Chapter Fourteen #2
Because what he didn’t understand was that there were other ways to hurt people.
“I love you. I love you enough to try and take a risk now. I love… Romeo. We’ve been fighting this fight for so many years.
Fighting to stay away from each other. And we lost that, didn’t we?
So now, I want to fight to have the most of what we can have.
I think we were meant to be together. Maybe we’re the love story.
Have you ever thought of that? Maybe all of this happened so that you and I could be together. Maybe we’re the happy ending.”
“I believe that’s true,” he said. “We are a mess. Created by a mess. And I believe that we can do our best with it, but I can’t—”
“You’re afraid. Then I understand that. Your mother turned love into a weapon for years.
She turned it into a task that you had to complete.
And today you did something incredible. You chose a different path.
It doesn’t change how much you love her.
If she tries to make you feel differently, then that’s on her.
It’s not you. Your love is the same. Whether or not we call what we have love, it’s the same.
I love you, and I think that you love me.
But I don’t want to have friendship and sex.
When I decided to marry you, I decided that I was doing it because I wanted you.
In the beginning, it was about the baby.
But that’s just a story I was telling myself.
In the end, it’s about you and me. It’s about our love story. ”
“You don’t understand what you’re asking for.”
“I do. I’m asking for you. All of you. And what part of me has ever seemed like I couldn’t handle all of you? It’s been that way from the beginning. When we only knew how to hurt each other.”
“Maybe that’s all I ever know how to do. Maybe that’s the most that it will ever be.”
“No. I just don’t believe it. I’m sorry. I know that it might make you feel better to think that this is all we have, because you want something to numb it, don’t you? You want some kind of a break from all of this. But this is intense, I fear. Becoming parents. Being married. Being in love.”
“And what exactly are you proposing?”
“The agreement is out the window. You’re going to have to penalize me.
I’ll give you everything. Every penny that I have.
But we will have to figure out how to coparent.
Because I’m not scared anymore. What I’m scared of is us having only a little when we can have everything.
That’s what I’m scared of. And that’s what I won’t allow. ”
“You can’t leave me,” he said.
“I can. And if you love me, you’ll follow me.
But if you don’t you let me go. And I will never keep you out of your child’s life.
I’m sorry for what I said when I first found out that I was pregnant.
But I would never do that to you. Not now.
Not now that I know you. But I know you well enough to take this risk.
So I’m giving you one more chance. Do you think you can ever love me? ”
She saw fear in his eyes. Real. Raw.
“No.”
“Then I can’t stay with you.”
He said nothing while she packed her things and left.
There was nothing to say. She had said it all.
She wanted something that he did not have the ability to give, and he had no choice but to let her go.
It was the only kind thing. It was the only thing he could do.
She wanted to escape him, so he needed to let her do it. There was no other option.
But as soon as she was gone, he began the process of tearing everything apart. Absolutely everything. The bedroom, and then he went down the hall and went into the room he lived in so infrequently as a child.
And he began to dismantle that as well. There could be nothing left. None of these false promises. None of this…
The pain inside of him was like a living thing. It had teeth. Monstrous teeth.
He was undone. He was finished. Because if he didn’t have Heather, what did he have?
It was like years’ and years’ worth of pain was pushing forward now. It was like all of the feelings that he had ever withheld from himself were crashing in on him now.
Years of it.
Why was his mother not like other mothers?
Why did his father care more about her, and then his new wife? His new stepdaughter? Why never him?
Why did he always have to work to have love? Why did he always have to give? Until he had nothing left. Nothing for his father, who he had shut out, and then there was her.
Then there was her.
He could remember when she had first appeared, and it was like a demon had risen up inside of him and told him that he had no choice but to deny her. He had to.
And then, when he was seventeen, it had become clear why.
Her beauty intoxicated him. His desire for her surpassed any desire he had ever felt for any other woman. And it made him mean. It made him want to lash out at her. It made him want to push her away.
Because she was the key to unlocking the door that he kept so carefully locked.
The one that kept him from being his father or his mother.
The one that kept him safe.
Always.
He gazed around the room, at all the destruction.
He had torn apart the bed. He had put holes in the wall.
He was like an animal. He had always known he would be.
Confirmed when he had first seen Heather with that other man.
Oh God. It had been confirmed then. Because he had been tempted to rip that fool’s head off. He was lucky that he hadn’t.
So very lucky.
He had been fighting this all those years. That his feelings for her were too strong. That they were…
That they were in love. And for him that was toxic, and it always would be.
She wanted them to have everything? He couldn’t have everything. He couldn’t.
And how did she leave him? How dare she. When he had been trying to save her.
You were trying to save yourself.
Maybe.
But he feared the alternative would be to drown.