Chapter 39
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Beck
Sloan has been staying with me for the past few days since James died.
She has been having to field phone call after phone call.
Sloan’s also been incredibly hard to read. Usually, I notice all of her tells of anxiety or fear, but she’s been oddly stoic.
We’ve fallen asleep together every night. I wake up with her wrapped around me like she can’t get close enough to me but she has felt so distant.
I’m trying not to let old insecurities come up.
Trying to hold space for her because I can’t even imagine what’s going on in her head.
I would never know how to handle something like this but the disconnect between us is killing me.
I’m trying not to push her to open up to me, and tell me how she is feeling.
Hopeful Sloan will do it in her own time but I just have this gnawing feeling she’s going to leave.
I have this impending feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I’m coming in from a run, walking into my bedroom when I hear Sloan on the phone. I lean against the doorframe and listen in on her conversation. Sloan’s back is to me.
“Yes, thank you. Just one day for the viewing and service please,” Sloan responds to whomever she’s talking to on the phone.
“Wow. In a week?” she questions.
“Um…how much does it cost to transport a body across several state lines?” I hear her ask with concern.
“Oh, wow. Okay. That’s incredibly expensive,” Sloan continues.
“A will. I never even thought about that. I imagine James did,” she responds to the person she’s speaking with.
“Yes. Okay, thank you, sir. I should be there within the week.” Sloan hangs up the phone, tossing it on the bed.
The shoe is finally dropping along with her phone.
I don’t even wait a second before I’m jumping down her throat. “So, after everything, you’re running away anyways.”
Sloan whips around. “What? Beck, no.”
“I heard you on the phone. You’re going back to Boston within the week,” I yell, storming off. Ripping my front door open, I take off down the hall.
I hear Sloan running behind me but I can’t even look at her right now.
“Beck, wait! Please! Can we please discuss this?” Sloan begs, her footsteps falling behind me.
My feet are tearing off down the stairs of my apartment complex when Sloan yells, “Stop!” Halting me in my tracks.
I whip around to face her. “You can’t just use our safe word, Sloan.”
“I just did, Beckett. Now come back inside and talk to me.”
“Answer me one question, Sloan.”
“I’ll answer any questions you have, if you just come inside, Beck. Please,” Sloan pleads.
We’re having a standoff in the middle of the stairs of my apartment complex, just staring at each other.
We walk up the stairs to my apartment door in silence. I break the tension, ripping open the door and holding my hand out for her to walk through first. When we get inside, Sloan walks over and sits on one edge of my sofa.
“What’s your question?” Sloan asks.
“Why? Why did you need to go see James every single day he was in the hospital? Why did you need to go see someone who hurt you? Repeatedly! Who tried to kill you, Sloan! I can’t wrap my head around it. I have been thinking about it for days. How could you love a man who hurt you?” I grit out.
“Beck. It’s complicated. Mine and James’ relationship was messy.
I thought I could get closure by going to the hospital.
I hoped I could get him to sign the divorce papers.
I thought maybe I’d feel bad for ruining his life.
That if I stared at him in the state he was in maybe I’d feel some sort of remorse. but I never did.
“I don’t love James. I’m not sure you could even call the relationship we had love.
I’m not sure I even knew what love looked like until I moved here.
In the beginning James was so attentive and said all of the right things.
I hadn’t been in many relationships to see the signs and then once we were married it was too late.
There were times things got so bad at home, I didn’t know how to get out of it.
My parents told me to stick it out. That James was such a great provider and it couldn’t be that bad.
“I was so afraid of him. There were so many times I had wished James would just die. A few times I wished I would just die. I think I’ve always hoped James would wake up one morning and see that I was enough.
That I was worth loving, and he would apologize to me for everything he put me through.
I thought maybe for once at his weakest moment he would but James in the end was still too much of a narcissist to take the blame for anything.
“I feel at peace knowing that he’s dead, Beck. Almost euphoric and then I’m disgusted with myself for feeling that way about a man dying,” Sloan explains, her face twisting in so many different emotions.
“So then, if you feel that way why are you still choosing to run? If James is dead, why are you running?”
“Beckett, do you even hear me? I’m not running,” Sloan says exasperated.
“But you are, Sloan. You are. You’re going back to Boston. I heard you on the phone. I’m sure you’ll go back home and remember how much you loved it there and stay. Leave us all behind. Why would you stay here?” My heart is breaking at the thought.
“Why would I stay? Why would I leave? I found a home in you.” Sloan points a finger at me. “I found a home with the girls. I found something I never even knew I was missing until I found it here with you, Beckett,” Sloan declares.
“If this was your home, you wouldn’t be booking a flight to Boston a few days after your ex died. You’d be staying here to start over with us. But you’re choosing to leave us.” My voice cracks.
Sloan gets up, moving to sit closer to me. Her hand wipes at my cheeks and then she’s cupping my face in her hands. I hadn’t even realized I was crying.
“Beckett, I need to close this chapter of my life fully so I can start a new chapter with you. I’m choosing us.
But I can’t leave unfinished pages in Boston and just move on to the next chapter.
I’m not going to just give you pieces of me.
I’m going to give you all of me. That’s what you deserve.
Just like I deserve every piece of you. Just give me a little bit of time.
I promise I will be back.” She holds my gaze.
“How long is that going to take? How do I know you won’t go back to Boston and never come back to me?” I whisper. All of my skeletons coming out of the closet. My fear of abandonment just leaking out at the fear of the unknown. The fear of being left again.
“As long as it needs to take. You will just have to trust me, Beck. Just like I’ve learned to trust you,” Sloan whispers, gently pressing her lips to my cheek.
“How?” I croak out.
“If you feel what I feel. If you can trust what we have. If you think with your heart and not that overthinking mind of yours, you will know deep down, that I won’t be able to stay away for long, Beckett.
You’ve made me feel something I never even knew existed before.
You make me want to be better for us. Trust that, okay?
” Sloan kisses my lips softly and then presses the sweetest kiss over my heart.
She gets up off the couch, grabbing her purse off the counter, and walking out of my apartment door. My heart in her hands.
When did loving someone become such a bloodsport?