CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A UGGIE WAS IN misery and regretting every decision that she had made. From telling him that she was in love with him to leaving him.
And when she dragged herself into the Your Girl Friday headquarters she didn’t bother to hide any of her regret.
“Auggie,” Lynna said, looking shocked. “You’re back.”
“I am.”
“No one else is here. They all have jobs.”
“Right. Well. I’m here. And everything is terrible.”
The story of what happened with Matias poured out of her, and she wasn’t quite sure what to expect of Lynna as far as reactions went.
But there was no judgment.
“So what are you going to do?”
“What can I do? He made his position on all of this really clear.”
“It’s true. But you don’t have to listen to him.”
“It makes you kind of pathetic to keep going after a guy who said he didn’t want you.”
“He didn’t say he didn’t want you. And anyway, I don’t know. I think people should be willing to be a little bit pathetic for love. Isn’t that the point of it? I mean, I certainly wouldn’t bother with it if it wasn’t. So maybe I never will. But...”
“No. Everyone is supposed to be balanced and healthy and not ask too much of each other, and not need each other too much.”
“What a boring reality.”
Auggie found she couldn’t disagree. She didn’t want quiet or reserved. She didn’t even mind this breaking her open, because it had helped her find new parts of herself.
She didn’t want to end up without him, however. But at the same time... She just wanted him.
And she wanted to be this version of herself that had blossomed with him.
So maybe there was something in all this.
“He’s going into surgery soon. I won’t be able to make it to the hospital in time to see him beforehand.”
“You should probably go anyway. Because the way you feel about him isn’t really contingent on how he feels about you, is it?”
With that truth, Auggie took her bruised heart down to the hospital. She was informed that he was in surgery. But told that she would be updated when he was finished.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out, seeing that she had a text from Irinka.
Was this your doing?
She frowned, and opened up the link that Irinka had sent.
It was a statement. From Matias.
He must’ve dictated it to someone last night after she left. Before he went into surgery.
She sat there, holding the phone, her mouth agape as she read.
Augusta Fremont encouraged me to make this statement before she left me in the early hours of the morning. She is another person that I have failed. But that is not the point of this statement.
By now rumors, planted by my father have run rampant that I am responsible for the death of my sister.
I have spent my life feeling that I was responsible. It is why I live the way that I do. But always, always I wanted to destroy my father with my success. I blamed us both for her death. My own harsh words that I spoke to her the last time I saw her, but also him, because he raised me to be that harsh, and because he raised her to feel so much shame.
It was the perfect counterpoint. I was the match, and she was gasoline. I have walked in guilt all these years, because it was more comfortable than grief. And it was not until I had an accident two weeks ago that forced me to sit and recover...it was not until I spent that time with a woman who showed me what life could be...that I began to see things for what they were. There were fences in my mind. Roadblocks that I was convinced were the real truth. She made me see that they weren’t.
But I was not able to change my opinion on that truth until it was too late. I’m writing this ahead of brain surgery. I don’t know how I will come out of it. The doctor made it sound as if it would be easy, but if I have learned one thing about life it’s that things are rarely easy. Perhaps I did cause my sister to overdose. Perhaps she would’ve done it anyway. All I know is I live with the grief either way. And blame and revenge felt active in a way that the loss of her doesn’t. Living in anger and regret has felt much more manageable than living in hope. Than wanting to find a joy and love that I never truly had in my life.
I manufactured fake joy and kept it all around myself. I cultivated a persona in the media that allowed me to bask in the warmth of fake flames, so that I could know at least a fraction of what it was like to be cared for. After having someone give me love for real, I recognize that it isn’t enough. She told me to be real. And I am. I have no answers. Only pain. I cannot bring my sister back. I can only grieve her. If I destroy my father, nothing will be rebuilt. And that too is pointless. The only thing that has not felt pointless is the hope that it gave me to have someone love me.
To begin to fall in love with her. I’m clinging to that hope now, because now that I’ve got a taste for it, I fear it might be the one thing I have ever been well and truly addicted to.
And that is all thanks to her.
Whatever this means for my future, for my company, for my place in the tabloids, I don’t care. I care about Auggie and the truth, in that order. The truth is that I love her. The truth is that I’m still figuring out what love is.
And so, however I come out of my surgery tomorrow, with my sight or without, having lost motor skills or not, it is the one thing that will be true about me. I am not a creation of my father’s. I am not a man who has everything. I am not the best beloved playboy in the world. I am not a golden retriever. All of those things are fake.
But loving Auggie is real.
A tear splashed down on her phone screen. It was a statement that wasn’t going to do anything for him. It was a personal revelation, and nothing more. There were no neat bows. And the public didn’t like that.
But it mattered to her. It echoed inside of her. As real as anything had ever been.
Irinka sent another text.
What exactly is happening?
He loves me.
He loved her, and she had to wait for him to wake up.
She needed him to wake up. But she didn’t need him to be physically perfect. She would care for him. She would stay with him.
You are going to marry a billionaire and abandon our business, are you?
No. I mean, I might marry a billionaire. But I’ll always be your work wife.
Work Wives Forever.
A man in scrubs entered the room. “He did well. He woke up talking.”
“And his vision?”
“Come and see him. And let him see you.”
On shaking legs she walked into the recovery room. And there he was, his head leaned back against the pillow. Looking alarmingly handsome in spite of everything.
His eyes fluttered open and came to rest on her. He could see her. She knew that he could.
“Auggie,” he said. “I hope that I can see and that this isn’t a dream. I hope that you’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“You came for me. You saw what I wrote.”
“I did. But not until I was already here. Because... Just because you sent me away didn’t mean I didn’t love you. And I needed to be here for this. I had to.”
“That is more than I deserve.”
“It’s how I love. Fierce and tough and forever.”
“I don’t know how I love,” he said. “I haven’t even been certain of what it is until... Until you. I am afraid that it is hard and complicated. But it will take a long time for me to figure out how to get it just right. But I want to try, Auggie. I want a life. Not a mission. I want picnics. And smell the flowers. And to live. I want to be my own, but most of all I want to be yours.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re so happy you can see.”
“To be honest, I cared about that less than I could’ve imagined except... I wanted to see your face. I wanted to see your face since I fell in love with you. And you are even more beautiful than I remembered.”
She closed the distance between them and went to his bedside. She reached out and took his hand and pressed her cheek against it. “Now you really are delirious. I haven’t slept and I look like garbage.”
“No. You are the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen. And I am seeing you really. For the first time. Because I really do see it now. I was running from pain, but you can’t run from that. Guilt and anger were preferable to missing her. To mourning a childhood I did not choose. But if you didn’t choose it then neither did I. These hard things... They just are. You are a living testament to the fact that it is what you do after that matters. You did so much more with your hand than I did with mine. I want to be like you. And maybe I will not be a simple character for the world anymore. But I will be a real person. And that is infinitely better, I think.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”