Chapter 53
fifty-three
Tristyn
What?” The word is harsh against my throat, like I’m coughing up razor blades. But that’s when I realize he’s not distant from me. His eyes aren’t on me at all.
I watch him stand and find myself doing the same, turning around to see what he sees. Or rather, who—
Andrew.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jeremy’s knuckles turn white as they ball into fists.
“I’m picking up my son.” Jeremy’s eyes land on me, a flood of confusion covering his face, as Andrew’s words settle in his brain.
“Son?”
“She didn’t tell you?” He laughs. And I know this laugh; it’s the laugh he makes when all his pieces are falling into place. “Kind of makes you wonder what other secrets she’s keeping from you.”
“Andrew, stop.” I turn toward Jeremy and place a hand on his chest, hoping to keep him levelheaded. “How do you even know each other?”
I know they didn’t go to school together because we did. I guess Andrew wasn’t consistent in Henry’s life, so there could be a number of reasons they know each other, like—
“Oh, my god.” I run my fingers through my hair. “I’m so stupid.”
Hockey. They both play hockey.
Jeremy looks down at me, a fire in his eyes that I’ve never seen before—an anger.
“Andrew O’Connell is Henry’s dad?” The words leap off his lips like an insult. I guess I don’t blame him. Andrew’s a dick. “I knew Henry’s dad was an asswipe, that I needed to protect you and Henry from, but Andrew O’Connell?”
This time, Jeremy takes a step forward, getting closer to Andrew's ‘personal bubble.’
“You don’t need to protect my son from me.”
“From what I’ve heard, it sounds like I do.”
Andrew looks at me, with that fire in his eyes, and I don’t have time to stop him before he says—
“If you need to protect anyone in this room, it’s yourself from Tristyn.”
“What are you talking about? You're gonna try to tell me you two have been sleeping together behind my back. You're gonna try and get under my skin, O’Connell, because you can no longer do it on the ice?!”
Jeremy shoves Andrew hard, but it only knocks him back a couple of steps.
“Did they ever find who was responsible for your career-ending accident?” Andrew mocks Jeremy. He wants a rise out of him, and he is two seconds away from getting one.
“I’m looking right at him.”
“You would be,” Andrew pauses, “if you turned around.”
My heart stops. I don’t know if I’m even breathing anymore. I honestly can’t even tell if I’m awake or if this is all some horrific nightmare.
“You think I’m gonna fall for that?” Jeremy asks.
“Why don’t you just ask her?” Andrew adds. “Ask her where she was that night. Because I promise you, she wasn’t here. She wasn’t home.”
Please don’t turn around. Please don’t look at me. Please don’t ask me.
Because if he does, I’ll break.
Because I love him.
And I can’t lie—
He turns around.
“Tristyn?” His voice is soft, but shaky. I can’t tell if there are tears in his eyes or if my tears are causing me to see things. “What’s he talking about? I mean, it’s not, you didn’t—”
“Jere—”
“Oh my,” he looks back at Andrew and then to me again, “you were with him that night? You, you were with him when he…”
His voice dies off, and I reach for him, but he backs away.
“I should probably let you two figure this out.” Andrew backs up to the front door. “You can just bring Henry to my place when this all gets sorted.”
Bring Henry to my place. You mean like our original plan? He wanted Henry to spend a holiday with him for the first time ever, and I was always supposed to drop Henry off at his place. He just came here to ruin this. To ruin us.
“Jeremy, please look at me.”
“You let me sit here for months and tell you how I couldn’t remember anything from the accident. You let me tell you that I wanted to find the guy because it would give me peace of mind. How my whole life was destroyed because some idiot drove me off the road, and the whole time you knew.”
“It’s not that simple,” I whisper.
“Not that simple?! You protected him. All he’s ever done is hurt you, and you protected him. I could’ve died, Tristyn. The two of you left me to die.”
I shake my head and take another step, trying to shrink the gap between us, only for him to make it grow larger.
“No.” I wipe the snot dripping from my nose. “No. I didn’t, I haven’t—”
“What? Are you trying to figure out a way out of this now?” He scoffs. “What, you’re backed into a corner and don’t know what lie to tell me next?”
“I didn’t know,” I mutter. “Not when I met you. I didn't know until you told me what really happened. I didn’t know until you told me how you actually hurt your back.”
“Six weeks, Tristyn. I told you that six weeks ago?!”
He laces his fingers behind his head, pacing in circles.
“I wanted to tell you. I swear, I just didn’t know how to.” This time, when I step toward him, he doesn’t run the other way.
Honestly, I wish he did, because seeing the look in his eyes hurts a million times worse than him not letting me near him.
“You seemed so at peace, so—”
“You were just going to lie to me for the rest of our lives?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug.
But I do know. A week passed, then two, and three, and the more time that passed, the more I knew I would never tell him the truth. The night he told me he got the closure he needed, I thought that night would be behind us. I should’ve known things were too good to be true.
But I let myself believe they’d be fine anyway.
“Yeah, you do.”
He falls back into the kitchen chair, trying to calm himself down. I don’t blame him. I should’ve told him. I should’ve told him no matter what it cost me because he deserved that closure, but I was scared—not just scared to lose him, but to lose Henry.
“Why didn’t you call 911?” he whispers. “Why’d you just leave me?”
“I tried.” I sit in the chair in front of him.
“I told him to stop the car. God, I pleaded with him to pull over. When I opened the passenger door, fully prepared to jump out, he finally pulled over. I got out of the car and tried to go back, but he’s a lot quicker than I am, those stupid hockey legs. He caught up to me in seconds.”
