Chapter 51
MAISIE
The silence inside Wilder’s truck is deafening.
Somehow, the loudest thing I’ve ever heard, and it’s stifling.
I’m torn between frantically forcing my way past his walls and trying to give him enough space to let me in.
I heard everything that he said in that muddy field, over the rain and wind whipping around us, over the broken, tortured emotion lacing every syllable, over the pain in his voice.
I heard the man I love tell me that he’s not worthy of my love. Of anyone’s love.
I heard the man I love tell me that he’s too broken, too damaged, to ever deserve a woman like me.
I heard the man I love tell me he doesn’t want to taint my goodness with unclean hands.
I heard the man I love tell me twenty reasons why he can’t love me.
But what broke my heart?
It wasn’t that he claimed to not be capable of loving me back or giving me what he thinks I deserve.
It was discovering that all of this time, these are the things he believes about himself. That he isn’t worthy. That he isn’t good. That he doesn’t deserve love. That he’s too fucked-up for anyone to love him.
That’s how I know that he’s wrong.
Because I love him. Desperately. In a way that consumes me.
And if he thought all of that? That all of the things he said that broke my heart for him, not for myself, was going to be what pushed me away for the last time… he was wrong.
If he thought that I could walk away from him and let him continue to believe those things, then he has no idea who I am.
I will fight for him, even if it’s him that I have to go through.
I’ve been quiet on the ride from the group home, mostly me trying to give him the space I think he needs to process this afternoon. But now that he’s parked in front of my apartment, the heavy silence has become unbearable.
“Wilder,” I say quietly, breaking through the thick, tense air.
He looks over at me.
“Tell me that you don’t want me.”
The thought has been colliding inside my head since we left the group home. He insisted that we get out of the rain since I was shivering and my lips had started to turn blue, but this conversation isn’t over, and we both know it.
I only obliged because I was starting to shake, and it felt like after everything that was said, we needed to take a moment to take a breath.
To think before reacting when we were both so high on emotions that we couldn’t seem to get control of.
Wilder’s throat works, and he slides his hand along his jaw and over his face. “It’s m—”
“No,” I cut him off as I unbuckle the seat belt he so tenderly belted me in with and angle myself toward him.
“I’m not asking for anything else but for you to tell me that you do not want me.
Tell me right now that you don’t find me attractive, that you don’t like spending time together, that you don’t want what’s been happening between us to continue.
Just tell me that. Tell that to me right now, and I will get out of your truck and walk out of your life. ”
It would destroy me.
But if he said that the problem was truly that he didn’t want me, that he didn’t want this, then I would walk away. Not just for him, but for me.
“I can’t, Maisie,” he finally says, his eyes burning into me with the same heat as the words. “I fucking can’t.”
And I already knew that, in my heart… I knew.
I just needed him to know it too.
Wilder’s running because he’s afraid, because he truly believes the poison he’s fed himself for his entire life.
I need to feel him. To feel his skin warm against mine, to feel him here with me. So I crawl over the console and into his lap.
“Then tell me you want to give this up. What it feels like right now between us. This.”
His throat works.
“Say it.”
“No,” he grits, nostrils flaring, and then his hands are sliding into my nape, threading into my hair tightly like he’s trying to fuse us together somehow.
“I’m not fucking saying that, Maisie, because I don’t want to give you up.
Because I’m too fucking selfish, and all I want is to keep you, even though it’s the last thing that I deserve. ”
“Then stop trying to decide for me! Stop trying to push me away because you think that you know what’s best for me. God, Wilder, you are my… freedom.”
The words burst out of me in a rush, like once I’ve started, now I can’t stop them.
“My entire life, I’ve been placed in this box that’s suffocated me.
A box that requires me to be perfect and demure and never who I truly was.
But I’ve never once felt that way with you.
I’ve never felt like I had to be anything other than me.
The woman who’s changing, and evolving, and chasing all the hidden parts of herself…
until now. Your hesitation is only because of that same restricting image of me.
The one that I keep trying to break free from. A person that I’m never going to be.”
A shaky breath rattles out of me as I pause, chasing air.
“Please don’t become the man who takes that from me. Trust and respect me enough to let me choose what’s best for myself, even if the choice is you. Don’t be like all of the other people who have taken my decisions away by their definition of me.”
“Fuck, baby,” he murmurs roughly, shaking his head. “I don’t want to be that person either. I just… I don’t fucking know how to do this, Maisie. I don’t know how to be what you need.”
“You are what I need. Exactly who you are right now, that’s what I need. Nothing more.”
Wilder’s jaw flexes, like he’s trying to fight the thoughts in his head. My thumb gently sweeps across his stubbled jaw.
“How can you not be good for me when you make me feel more like myself than anyone, or anything, ever has? When you make me happier than I’ve ever been?” I kiss the corner of his lip softly because I can’t… not.
I want to make him feel the same way he makes me feel every day.
With his touch and his words that may be quiet, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t profound.
I press another kiss to his mouth, to the small cleft above his lip, the opposite corner, all while he holds me tightly against him.
“That’s not a man who’s bad for me. That’s a man who sees me in a way no other person has ever seen me. So see me now. The woman who’s never been more certain about what she wants. And what I want is you, Wilder. All I want is you.”
Wilder presses his forehead against mine and just… breathes. Every slow, measured inhale is like he’s trying to drag me inside of him.
He doesn’t speak, not with words, but he says everything with the way he touches me.
The way he holds me so tightly against him, like he’s afraid I’m going to slip through his fingers.
The way he sinks into my hand that curves below his jaw like he’s trusting me enough to stop running, even if only for a moment. To just… rest.
Heads still pressed together, our eyes shut, breathing, it feels like we’re connected in a way that’s more than words.
And it feels like enough.
Even if the way it is right now between us is all we’ll ever be, it could be enough.
“We don’t have to figure it all out right now, Wilder.
What happens next, or at all. We don’t have to decide anything.
We just take it day by day and figure it out as we go.
I’m not asking for anything more than to keep doing this with you, because I don’t want to lose you.
I… I can’t.” I whisper the words, and his fingers tighten their grip in my hair.
He tenderly pulls me back to look at me, and I can see the emotion heavy in the depths of his eyes.
I can feel everything that he can’t say.
“I’m fucking terrified, Maisie.”
I nod. “Me too.”
His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard swallow.
“I know how hard it is to open up and let someone see the darkest, most painful parts of you, and I’m never going to push you to tell me anything about your past or the things that hurt you.
I just want you to know that when you’re ready, I’ll be right beside you.
I’m not scared of the darkness, Wilder. I’m not afraid of what’s hiding in it.
I can handle it because I’m strong. So when you feel like you can let me in, I’ll be ready. Okay?”
He’s silent for so long that I’m scared that this is where he retreats, where he’s going to push me away past the point of no return, where I’ve finally lost him.
My heart begins to pound, tears stinging so hotly in my eyes that I have to bite the inside of my lip.
But then he lifts his eyes to mine, haunted with things I can’t begin to understand.
“Be patient with me. Please, Maisie.”
I nod. “I’ve got forever.”
“That’s what it may take, but I will never stop fucking trying for you.”
It’s enough.
Wilder Hawthorne is enough for me, just the way he is.