Chapter 31
Tate brings me and Gabby home after the Celestival, and for the first time ever, I don’t invite him inside.
He comes in anyways.
“Can you give us a minute?” I ask Gabby.
My voice is unrecognizable to my own ears, and I’m sure Gabby doesn’t miss the exhaustion in my tone. She chews on her bottom lip for a minute, and I start to worry she’s not going to leave when she finally nods her head.
“Sure,” she says. “You know where to find me if you need me.”
She touches Tate’s shoulder on the way out with a sadness in her eyes that tells me she knows exactly what’s coming next.
There’s a bottle of wine calling my name. I grab a glass out of the pink cabinets I wasn’t able to enjoy for nearly long enough.
“Do you want something to drink?” I offer Tate once I hear the door to Gabby’s room close. “There’s enough wine to share, but there’s Dr Pepper in the fridge if you want that instead.”
He doesn’t answer.
He closes the space between us and pulls the wineglass from my hands. He sets it on the counter beside the bottle that will likely be gone by morning and pulls me so tight to his chest, he almost squeezes the resolve out of me.
Almost.
I allow myself to rest my head on his chest, indulging in these final moments, hoping I can remember the sound of his heart beating beneath my ear, the smell of his cologne, and the safety I know I’ll never find outside of his arms.
“Are you okay?” his deep voice whispers into the top of my head. My heart breaks a little more, knowing I have to let all of this go. Knowing he deserves better. “What can I do for you?”
I squeeze my eyes closed and give him the answer I know he’ll never accept. “Nothing.”
He shakes his head. “There’s something I can do,” he says. “We just haven’t thought of it yet.”
Part of me wants to draw this out forever, but I know what will happen if I do. I will turn everything that is good, bad. Leaving him with the familiar scars the Starr women leave behind.
And Tate Jacobs is too good of a man for me to allow that to happen.
I look up at him, and the expression on his face is so sweet, so tender, it knocks the wind out of me. I hope I don’t forget that either.
“Come sit with me?” I ask.
He nods and follows behind me to the couch, never dropping my hand. Never losing my touch.
“I’m gonna hang out here tonight,” he says. “Silas followed your uncle and made sure he left town. I don’t think he’ll be back, but I want to be here on the off chance he chooses to make the wrong decision.”
I didn’t know Silas followed him. One more person getting roped into my mess.
The blast zone of my life is endless.
I have to get this over with before someone else gets hit with shrapnel.
“Do you remember our first night at the Whiskey Rose?” I ask.
“Of course.” A lazy smile tugs on the corner of his mouth. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that night.”
“Not that.” My thighs clench together, and I fight to stay focused. This is already hard enough. The last thing I need is to be distracted by thoughts of his mouth on mine. Thoughts of how it will never be there again. “Before we left. Do you remember what happened on the dance floor?”
He pauses and thinks for a second before it comes back to him.
“Yeah, I think.” He nods. “Wasn’t there a song that came on that reminded you of your mom? You said she really liked it?”
Of course he remembers. Nobody has ever made me feel more cared for than this man, and it makes me hate Jack, and myself, even more.
“That was true, it just wasn’t the entire truth.
” I fight the urge to pick at my fingernails or look at the floor, anything to avoid having to look into his eyes as I say what I have to say.
“You know how they say smells bring memories? That night it was like that, but with sound. Does that make sense?”
“I think so.”
“That song…I hadn’t heard it in so long, but when I was growing up it was a staple in my house. There were three weeks a year that my mom would pull out that CD and play ‘The Dance’ on a loop for a week straight.”
“Three weeks?”
“A week for her and my dad’s anniversary, a week for my dad’s birthday, and”—I inhale, pushing against the emotions trying to creep back in—“a week for the day he died. The day he died driving to pick my mom up because she’d had too much wine. Again.”
“Jesus, Luna,” he whispers into my messy curls. “I’m so sorry.”
Tate’s arm flexes around my shoulders, and I scoot farther away. I can’t feel it anymore.
Not when the comfort of his arms no longer belongs to me.
