Lake
LAKE
It takes me forever to stop after I’ve stormed out of the hotel bar and onto the busy streets. All I know is that I need to put as much distance between me and Scott as possible, so I fucking commit.
I walk, and I walk, and I walk, with no idea where I’m even going, fighting the urge to run. Literally and metaphorically, because Scott in his casual cruelty has ripped something open inside me, and now all the fears and insecurities Ryk has meticulously soothed and kissed better are out in the open once again.
You can’t trust people.
But you trust Ryker.
But you can’t trust people.
But you trust Ryker.
But you can’t trust people.
My insides are at war, and my mind is a mess, and all I really know is that I need Ryker. You can’t trust people, but Ryk is family and freedom and spring days and sunrises. Lying on the grass on a warm summer’s day. Laughter. Joy. He’s happiness and a dream come true, and I need him.
I trek through the city toward the rink, too much of a mess inside to get a cab or even go on the subway. I rush through the streets. I need to move and clear my head. I need to be able to think again.
I finally get to the rink, but by then the game is long over.
It takes me a second to remember that I haven’t even glanced at my phone in hours, so I pull it out. The screen is dark. I guess I forgot to charge it.
I drag my fingers through my hair and let out an angry shout because absolutely nothing is going my way right now, and I’m tired and cold and alone.
I give myself another second to get it together and then I start to walk again.
Home.
I just need to get back home, and then everything will be okay.
It has to.
It takes me forever to navigate my way through the city back to our apartment. Once I reach the front door of the building, I could almost cry from the sheer relief. I close my eyes and breathe deeply a few times before I head upstairs. I unlock the door and get inside. The moment the front door clicks shut behind me, Ryker is in the hallway. I can see the moment he breathes out and his shoulders relax.
“Where have you been?” he asks and steps closer. He takes my backpack and drops it on the floor, then helps me pull my jacket off.
“I was...” My voice sounds too hollow, and Ryk is frowning when he looks at me, and I need him to hold me, but I can’t have him worrying about me.
“I missed your game. I’m sorry. Did you guys win?”
“My…” He looks down and shakes his head, and his frown deepens. “Yeah, we won.”
I nod and try to smile, but it probably looks like a grimace.
“Congrats,” I say, and that, too, sounds pathetic, so I try again. “That’s great.”
“Where have you been?” he asks again.
“I… I got lost,” I say. Which is true in a way, but not in the way Ryk takes it.
“You got lost,” he repeats.
All I can do is nod.
He stares at me for a few more seconds before he takes my hand and pulls me into the apartment. In the living room, he sits me down by the counter.
“Are you hungry?”
I have no idea, if I’m being honest, but I nod anyway because eating seems normal, and I could really, really use some normalcy right about now.
He starts making me a sandwich, and I sit and watch and wait to feel like myself again, but I just can’t seem to force myself to feel at home inside my own body right now, and it agitates and irritates and makes me tap my fingers on the counter restlessly and bounce my foot on the stool.
Ryker ignores my twitching and slides the plate of sandwiches in front of me. I look at it like I’ve never seen food before because I suddenly can’t seem to remember what I’m supposed to do with it.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?” he asks after I’ve spent some time staring at the sandwiches while he’s been staring at me.
I stretch my mouth into a grin. “Just a really long day.”
He comes and sits down next to me. Nudges the plate closer. I take one of the sandwiches and take a bite. It tastes like nothing, but I dutifully force it down.
By the time I’m done, Ryk is playing with his fingers, wringing them, eyes fixed on his hands, looking like the weight of the world is on his shoulders.
“Are you going to tell me what’s really going on?” he eventually says.
My heart picks up speed, pounding in my throat in a sickeningly fast rhythm.
“Nothing’s going on.”
I could really use a drink right about now.
“,” he says when I fail to say anything else. There’s a tiny bit of wariness in his tone now. My heart beats even faster. Even louder.
