Chapter 27 #2
“I might be here, but I have still failed to protect you,” he said, refusing to so much as blink. “Thalia, I… I should have never—”
“Don’t,” she said, her voice weak, but still brimming with strength. “You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do,” he pressed. “And not just for… not just for making you believe that you had to leave. But for everything. Since the day you arrived, I have been cold and distant when I should not have been. I have confused things, pushed you away when I should have been pulling you toward me. I have—”
“I said don’t,” she cut over him again. “I am the one who forced you—”
“You did not force anything.”
“I did,” she said, still weak, still struggling with every word. But her skin was less pale than it had been, and there was life returning to her eyes. “I am the one who needs to apologize.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Oh, we both know that is not true.”
He smiled at her, wanting to kiss her to show how much he did not care about what she had done. “Let us not talk about this now. I am here, and that is all that matters.”
She was still lying on her back. She was still so frail, without the strength to push herself up or move more than an inch or two. But she was able to meet his eyes, and where he could see the smile that reached them, he could also see the question that sat behind them.
She watched him, that question growing. She licked her lips, grimaced as she shifted, and then she slowly pulled her hand away. Ronan gasped and went to take it, but she held it back.
“Ronan, I know this might not be the time but…” She hesitated, pain on her face that had nothing to do with the fever. “But we have been here before. We have danced around this moment so many times, and each time we do, I am left more confused than ever.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know how you feel about me,” she said. “I know how much you care. But what I do not know is why you struggle the way you do to admit such things. And not to me but to yourself.”
“But I don’t,” he assured her. “I mean… I did. I know that I have only confused things, Thalia. But that is of the past. When I heard what had happened to you, I realized how wrong I have been this whole time. I realized that…” His heart was beating, nerves building inside of him.
Fear threatening to wrap itself around him and keep him from saying the one thing he was desperate to say.
“I… I love you, Thalia. I have for some time. Foolish me, it is only just now that I am willing to admit it.”
He expected her to beam. To admit the same love. Rather than that, her brow tightened, and she continued to look at him with that same brimming question.
“That isn’t good enough,” she said.
He balked. “What… what do you—”
“Tell me why.”
“Why I love you?”
“No…” She chuckled softly. “Tell me why it is so hard for you to say it. You have been hiding something from me, Ronan. I know you have. And until you tell me what, I don’t know if…
” Her chin began to wobble. “I don’t know if I can ever trust you, for what is to stop you from changing your mind again? ”
“But I won’t!”
“Then prove it.” Slowly, with what looked like great effort, she groaned and pushed herself up so that she was sitting. There, she looked down at Ronan who was still on his knees, refusing to back down because this right here was what their relationship had been all about.
She was right, of course. Ronan was indeed hiding from something. His past, why he was this way, and why he refused to love or dared to trust himself to another.
For so long, he had used this past of his like a wall to hide behind.
He had used it to justify his actions. To defend against those who questioned why he was so removed and withdrawn.
Really, he had used it to hide himself, always saying it was for the good of others, knowing it was because he was terrified to reveal his darkest secret…
the shame he had lived with now for years.
He could feel Thalia watching him. Pleading with him to tell her. And where just a few days ago, Ronan might have stood up and walked out, convinced she would never understand, he knew now that if there was one person in this world who would understand, it was Thalia.
More than that, he wanted to tell her. She deserved to know, and it was only once she did that they might they be free to love as they both deserved.
“No doubt you have heard the rumors about me?” Ronan began. He cast his gaze away, finding that he couldn’t look her in the eyes as he spoke.
“Rumors?”
He chuckled darkly. “They vary, of course. But most pertain to that of my more… violent nature. As if the reason that I hide myself away is because it would be too dangerous to allow me among more civilized people.”
“Oh. Well… I always assumed that they were more a result of how you lived. Rumors used to explain what people don’t understand.”
“That is partly the case,” he admitted. “But all rumors start somewhere. I did not hide myself away because I wanted to, Thalia. I did it because I thought I must.”
