57. Enslee #3
After I stepped back, I sucked a few gulps of air into my lungs. “I'm here to tell you the same thing I told him.” His head snapped back as if I struck him.
“Enslee, I don’t want you to—”
“I need to do this for myself.”
“Is leaving really the answer?”
“Yes, because this is the best thing for me.”
“What about me, and what we’d been building? After all we've been through and shared together, doesn't that mean—”
“It means everything to me, Declan, but the one you're desperately trying to hold on to isn't me, and we both know it. We both know your heart will never be fully healed until you get Brogan back.”
“There’s no future for him and me. He hates me.”
“He's hurt, just as you're hurt by his rejection.
The two of you have been through so much together.
Hell, you've shared an entire lifetime with one another. Many don’t get the chance to fall in love with their best friend.
Don't throw away your relationship in haste over something that can be fixed.”
“You should be telling him that, and not me. I was the one willing to let bygones be bygones, but he won’t forgive me.”
“He will. It's just going to take time, I promise, Declan. I need you to promise me that you’ll work on it.”
“There's nothing to work on with him, but there is something to work on between us.”
“There’s nothing for us to work on because we're great. We’re friends. Are we not?”
“Of course, we are. I’d just like to think that maybe we're more than friends.”
“We are, but right now friendship is all I can offer either of you.”
“Why? I thought you loved me.”
“I do, but I’ve realized that I've never really loved myself. That’s what I need to learn to do. I’ll be working on that while you and Brogan work on learning how to forgive and forget. You need to learn how to let love heal you.”
“What if that never happens?”
“It will,” I promised, even though I was still a bit unsure about that.
No, I wasn't unsure. I was positive, because I knew these men loved each other deeply. And while love had a way of severing things, it also had a way of bringing people together. Besides, the season of giving was upon us, and if there was ever a chance to have a redo and start over, it’d be at the New Year, which was just over two weeks away.
“I told Brogan I wouldn't choose between the two of you, and I will not.
I love you, and I love Brogan. I also know the two of you love me in your own ways, and if it's not love, you at least care about me.”
“Of course, I care about you.”
“I have to leave so I can move on with my life. I've taken so much time away from my own work. Killer Thoughtz is important to me, and I need to get back on track. In doing so, I can remember who I am and who I was before I ever came here.”
“Before you ever met the two of us,” he spat out bitterly.
“Once upon a time, I might not have felt this way, but I'll never now wish that we hadn't had this time together. I’d spent so many years only seeing you on the big screen, so to actually have a chance not to only meet, but get to know you, has been more than I ever could’ve dreamed of. You're a good man. Declan. Yes, you’d made a mistake, but mistakes can be rectified. I’m just begging you not to make another one by closing the door on what you had with Brogan.
And beyond that, I'm also begging you not to close the door on me. Allow me to remain in your life in the only capacity I can at the moment.”
Declan walked over to me, then tipped my face up so I’d have to stare into his blue eyes. “For what you’ve helped me do, I could never repay you. For what you've been for me, I could never deny you anything. If you have to leave, I won’t stand in your way.”
“Thank you,” I said before I raised up onto my tiptoes and pressed my mouth to his. Before he could deepen the kiss, I pulled away. “I'm going to miss you.”
“I'm going to miss you more.”
I smiled because I believed that. And as the same tears I’d cried upon leaving Brogan started to fill my eyes, I turned away from Declan. “I'll call you in a few days.”
“I'd like that.”
“Goodbye, Declan.”
“Goodbye, Enslee,” he said right as I disappeared through the door.
Half an hour later, my van was fully fueled, and I was on the southbound highway heading away from New York and the two most impossibly unpredictable and misunderstood men that I’d ever known.
Yet, they were also the most fiercely passionate and amazing ones as well.
Not wanting to second-guess my decision, I pushed thoughts of them from my head.
I needed to make it to Alabama. I felt a pull toward my grandmother, and I needed to be near her.
Afterward, I planned to head to Florida where I already had a prison meeting lined up for next week.
Work was the only thing that’d keep me moving forward and not reversing course to go back, but to who I wouldn't even know. How could I ever choose between either man? I wouldn’t because I couldn't, so I had no other choice but to keep moving forward.
It'd been what I'd done all my life, and it was what I would continue to do.