“I’m okay,” I say.
“You haven’t been okay for weeks.”
I rub a palm over my face and try to gather my strength. I need to be strong for Ryker. For us. He doesn’t deserve all this shit that comes with me. And what if… What if it’s too much?
He sighs and rakes his fingers through his hair. “Look, I know it’s been difficult. I know I’m pretty much forcing you back into the closet, and it’s so fucking much to ask, and I shouldn’t. I know… I know you’re lonely. I know it’s my fault.” He squeezes the hand still in his hair into a fist for a moment. “I should never have asked you to do this. I didn’t get it before because it was all new, and I didn’t know, but I’m starting to get it. It’s goddamn exhausting, isn’t it? To hide who you really are. I get it now, and I’m so sorry.”
I’m trying to understand what he’s saying, but my brain seems very sluggish right now.
“That’s—” I start to say, but he’s already shaking his head.
“No, please. Let me finish, okay? I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and I have things to say. I think there’s a way we can make things better, because I can’t have you be unhappy. You’re the single most important person in my life. Hell, you are my life. Nobody else matters. Nothing else matters. Just you. Whatever I have to do, so you’ll be okay, I will. Tell me you know that.”
He looks at me, all imploring eyes and anxiety, and I don’t understand what he’s saying or why he looks so guilty.
He shouldn’t.
I should.
He shouldn’t.
“I’ll come out,” he says.
Now I can’t seem to breathe at all. I try to be calm, but the words still come out loud and even a bit unhinged at this point. “You can’t. I don’t want that. None of it. You don’t have to do any of this for me.”
By the time I’m done speaking, I’m shaking my head frantically. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I understand that it doesn’t make sense to feel this kind of panic right now. That if I look deep down inside me, this is what I actually do want. For us to be out. Not loudly or with fanfare, but him and me free to be ourselves without anybody else giving it a second thought.
Thing is, right now, he’d be doing it because of me and not because he feels it’s the right time, and that’s not something he should do.
I take a deep breath that ends up sounding like a panicked wheeze, and frankly that’s not too far off, despite my better intentions.
“It’s not a good idea,” I say, and in a bout of infinite arrogance, I figure that’s it. Case closed.
Ryker’s gaze stays on me, and he crosses his arms over his chest. There’s the familiar stubborn set of his jaw to deal with now.
My husband is an easygoing man. Unless he wants something. Then he turns into a literal shark.
“Why?” he asks.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“That’s not an answer.”
I’m lost for words for a moment because my head is a mess, and it’s difficult to figure out what I even want to say. What are my real thoughts and what is this panic taking over and speaking for me? I’m barely holding my head up in an ocean of fear, and there’s no lifeboat anywhere in sight and it’s all my own fault.
I should have told Ryk about the mess with Scott right away, because now when I open my mouth, the words aren’t coming. My vocal cords are paralyzed. Frozen.
It’s suddenly all too much. All of it. I just need a moment to think.
“We’re doing good. Why do you want to rock the boat?” I blurt out instead of taking that moment.
He stares at me for an endless second. “Because you’re not happy,” he says slowly. “And don’t try and argue. You’ve been getting quieter and more withdrawn for weeks, and I can put an end to it, so why wouldn’t I?”
“I haven’t. I’ve just been busy with stuff. These things happen.”
“Don’t lie to me,” he says. “You have. And I’ve been waiting for you to talk to me, but I’m starting to wonder if you ever will.” He takes a step closer. And another one. Until he’s standing right in front of me.
“Talk to me,” he says.
Tell him.
Tell him.
I open my mouth.
Nothing comes out.
He takes my face between his palms. His thumb traces over my cheek.
“It’s going to be okay,” he says. “I promise.”
Only he can’t make that promise. Nobody can. That’s a tiny piece of reality and for some reason it makes me feel just a tad bit more grounded.
