Chapter Twenty-Six #2
He lifted his head, revealing his red-rimmed eyes, his face twisted with devastation. “You asking, beautiful? Or are you going to take it from me?”
“I can’t take it,” I croaked. “You have to give it.” I put my hands against my chest, lip trembling now.
“We can’t be…this, Hayes. This isn’t what I want.
” His throat bobbed, and outside, the hoots and hollers of the Buoy floated up to the window, drawing my attention to it.
“I’ve come too far,” I whispered. “I can’t go back now. ”
Nothing.
I kept my eyes on the moonlight dancing on the water, taking in the ebb and flow of the midnight tide.
The dark water. The pale light. A reminder of the somber days to come.
Winter was my least favorite season. Mainly because when I wasn’t working or studying, I was here, in my colorful apartment, surrounded by ice and snow with no warmth. No love. Just me.
That first night Hayes and I spent together, before my life went up in smoke, he had lit a small flicker of hope inside me.
Struck a match with his soft chuckles and sweet praise-filled murmurs.
That hope was snuffed out the next morning, but before that, for a wisp of a moment, I thought I would be warm this winter.
In his arms. Our lives intertwined, weaved together by happenstance and acceptance.
I cleared my throat and pulled my gaze away from the outside world, diverting it back to the most handsome man I’d ever seen. “We’re at a crossroads.”
“What are you saying?”
My bottom lip trembled. In a quick effort to hide it, I pressed my lips together, looked down, and adjusted my stance. “You've given me none of you.”
“A lie, Margo,” he replied softly. “That’s a damn lie.”
“Is it?” I challenged him, raising my head. A short laugh left me. “Perhaps that’s what we should stick to—lying.”
His nostrils flared.
I threw out my arms. “Hell, you and I are both so good at it. I built my entire existence in Astoria on lies. I lied to the people I loved for years, knowing that if I kept it up, they would never know how much of a fucking mess I truly was. I would never have to feel ashamed of the past. I would never have people look at me with pity or disgust. With the lies, I could just be me.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, my hands falling to my sides, slapping my thighs.
“What I said was the truth, but you’re too much of a coward to admit that, so you slap the Lie label over it. ”
“A coward?” he repeated slowly.
I huffed, bringing my hands to the buttons of my coat, undoing them.
“You have given me nothing.” Another breathy laugh left me as I yanked the coat off and slapped it on the ground, angling both hands to my chest—my heart.
“You know everything about me. The good, the bad, and the fucking ugly. You’ve seen me at my worst—and I let you.
Yeah, you were a stubborn jackass the night you kicked down my door, but I could’ve kept my mouth shut.
I could’ve not given you a shred of mercy. ”
“Is that right?”
I nodded. “It damn well is. I let you in because I wanted you in. You, Hayes Mitchell. Not Carrie. Not Sarah. Not even Rossy. You. I wanted you behind my walls.” My eyes welled with tears. “I wanted you in my truth.”
He tore his gaze from me, inhaling sharply through his nose, his jaw jumping. “God dammit, Temper,” he muttered under his breath, shoving his fingers through his short hair. I was utterly mesmerized by the movement, him becoming unraveled, smearing his perfection for me.
“Again, you are at a crossroads,” I decreed, voice unsteady.
“You can either keep me out of those walls or let me behind them. I’m not asking you to destroy them.
Walls serve a purpose. They shield. They protect.
I understand.” I paused, taking a step forward.
“But if you want me, I need more than just your body.”
His throat moved again, his eyes glimmering with panic. “And if I don’t let you in?”
A single tear landed on my cheek. “Then what we had is done,” I answered. “You’ve installed security cameras and have access to the feed. There’s no need for you to be here any longer.” I paused, throat constricting. “I can’t live in a lie anymore, Superman. That includes yours.”
Perhaps it was due to my relationship history. I expected an outburst. A thrown lamp, a few cuss words, sprinkled throughout his insults. When none of those things happened, I realized that he was, indeed, perfect.
Just not quite healed.
“We have to let go of the lies we lived if this is going to work.” He quoted my words, both a plea and revelation I’d whispered to him when our bodies were one.
“Yes,” I rasped.
“You think I’m perfect,” he continued, his voice barely above a whisper, laced with doubt and self-hatred.
“My definition of perfect isn’t different from the dictionary’s,” I confessed.
His eyes scanned over me again, from head to toe.
“Before I met you, I had a vision of who the woman I wanted was supposed to be. What she looked like, how she acted, who she was in her heart. I’d conjured up this standard for myself.
I was chasing perfection, because that’s who I needed to be in order to survive.
” He ran a hand over his jaw, his eyes narrowing as they landed on my shoes.
He removed his hand slowly and gestured toward the couch with a quiet sigh.
“Know you love your Docs, baby, but I also know they hurt your feet after a few hours of wear. Come sit down.”
“But—”
“The thought of you in any discomfort kills me inside.” He cut me off. “I can’t focus. Please, sit.”
I hesitated, the silent question hanging above us.