He waited for her to say something, but she remained silent. Still, he could feel her watching him, the nerves building as she likely started to consider the consequences of what she was about to be told.
“It is a cliché to say so, but my father is where my story begins…” Ronan grimaced and he felt that familiar sickness deep in his soul, that which always came when he was forced to picture his father.
“I doubt a crueler man existed in this world, at the very least one who enjoyed torment as my father did. His soul was twisted and malicious, such that he enjoyed causing misery and hurt for no other reason than it made him feel powerful.”
“That is awful,” she said dutifully.
“My mother was the person upon whom he focused most of his suffering. As a boy, I was forced to watch as he beat and humiliated her, unable to do anything about it. Even worse was that she was too kind for this world, and she loved me dearly. I always felt that my father resented how much she cared for me, and the more she loved me, the worse he treated her.”
That was one of the main reasons that Ronan was so cautious when it came to love. He had seen firsthand the consequences of caring for another, equating love with suffering because that was all he had ever known.
“I was ten when my mother left, unable to take my father’s cruelty any longer.
She left in the night…” His chin started to wobble, and he wiped his eyes because he did not want the tears to show.
“She did not say goodbye. She did not… she did not tell me that she was leaving. One day she was simply gone, and I have not heard from her since.”
“Oh, Ronan…” Her voice cracked and she reached for his shoulder, which had him pulling away as if in shame.
“That only turned my father’s anger onto me…
” His jaw clenched and he forced down the memories of the beating he used to receive, the pain he lived through.
“For years, I was his to do with as he pleased. Done so under the claim that he was toughening me up, making a man out of me.” He scoffed.
“Really, he just did it because he liked the way it made him feel.” He took a ragged breath, struggling to go on.
“And then what happened?” she asked as if she knew he needed the push.
“I was eighteen when I’d had enough…” He stared at his feet, remembering the night that had changed his life forever.
“My father and I were hunting, done so often as another means to toughen me. I…” His voice cracked.
“Truly, I don’t remember it exactly. I think I have blocked the memory.
But my father—he was standing by a cliff—berated me for missing a shot that I should have made.
He was screaming at me, spittle flying from his mouth, his face red with madness, and I snapped.
” He winced and wanted nothing more than to stand, turn and run.
He could still feel Thalia watching him, and this time when she rested a hand on his shoulder he did not pull away.
“I had the gun pointed on him…” His voice turned distant.
“I cannot even say if I meant to shoot. I think… I think I just wanted him to know that I could, if he did not stop. That I was man enough.” He winced again, chin trembling, body shaking.
“My father was a man of few words, so rather than trying to talk me down, he turned his rifle on me and pulled the trigger before I had the chance.”
Thalia gasped. “He shot you?”
Subconsciously, Ronan touched the scar on his face. Even after all these years, he could still feel the way it had burned when the bullet grazed him.
“He did,” he said. “Lucky that he missed. Lucky that I fired back before he could get off another. My eyes were closed, blood everywhere. I…” He took a ragged breath, body trembling so the floorboards shook.
“I remember hearing the gunshot, staying perfectly still as I listened for my father to shoot me dead. But when he didn’t, I opened my eyes, and he was…
” He swallowed and shook his head. “He was gone.”
“Ronan…” She squeezed his shoulder.
Ronan pictured that day as clear as if it was just yesterday.
He could still remember stumbling to the edge of the cliff where he peered over to see his father’s corpse.
He could still remember how he had wanted to feel guilty about what he had done, how he had known that he should have been taken with shame and sadness and hurt.
But most of all, what he remembered was how little he had cared. Worse was how good it had felt.
“I killed him.” He spoke in a whisper, as if hoping Thalia would not hear.
“And I was glad for it. I…” Finally, he forced himself to meet her eyes, and when the tears began to pool, he didn’t wipe them away.
“I am not a good person, Thalia. I don’t deserve good things—love or happiness or any of that.
I might not be my father, but I can feel him living inside me. ”