Come Clean
Kodiak
Present day
IRUB THE back of my neck, searching for a way to explain my behavior. There really isn’t a good excuse without coming clean. All the way clean. And I’m so exhausted, so tired of fighting against this, of trying to make her hate me, of making myself miserable . . . “A couple.”
“So twice?” she presses.
This isn’t the Lavender I knew. She was shy and quiet and never, ever called me on my shit like she does now.
Although usually I was coming to her rescue, not being an asshole, so the calling out wasn’t necessary.
“Uhhh, I guess . . .” I swallow as she continues to stare.
Not believing me. I think about the times I’ve sat outside her door just to be close.
And the handful of times I picked the lock. “More like a few.”
Her right brow raises. She seems to decide the actual number isn’t important. Thankfully. “Why?”
“Huh?” It’s difficult not to focus on the items scattered across the floor—the ones I dumped there, thinking I’d make some kind of point. It’s not helping the thoughts running through my head, which are jumbling up like an off-kilter tray full of marbles.
“Why were you in here? It’s a fairly straightforward question, shouldn’t be too difficult for your genius brain to manage.”
“I just . . . I wanted to see . . .” I flounder, fighting the rising panic.
“See what?” She flails her hand toward her bed.
“What I keep in my nightstand drawer? Did you check for a journal? Did you want to see if I was still pining for you? Were you looking for more ways to humiliate me? Coveting them like little grenades you planned to set off every time I needed a reminder of how much you hate me?”
She stalks closer, and I hold my breath, willing her to touch me—shove me, smack me, anything, but she doesn’t.
Her ocean-blue eyes flash with ire. “Message fucking received, Kodiak. You delivered it perfectly two years ago, and I sure as hell haven’t forgotten how that felt.
I don’t require any more goddamn reminders, though you seem like you’re quite fond of delivering them.
I screwed up your life. I get it. I was a goddamn child, and I had no idea it was going to get as bad as it did, but I was not alone in those choices, so stop punishing me for something I didn’t have a whole hell of a lot of control over. ”
“That wasn’t . . . I don’t . . . I’m not . . .” I pace the room, more to keep myself from acting on impulses I can’t allow. I accidentally kick a bottle of lube across the floor. It comes to a stop in front of Lavender. She bends to pick it up, flipping it between her fingers.
“Then what was this about?” She lobs the bottle at me. Normally she has piss-poor aim, but it hits me in the thigh, a few inches shy of my junk. I catch it before it can fall to the floor. I try not to think about what she uses this for, but the images are already popping like bubbles in my brain.
“I didn’t want you up here alone with him,” I admit.
“Why? You’ve made it clear you don’t want me. So why are you being such a cockblocking son of a bitch, other than to make me miserable?”
I scrub a hand over my face. “That’s not true.”
“Oh yes, it is! You’ve been a nightmare to deal with. Every time I turn around, there you are, making my life damn well impossible. Why can’t you leave me alone? Why do you feel the need to torment me so relentlessly?”
“Because I can’t have you!” I shout.
Her expression shifts to confusion. “Have you lost your goddamn mind? You don’t even want me, so why does that matter?” she shouts back. “Who the fuck are you? What the hell happened to you?”
I don’t understand how she can’t see what’s right in front of her. Why does she have to make me say it all? What happened to when we could just be together and know what the other person was feeling? “You! You happened!”
She throws her hands in the air. “I won’t apologize for the mistakes we made when we were kids!”
I’m done fighting this, and her. I can’t keep doing this or I’m going to lose my mind, and based on what I’ve done tonight, I think I’m already halfway there. I can’t think, I can’t focus . . . All these years of holding this in have eaten away at me, turning me into someone I don’t even recognize.
Desperation bubbles to the surface and spills over. “How can you not see it?”
“See what?”
“Don’t you get it? All of it was bullshit!” I yell. “I lied!”
Her voice goes eerily calm. “Lied about what, exactly?”
Her frustration at my lack of explanation is understandable, but I’ve spent so many years avoiding and pushing my feelings down, I don’t know how to tell her the truth. I worry I’ve ruined this, us, beyond repair and she’ll never forgive me.