I sniffle, subconsciously brushing my fingers along my wrist.
“He grabbed me, ended the 911 call, and smashed my phone.”
I don’t get into the gritty details. I doubt he cares about those right now when his whole world is crumbling around him.
“Your wrist,” he mumbles. I should’ve known he’d realize that I hadn’t been truthful about what actually happened to my wrist. “The reason you were in physical therapy was that you tried to call 911.”
“Henry was in the back of the car,” I continue, ignoring his statement.
“He was asleep. We weren’t even supposed to be with Andrew that night.
He showed up at my place, rambling about some bullshit hockey stuff that I really didn’t understand.
He took Henry out of his room and said, ‘I have two choices: Go with him or let him take Henry.’ I could smell the alcohol on him from a mile away and knew there wasn’t a choice.
I had to go with him because I didn’t know what he’d do to Henry if I wasn’t around. ”
“He’s hit him?”
I shake my head. “He hasn’t, but he’d do anything to get to me.”
He just nods, like out of everything that’s happened in the last five minutes, at least he knows that Andrew never laid a hand on Henry.
“After the accident,” I find his eyes, “your accident, he told me that if I went to the cops, he’d make sure I’d never see Henry again.
That he had money and fancy lawyers and resources I didn’t, and whether it was the truth or not, they would believe his fancy, well-known family over a girl who,” I let out a shaky breath, “got pregnant at sixteen.
I tuck my hands between my legs to prevent myself from reaching out to him, even though it’s the only thing I want to do right now.
“When I finally got home the next day, the first thing I did was look up that crossroad. It was the first article I saw. There weren’t a lot of details, just that the victim made it to the hospital alive.
I checked every day for weeks for updates, and when nothing ever came, I just prayed for the best.”
Jeremy licks his lips, and I’m sure I can see tears in his eyes. And then he does something I don’t expect, not at this moment.
He tugs on my arm, freeing my hands from between my legs, and grabs one of my hands.
He gives it a gentle, yet reassuring squeeze, as he releases an anguishing sigh.
“I wish you had told me.”
“I tried. I just didn’t know how,” I reply.
He stands, leans forward, and presses a kiss against the top of my head.
Then he drops my hand.
“This is it, isn’t it?”
I know the answer. I ruined his life. Even though I wasn’t the one behind the wheel, the doctors told him that if someone had found him earlier, there’s a chance he would’ve been okay.
There’s a chance the damage wouldn’t have been extensive.
Instead, he sat in his car, broken, bruised, and bleeding out, while Andrew drove away.
He’s lucky that he made it at all.
I turn toward him as he freezes by the island. My words hit him slowly. He doesn’t look at me, but he shrugs and continues toward the front door.
I follow behind him, and when he stops again, there’s a jolt of hope in my heart. But the second he turns around and looks at me, I know there’s no hope, not for us.
“Do you want to know the worst part about this? If you had come to me, if you had told me what happened and why you didn’t go to the cops, I would’ve understood.
” A breathy laugh escapes his lips. “If you had trusted me enough to know that I would never let anything happen to you, or to Henry, then this wouldn’t be over because I would’ve understood.
And I would’ve let the whole thing go if it meant protecting you and your son. ”
“Jeremy—”
“All the love I’ve given you, the part of my heart that belongs to you and your son, is yours to keep. But this ends here. I don’t think I can be with someone who—”
“Ruined your life?”
He shakes his head. “No. Someone who fixed my life. Someone who gave me a different reason to live, two reasons to live. Someone I trusted with my heart and my pain, and my love. Just to learn you’ve been lying to me for weeks.
You’ve looked me in the eye and let me fall more and more in love with you every day, knowing you held the one piece of information to completely destroy me. ”
He takes a deep breath.
“I can’t be with someone I can’t trust, and I don’t think I can trust you after this.”
“Jere—”
“I believe that you couldn’t tell me because you wanted to protect Henry. I see the way you love that boy; there’s no denying that.” He pauses. “But I also can’t deny that there’s a part of me that feels like I don’t even know who you are.”
“You know me. You know you do.”
“I thought I did.” He sniffles, scratching the back of his head. “You don’t have to worry about losing Henry. I won’t tell the cops what happened that night. I already told them to let it go, so there’s really no point.”
“No, Jeremy. I won’t—”
“Goodbye, Tristyn.”
And then he’s out the door, taking part of my heart with him.
“Mama?” The small voice comes from behind me, and my heart breaks a little more. “Where’s Jere going?”
“He’s leaving, baby.” I bend down, so I’m on his level.
“When will he be back?”
“Um, I don’t think he’s coming back.” I brush my hand across his cheek.
“But he promised.”
“What?”
“He told me he’d never leave me.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen Henry so heartbroken, not even in the countless instances that his father disappointed him. “He promised! He said he wasn’t Dad.”
“He’s not, Henry. He’s so much better. And it’s not his fault, baby.”
“Is it mine?”
“No. If anything could’ve gotten him to stay, it would’ve been you.” I cup his face between my hands. “Sometimes people just grow apart.”
I don’t know what to say to him. I don’t know how to explain any of this to him.
“Do you think he’ll ever come back?” Henry’s eyes focus on the door.
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “I hope so, baby, but I don’t know.”
Henry falls into my arms and breaks down. I feel the heaving of his chest as I hold him in my arms. I listen to his breath hitch in his throat as he tries to breathe through the tears. I feel his body tremble and hear his heart slowly break.
The one thing I never wanted.
The reason I pushed people away for so many years was to avoid this very moment. The moment my son loses someone who meant so much to him. And the worst part is—
I have no one to blame for it… but myself.