34. Chapter 34 #2
“Caitlin—” His voice breaks on my name.
“I’m not finished,” I cut him off, whirling to face him. “Your mother arranged this to push you and Millie together, and you didn’t fight it. You didn’t stand up for me, for us. Do you know what that feels like? It feels like I meant nothing to you.”
Adam flinches as if I’ve struck him. “That’s not true. You meant everything to me. I was just too weak to stand up for what mattered.”
“That’s almost worse,” I whisper, the fight draining out of me suddenly. “If I meant everything to you and you still couldn’t put me first, what does that say about us?”
The question hangs in the air between us, unanswerable. Adam looks utterly defeated, shoulders slumped, eyes hollow.
“What else?” I ask, forcing myself to continue. I feel like I’m walking across a tightrope without a net, each step more precarious than the last. But I can’t stop now. “What else happened on the cruise, Adam? I need to know everything.”
I sit perfectly still, afraid that if I move, the fragile control I have over my emotions will shatter completely. Adam looks at me with a mixture of concern and resignation, like he knows what he’s about to say will hurt me but he’s done hiding from it.
“Go on,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “Finish telling me about the cruise.”
“There isn’t much to tell until the last day. I saw Rachel’s post on Instagram that you were back in Oregon on Thanksgiving Day. I spent most of my time trying to avoid everyone and get in touch with you.”
He hesitates and then plunges ahead. “Millie and I went scuba diving the first day. There were supposed to be others with us, but…”
“I imagine something coincidentally came up with the others so that it was just you and Millie going, am I right?”
“Yeah,” he whispers, head in his hands, eyes closed.
“There were a few more activities that I couldn’t get out of. But mostly, I avoided everyone, to my mother’s disgust.”
“What happened on the last day of the cruise, Adam?”
“I’d gone back to the room after dinner. My parents were constantly fighting, my head hurt, and I just wanted a few minutes alone. But Millie found me there.”
He pauses, and I can feel the weight of what’s coming pressing down on me like a physical thing.
“Adam,” I say, my voice strained with the effort of holding back tears. “Just tell me. Whatever it is, just say it.”
He looks at me, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my blood run cold. There’s a mixture of shame and anger and something that looks almost like fear.
“She kissed me,” he says finally. “She’d been drinking, and she was upset that I’d been avoiding her all week, and she said something about how we were meant to be together, how everyone knew it but me.” He swallows hard. “And then she kissed me.”
Adam’s face is a study in misery, his shoulders hunched as if preparing to take a blow. I wait, knowing that whatever comes next will change things between us, one way or another.
“I was in shock,” he continues. “I just stood there, frozen. She had her hands on my face, and I couldn’t…
I couldn’t process what was happening.” His eyes finally meet mine, desperate for understanding.
“I didn’t want her to kiss me, Caitlin. I swear to you.
I kept screaming at myself to push her away, but it was like…
like my brain short-circuited. I felt frozen in place. ”
I nod, not trusting myself to speak yet. I can picture it too clearly, Millie’s face close to his, her hands cupping his cheeks, their lips meeting. The image burns behind my eyes.
“She tried to kiss me again, and that’s when I snapped out of it.
” Adam’s hands clench and unclench on the tabletop.
“I pushed her away. I told her no, that this wasn’t right, that I loved you.
” His voice cracks slightly on the last word.
“She started crying, saying I was just confused, that I’d been manipulated by you into thinking I didn’t love her. ”
“Manipulated by me?” The words escape before I can stop them, indignation flaring hot in my chest.
“I know,” Adam says quickly. “It was absurd. She was twisting everything around. She said that you’d known about our ‘connection’ from the beginning, that you’d purposely come between us because you were jealous.
” He shakes his head, disgust clear in his expression.
“I told her that was insane, that she was the one who’d been trying to come between us. And then…” His voice falters.
“Then what?” I prompt, needing to hear all of it now, no matter how painful.
“Then she said, ‘Ask your mother if you don’t believe me. Ask anyone. They all see it. They all know.’” Adam’s voice has taken on a hollow quality.
“And I realized then how deep it went. How my mother had been feeding into this fantasy of hers for years. And how I’d encouraged it more than she ever could every time I picked her over you. ”
He rubs his hands over his face, looking suddenly exhausted.
“I left the stateroom. I just walked out. I couldn’t be in that space with her anymore.
I wandered around the ship for hours, trying to make sense of everything.
Trying to figure out how I’d been so blind, how I’d let things get so twisted. ”
I watch him, my emotions a tangled mess of hurt, anger, vindication, and something dangerously close to sympathy. “Where did you sleep?” I ask, latching onto this practical detail as something concrete amidst the emotional chaos.
“One of the lounges on the upper deck,” he says.
“I avoided everyone for the rest of the trip. Ignored their calls and texts. My dad and Lauren helped, packing up my clothes for me and helping me avoid Mom and Millie when we disembarked. Instead of flying back to Iowa with them when we docked, I flew to Oregon. I found you at your aunt and uncles and well, you know what happened from there.”
I sit in silence, absorbing everything he’s told me.
The room feels too small, too warm, too full of our shared history and pain.
Part of me wants to reach across the space between us, to forget the last year of pain.
Another part wants to run, to protect myself from ever being hurt like that again.
Frozen, I stay where I am, trapped between these opposing impulses, unsure which way to move.