And I’ll lose her all over again.
“About everything.” I run my hands through my hair.
She skims her bottom lip with her teeth, running them over the scar. “Explain that, please,” she says, voice barely a whisper.
“After our parents sat us down and told us we needed a break, I was so angry. It hurt to stay away from you. I hated it, but I also realized I didn’t have control anymore.
Not when it came to you. It had to be all or nothing.
I was making you worse. I was making me worse.
I made you dependent on me, and the worst part was that I wanted it that way.
They were right to try to split us up. I was so fucking toxic. ”
“That’s what you said, we were toxic for each other.”
I shake my head. “You were never toxic for me, but I was toxic for you. For a while I didn’t see it, but you started to do better.
I hated that you were okay without me. I knew if I kept coming back, it would ruin you, and you’d already been through so much.
” I lace my fingers behind my neck and pace the length of the room.
“But that night before we moved, all I wanted was to see you, see for myself that you really were better and that I’d done the right thing. ”
“You kissed that girl the day you left! I saw it happen.”
“I was angry! You didn’t come to say goodbye.”
Her eyes flash with indignation. It’s understandable, but it’s terrifying all the same. “You’d barely spoken to me in months. What was I saying goodbye to? And it’s not as though you made an effort to reach out after you moved anyway!”
“I did try, but you shut me down and then stopped responding!”
“River blocked your messages,” she says softly. “I didn’t know until recently.”
“Of course he fucking did. And you know what? He was right to do it because I wouldn’t have been able to let you go otherwise.
After we moved, I still missed you all the damn time.
It killed me that you were gone from my world, but there wasn’t another option.
I wasn’t going to be good for you. Everyone saw what I couldn’t.
I was na?ve to believe that after five fucking years I could handle being near you again.
I couldn’t deal at all. All it took was seeing you once and everything came rushing back.
I was still going to be toxic for you. And you weren’t a kid anymore, which made it worse.
Nothing had changed, Lavender. Not for me.
I felt exactly the same as I had the day I moved away from you, so I lied.
” She’s silent and unmoving, so I continue, digging my own grave.
“That night when you came and found me at your parents’—”
“You mean the night I caught you creeping on me and followed you back to the spare room, and you made me repeat all of those horrible things you said?” Her voice is hard and sharp like knives.
I stop in front of her. “You were seventeen, and I was already in college. If I had done what I’d wanted to, I would have caused us to implode.
I wouldn’t have been able to manage the distance and not being there when you needed me.
I already knew what leaving you felt like. I didn’t think I’d survive it again.”
“So you told me you didn’t want me and you never would.”
“I lied to save you from me.” My chest aches, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.
She rubs the scar on her bottom lip. “And all the shit you’ve pulled this year? The horrible things you’ve said and done? I’m just supposed to forgive you because you decided this was how you were going to protect me?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just want you to understand.”
“You made me feel like nothing. You were a huge part of my life, and you abandoned me.”
“Because I loved you, I l—”
She recoils and puts her hands up defensively. “Do not finish that sentence. You don’t deserve to say those words, not with the way you’ve treated me. From the first day I came here, you made me feel like a nuisance.”
“I wasn’t prepared for what it was like to be this close to you again.”
I was drafted during my freshman year to Vancouver, but my mom and I talked it through with my dad and decided I should finish my degree.
I have a great team and coaching staff here, so Vancouver agreed.
As much as hockey is my life, I’ve always wanted a backup plan.
Concussions can cause a lot of damage, and I’m screwed up enough as it is.
I won’t risk my brain for a sweet paycheck.
But the real truth is, I wanted to stay because I knew there was a very good chance Lavender would be here.
Some small part of me wanted to prove I was over her, though I knew I wasn’t.
I didn’t have to dig very deep to come to that conclusion.
It took one five-minute trip in a car with her to realize I was fucked.
“So you were an asshole instead.” She exhales a slow breath. “And Bethany, the girl who came out of your house not half an hour after you dropped me off that first day, did you fuck her right after you made me feel worthless and insignificant?”
“What? No.” I don’t know how she even knows about Bethany being anywhere near me.