He tipped his head to the couch. “Told you I was never leaving you again,” he reminded me, putting his hands in his pockets. “Now sit.”
The order was firm but gentle. All Hayes. All warmth. Gone was the tortured animal, the stranger who’d left me in bed earlier.
I moved to the couch, taking a seat on the armrest. My feet thanked me as I toed them off and crossed my ankles, each shoe hitting my floorboards with a heavy thunk. He watched it all, drinking everything in. I folded my hands in my lap, looking at him. “There.”
His eyes flicked to the shoes before he came to me, silent, and nabbed them off the floor, along with my coat. I watched, holding my breath, as he straightened up the space. When he finally came to stand in front of me again, his eyes were still dark, but the trees were returning.
A small comfort. Proof that I hadn’t pushed him too hard.
He spoke again, his words jarring me, as they were the last thing I expected. “Your messes are something I should hate.”
My tongue pressed to the roof of my mouth, my mind unsure of how to take that.
His voice was gentle. His body was rigid, eyes alert, hands on his hips.
Everything about his body language was screaming at me that he was disappointed in my clutter, but his eyes were merciful.
“I’m not a dirty person,” I noted, picking at the hangnail on my thumb. “I just—I have a lot of stuff.”
“I know.”
I waited for him to give me more, and when he didn’t, I leaned forward expectantly. “I take it this woman you envisioned wasn’t unorganized?”
“No, she was not. She was just as clean as me.”
I tilted my head to the side, my hair shifting, falling over my shoulder. I didn’t miss the way his eyes tracked the movement, the subtle twitch in his cheek or the shifting of his weight.
“Why do you look confused?” he asked, brow furrowing. “You’ve been to my apartment.”
“Yes, but it isn’t clean—”
“What the—yes, it is.” He cut me off.
“Barren is not the same thing as clean,” I educated him.
He stared at me. I took a breath and continued.
“Your home is barren—and no, I don’t think you’re trying to follow the ‘clean girl’ aesthetic.
I think you’re just too afraid to settle anywhere, to allow yourself to want things in your life because for some reason, you think you don’t deserve them. ”
His throat bobbed, his hands falling from his hips, arms now hanging limply at his sides as his chest expanded, inhaling a breath of disbelief. “Fucking Christ,” he muttered, closing his eyes, hiding from me.
I didn’t move. Not because I didn’t want to, but because he needed to take and accept this realization on his own.
“I think,” I began again, softer this time.
“I think the difference between you and me, Superman, is this: Even though a part of me didn’t think I deserved nice things, I went after them anyway.
Because after escaping the hell I was born into, I would be damned if I didn’t experience a little bit of life. ”
His eyes were shining when he lifted his head, the tops of his cheeks red, imperfect.
God, I was so in love with him, and it killed me knowing he didn’t love himself.
“Something happened to you,” I assumed. “Something awful, and I believe that, unlike me using my lies to protect myself, your lies are a form of punishment. A punishment you’ve placed upon yourself. You don’t want perfection, Hayes. That’s not what you were chasing.”
The question that spilled from his lips, the words weaved with agony and dread, had me wanting to run to him. Still, I stayed where I was, moving my hands to the arm of the couch, gripping the sides. Anchoring myself in place. “What was I chasing, my beautiful Margo?”
Hesitation weighed heavily on my shoulders. I was a mess. That much was true. But my mess was the breath of life compared to the neatly wrapped lie that had consumed him for over a decade.
“Tell me,” he begged. A tear fell from his eye, and my lips parted as I watched the first bit of his wall break when the moisture landed on his cheek. “Tell me what I was chasing.”
“Emptiness,” I answered, voice cracking. “You convinced yourself to call it perfection, Hayes, but you were never going to allow yourself to be happy.”
He tore his gaze from me, turning his head to the side. The light of my lamp hit that tear just right, and as silence suffocated the both of us, I watched it slowly slide down the sharp edges of him. When it disappeared into his neck, I whispered, “Your plan never involved your own happiness.”
“Until you.”
My heart lunged for him, but I held her steady.
A gust of wind rattled the building, a warning of the storm to come.
The roof creaked above us, fifty years of history echoing throughout my home, raindrops beginning to hit my window.
First one, then five more, then ten, and before I could release the air in my lungs, rain was pelting against the glass, bouncing off the roof.
The low roar and rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, lightning striking the water over a mile away, illuminating my broken man even more.
“Until me,” I repeated.
“You were never a part of my plan.”
“And you weren’t a part of mine,” I replied, smirking at him. I’d hoped to get something out of that, but nothing came. His face was stone cold, unreadable.
His eyes?
They were an open book, but I couldn’t turn the page. He needed to do it. He had to give me something.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I don’t deserve happiness.”
“Tell me why you believe that, because I believe you do deserve happiness.”
That was when he gave me a smile. It was small and quick, but it had the power to shake mountains. The words that followed also carried power…the kind of power that seeped its way into your soul, gradually consuming it until there was nothing but a void of your own mistakes in its place.
“Because I’m the reason my entire flight crew is dead.”