Chapter 22 #3
I could live in Maine in my dream home on the lake in the middle of the woods.
I could open a private practice in town and make it my own.
I could fall asleep every night and wake up every morning with him wrapped around me.
And I could happily sit on this piano bench and listen to him play anytime he does.
I could do all that forever.
But in my heart, in my head, I know this is only temporary. And I realize I’m hurting with that because I want that picture in my head to be my reality, my future. I’ve always wanted that with him. And no amount of protection or distance can erase that reality.
It’s Lenox. It’s always been Lenox.
There is no getting over him. There is only living with the pain of never being able to truly have him.
Like a chronic condition, I may be able to treat the symptoms but will never be able to eradicate the underlying disease.
I revel in that truth, bleed with it, and when I’ve come to terms with it, I tuck it into its own space in my heart instead of allowing it to continue to bleed me dry.
“Did you get Ezra arrested?” I ask when his fingers start to slow and I’m positive I have control over my voice and emotions.
He finishes off his song and shifts on the bench, forcing me to sit upright. He peers at me and answers, “Yes,” without so much as a blink of his eyes or a twitch.
“Are the drug charges fake?”
“The warrant was fake. The drug use and what they found on him is not. I didn’t have anything planted.”
“I never knew he was using drugs.”
“Recreationally. More since you left him. I noticed it in Vegas, and it prompted me to do some more digging into that. He did also have an unpaid speeding ticket, which is what gave me the idea in the first place. I didn’t set him up with anything he wasn’t already guilty of.”
“Okay.”
He gives me a wry smirk. “Just okay? I was expecting you to ream me out when you found out what I did.”
I shake my head and run my fingers through his soft, thick hair, staring at him with resigned sadness.
I can say all that I want about him. I can put up a thousand walls and remind myself a thousand more times where letting him in once took me.
But the truth is, hating him is ridiculous, avoiding him is futile, and building wall after wall only ends with him repeatedly knocking them down.
All without him even having to try.
“I spoke to my mother.”
“And? ”
“And she’s sending me my dad’s personal laptop.
Alfie has been asking for it, and she told him she threw it out.
She also doesn’t know why my father changed his will, but she reminded me of how I had come to them two months before the wedding and told them I couldn’t marry Ezra and that my father pressured me into staying and seeing it through.
She told me he was under a great amount of stress because of it. ”
“I haven’t found any link that ties Ezra to your father’s death.
The only people he’s paid are bookies, and those were to settle debts.
As far as I could tell, Ezra hardly ever interacted with your father directly and wouldn’t have any direct way of knowing about the will change since your father was so careful with it. ”
That’s a relief, I guess. “And Alfie?”
“I’m still working on him. He’s a hacker, Georgia, and they take more care and time as their secrets are more difficult to find and unravel.
Last night, when he tried to dig into your computer, I reverse-hacked him because he left it open and didn’t mask himself.
A stupid mistake, but now it’s just a matter of time, and it will move faster than it has been.
I’m in something he doesn’t want anyone in, and I will discover what he’s hiding. ”
I still can’t believe all that I’m hearing. It’s too much. And yet, I’m not sure I’ve ever felt safer than I do here with Lenox. I stare at him, at this fierce, loyal, determined man. I’m so grateful for all he’s done for me. For all he’s doing for me.
Still… “I wish I had never fallen in love with you. It would make my fear of doing so again so much less.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, telling me that hurt him, but it’s true.
It’s so very, very true. Love doesn’t make sense.
If it did, we’d never continue to love people who hurt us or forgive them for it.
There is a natural, physiological response to danger.
A fight or flight response. A distress signal in your brain that activates a rush of adrenaline and sets you into motion.
You fight, or you flee.
Love doesn’t trigger the same response. Not even when it’s hurting us. Not even when it’s dangerous and we need to fight or flee for our very survival. It supersedes common sense by making us second-guess our baser gut reactions.
Love is a weapon. Whether it’s wielded by others or ourselves against us, it doesn’t matter. But when it cuts just right and makes you bleed just so, there is no sweeter weapon nor more exquisite pain than love, danger be damned.
Lenox’s eyes grow accusatory even as his knuckles gently graze up my cheek. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”
I gulp at his expression. “Figured what out?”
“You were everything to me, Georgia.” His voice floats over me like a whisper in the wind, but it slams into me with the force of a category-five hurricane.
“I never wanted to love without you. I wanted you to love without me,” he rasps, his voice almost pleading.
“You think I didn’t love you? I hurt with how I loved you.
But I was already hurting too much. I had nothing to offer you.
Two empty hands and a broken soul. I walked away because I had to.
I let you go because I would have rather died than wrecked you along with me. And I’m tired of you not knowing it.”