“How about this,” he continues. “We’ll take it step by step. Expand the circle one person at a time. I’ll tell Kian.”
“No!” I rear back so fast I almost knock my head into his nose.
The panic is back. Big time.
Because this means trust. Having to trust. That thing I just did with Scott that then came back and kicked me in the nuts.
I’m still shaking my head. “You can’t trust people,” I blurt.
Ryker blinks and draws in a measured breath, but it’s tense. I can practically read his thoughts.
Not this again.
And I know what the normal route is, the one I should take.
But I don’t.
I double down.
“You can’t,” I say. “People suck. Look at all the examples. There are so many. It’s… it’s a real design flaw we have. Everybody’s an asshole.”
Holy fuck, the backs of my eyes are burning. I’m going to have an epic freak-out right here in the middle of our home, and then this place is going to be tainted by my issues too.
Ryk eyes me. Warily again. I’m making my husband wary.
“Stop being a dick,” he says softly.
I look away.
Ryk sighs.
I heave in a breath and try to make sense, but it’s like only half the words are willing to come out, so it ends up in fragments of thoughts. “If you do… and then—It’ll be my fault. Because people are assholes, and you don’t know. I…I don’t want—I can’t have that.”
It’s ugly and desperate. Panic so all-consuming it gives me tunnel vision and all the worst sides of me take over every piece of rational thought I have left, and I have to put a stop to it, but I can’t.
“What do you want then?” His tone is puzzled, with its own edge of desperation. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. I haven’t asked anything. I just want things to stay like they are.”
“You’re not happy!” His voice is louder now, which is almost the equivalent of shouting in Ryker’s case.
“I’m standing right here, telling you I’m fine!” I snap. Still the panic. Still the ugliness.
He turns and stalks away from me, muttering, “Oh my fucking God!”
“You don’t have to keep fixing me, you know?” I call after him.
He whirls around. “The fuck?”
“You’re a fixer, so you’re trying to fix me, too, but I’m not some fucking project you have to make better to fit your standards of happiness or whatever.”
He drags both his hands through his hair. “When the fuck have I ever tried to change anything about you at all?”
“Why wouldn’t you? You’re all well-adjusted and normal, and I’m an endless bunch of issues. Who the fuck wouldn’t try to fix at least some of it?”
I’m well aware I’m making no sense at all by now.
Ryker throws up his hands. “You want me to fix you now? What the fuck are you even saying? I’m going to need you to spell it out for me because you’re veering from one thing to the other, and it’s making my head spin.”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m—” I look around wildly. I don’t know what I’m searching for. An escape hatch? Because I’ve exclusively said the wrong things ever since I came home. Somehow, without planning to, I’m in full destruction mode. Elephant in a porcelain store. “You have to put yourself first. I want you to do what’s best for you. Not for us. But for you.”
“What’s best for us is best for me.”
My heart is beating too loudly in my ears, and my breath is stuck somewhere in my lungs.
“You’re acting crazy,” he says.
I can’t argue with that, but I also can’t seem to stop and make myself less crazy.
I grit my teeth. There’s a lump in my throat. A huge lump that refuses to go down. I don’t know how to explain this to Ryker. I don’t know how to banish the ugly voice inside me that’s so loud that it drowns out everything else.
People are assholes.
People are assholes.
People are assholes.
I’m this close to covering my ears with my hands and squeezing my eyes shut like a little kid.
I need to get out of here. I need to step away, take a deep breath, and stop the claws of panic from scratching the inside of my chest bloody, because I can’t think clearly like this.
I take that step. Away from Ryker.
“Don’t even think about running away,” he says, voice filled with steel now.
“I’m not,” I snap, even though I’m already backing away.
“, I swear to God,” he says.
But I’m already in the hallway.
“I need air,” I say. “And I need a few minutes.”
I stuff my feet into my boots, blindly grab Ryker’s car keys from the basket by the door, and then I storm out of the apartment without looking back.