Chapter 21
I Want Answers
Hayvin
Calling an ex for answers while running on fumes, nerves, a splash of whiskey, and a storm of anger is a recipe for disaster. That cocktail never ends well. Then again, maybe this time will surprise me.
I prowl from room to room, the phone pressed to my ear, each ring echoing through the empty house.
Do I want him to answer? Not answer?
Do I want to tell him to sit on a cactus until it hurts?
I have no clue, and the uncertainty is clawing at my sanity.
I used to be decisive, until Alek crashed into my world and turned certainty into chaos with a single demand to see him.
“Hayvin?”
Alek’s husky voice slides through the phone, and goosebumps ripple down my arms.
“What game are you playing?” I demand.
The sound of his sheets rustling sends my mind wandering somewhere it absolutely shouldn’t go.
Bad girl, Hayvin.
“Game? What are you talking about?”
“The flowers. The card. The information you absolutely do know about my career after pretending you didn’t.” I shout. “How did you know about the ceremony and the awards?”
“I know everything about you, Hayvin.”
“Bullshit,” I spit.
“Ask me anything,” he pleads.
“What’s my favorite color?” I ask, honestly, not expecting him to know this.
“You’re angry, so right now, it’s orange.
You always associate that color with anger or rage.
Red when you’re writing or singing because you feel passionate about them.
Yellow, purple, and pink are when you’re happy.
You always alternate them. Black when you hit the darker part of you, blue when you’re sad because it reminds you of the ocean to try to make your mood lighter. ”
His answer knocks the breath from me, and I find myself pressed against the wall, stunned.
“Favorite food?” I ask.
“Tacos on Saturday, Pizza on Monday, Chinese on Sunday. You try to eat healthier on the other days of the week to make up for days you load up on carbs.”
A thousand questions race through my mind, but I need one he should know. Something from my career, something I once thought he barely noticed.
“When did I sell my first song?”
“Two months after we got together. It was two days before your birthday. I gave you flowers the next day, but you thought I was giving them to you for your birthday and assumed I just got the day wrong.”
I sink to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. “What was the name of it?”
“Broken Lullabies,” he answers quietly. “It was about you growing up in a broken home without your dad and wanting better for the kids you would have.”
“When did I have my first article write-up?”
“October eighth. Marcy Longwood wrote it, and I have it framed and hanging on the wall in my office.”
A single tear escapes, tracing a slow path down my cheek. “How did I get the big scar on my knee?”
“You were at the top of the incline on your road. You and your friends decided to do something stupid that day and ride as fast as you could down it. About halfway down, you hit a huge rock and went over your handlebars. Your knee caught the same rock and busted it open. Thankfully, you only ended up with about fifteen stitches that day.”
“So, why? Why did you always act so uninterested in everything related to me?” I cry.
“Because I was fucking terrified, Hayvin. I was so damn scared to get too deep with you even though I’d passed that point the first few weeks we were together,” he admits, his voice broken and shameful.
“That doesn’t make sense, Alek. What in the world made you so scared?”
“Love. Love made me scared, Vin. But I’m realizing it also made me hurt you.”
I scoff. “Love didn’t make you hurt me. Your fear did.
Fear that you should have talked to me about.
I told you what I wanted when we got together and warned you that if you weren’t in it for the long haul or couldn’t give it to me, you needed to walk the hell away.
You made promises to me. If it’s anyone’s fault for me hurting, it’s my own because I recognize that I should have left you a long time ago.
The first time you brushed my feelings away, and kept putting Jerica between us.
Why did love scare you, Alek? Because I never did anything to make you fear it. ”
“It was never you. You didn’t make me fear anything. You, Hayvin Marie, were the one who taught me to love.”
“Stop lying,” I snarl.
He sighs. “I’m not, baby girl. Not about this. I never showed you. Never let you see.”
“But why? What was so awful about letting me see that part of you? What was so damn bad about letting me know I mattered to you? Why was it so hard to let me fucking see you?”
“Because that gave you power. It gave you something that I couldn’t control.”
“Love? Alek, nobody can control that. Your heart is in the driver’s seat there.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t control my heart, and letting you know you had it would give you the knowledge that you did.”
“So it was better to constantly hurt me? To make me feel like I wasn’t enough? It was better to make me feel inferior to Jerica because you were scared of me?” I shake my head. “I just can’t make it make sense, Alek.”
“Because it doesn’t. Not anymore. There were so many things that I wish I could go back and do differently with you, Hayvin.
The first would be claiming you to the world.
I kept you away from everything in my life because you were mine.
I shared you with Charlie, Keaton, and David.
They were the three most important people in my life. I justified that as being enough.”
“It wasn’t,” I interrupt.
“I know that now. I know I diminished your importance in my life by doing that, which was unfair and disrespectful to you.”
“There was so much more that was disrespectful to me than that.”
“Jerica,” he states, and I swear I growl.
“You made me feel like her placeholder. She was on this pedestal above me, and you couldn’t see that,” I tell him. “Or more like you didn’t want to.”
“I never meant to,” he replies solemnly.
“God. Just stop. Stop with all the apologies, all the platitudes, all the excuses. They’re just words, Alek.
It was never your words that broke me. It was your actions.
You can scream to the universe that you love me, that I’m your first and only choice, that you’re sorry, and all that other bullshit.
If your actions never match up, how the hell would your words have any impact? ”
“Okay. So, let me show you. Let my actions from here on out speak for me. Let them be the words you need to hear.”
There’s a raw, pleading note in his voice I’ve never heard before, and it twists something deep inside my chest.
“Start over with me. Give me six months to make you fall in love with me again. Fall in love with the man I’m becoming, not the man I was.”
I close my eyes and knock my head lightly into the wall. “I gave you three years of my life, Alek. You’re asking me to give you six more months of it? Six months without a guaranteed happy ending?”
“I swear, baby girl. I fucking swear I won’t let you down again.”
Behind my closed eyes, every disappointment circles back, each memory tearing at my heart like hungry vultures feasting on what’s left.
“I’m sorry.” A sob clogs my throat. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”
He coughs, and I’m pretty sure it sounds water-logged, as if he’s been crying, but I know that’s just another lie I tell myself.
“I’m not giving up, Hayvin. I didn’t fight for us when you needed me to.
And I don’t give a fuck if it’s too late now.
I’ll never stop showing you what I should have shown you from the start.
That you’re it for me. That you’re the only one I’ve ever seen.
You’re my end game, Hayvin Marie. You’re the one I’m going to my grave loving.
I love you, baby girl. Congrats on the trophy. ”
This conversation leaves me stranded in uncertainty, unable to tell if speaking my truth was a mistake or a mercy.
Emotions coil around my ankles, dragging me down with a merciless grip.
I am sinking fast, desperate for a breath that never comes.
All I can do is hope that when I finally break the surface, air will fill my lungs again.