my heart.
But I can’t break. I have a daughter who needs me. A family who’s counting on me. And I didn’t just escape one man slowly and absent-mindedly wearing my shine off to hand my heart and self-worth to another man who already threw me away once.