“It was hard,” I tell him, ignoring the flicker of hurt that passes over his face. “She missed him so much, and even though I don’t remember him, his presence was such a big part of my life. Her grief was overwhelming. Her guilt was all-consuming, but never enough to make her stop.”
I close my eyes, and for a moment I can see my mom so clearly, it nearly knocks my breath away.
She’s younger.
Her cheeks are still full. Her skin is bright and unlined, the effects of the wineglass in her hand yet to be seen.
Her long legs are tucked beneath her in the ivory chair in the corner of the living room, her delicate neck bent down, as if she’s trying to fold into herself.
Grease weighs down her beautiful wavy hair.
It hangs like a heavy curtain over her face.
Garth’s voice is playing so loud from the stereo beside her she doesn’t notice I’ve come into the room until I call her name.
I don’t remember where we were going or why I needed her, but I do remember the panic I felt when she turned to me with tear-stained cheeks.
I remember thinking, even though she was sad, how beautiful she looked and the way her blue eyes turned electric rimmed in red.
I remember making myself believe her when she wiped away the stray tears and told me she was okay through a shaky smile.
I remember that if I ever bothered to look close enough, I would’ve seen the bone-aching sadness that lingered beneath the stunning facade she tried her hardest to keep up. It’s a look I know so well.
It’s the look I see reflected back in my own face.
Maybe if I took the time to look closer, I would’ve known she’d broken years before the mask finally cracked.
“She never got over losing him.” The quiet admission slices through me like a million hot knives. “I don’t think I ever knew her happy.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be happy.
I leave the quiet part unsaid.
“What do you mean?” Tate asks after a few moments.
“I mean that I’m a mess.” The admission feels like a literal blow to my chest. “For the last five years, I’ve been so mad at my mom that I failed to realize it turned me into her. The house, the chickens.” The relationship. “It was all a distraction. It was all a fake. It was all a lie.”
“It wasn’t a lie and it damn sure wasn’t fake.” His shoulders draw back as understanding dawns on the gorgeous face that I’ll no doubt spend the rest of my life dreaming about. “I’ve been here. I’ve seen it all. You can try to lie to yourself, but you can’t lie to me.”
“You saw what I wanted you to see.” I tell him the truth I never wanted to say out loud.
“That’s the thing with me, Tate. I’m just like my mom.
You’ll never know what’s real because neither do I.
We hide, we lie, and we run, but it’s never enough to prevent our mess from spilling onto everyone we love, and I can’t do that to you.
You deserve so much better than anything I can give you. ”
“No, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to run anymore and you never have to hide from me.” His gruff voice cuts through the peaceful quiet night that only a person like me can ruin. “Don’t do this, Luna.”
He says my name like a prayer, and it puts the final crack in my already breaking heart.
“There’s nothing to do,” I tell him and watch as the shadows that disappeared from his face fall right back into place. “It’s already done.”
“So what’s the plan here?” There’s a sharpness to his voice that I’ve never heard before, not even in the beginning. “You’re just going to live next door to my family you insisted I make up with and ignore me for the rest of your life? Expect me to pretend none of this ever existed between us?”
I’m sure he thinks the anger will be harder for me to hear, but I welcome it in.
Anger he can get over. Heartbreak is much harder, and I’ll gladly take that burden from him. I hope he will hate me as much as I hate myself.
“No.” I squeeze my eyes shut and I wish I could cry. I wish I could give him the tears he deserves. But I can’t. So I give him the only thing I can provide: the space to move on without me. I can’t stay. “I’m moving back to Denver and selling the house.”
He doesn’t say anything else.
The full lips I know I’ll dream about until my dying days flatten into a straight line and the eyes I sought comfort in turn to ice, their daggers taking aim straight through my already broken heart.
And as he walks out of my door and out of my life, without so much as a glance backward, I close my eyes and whisper to the skies, hoping that somebody up there can hear my wish.
Give him the person he deserves. Give him somebody better than me.
I’m not meant for a life filled with happiness and love, but Tate is.
He might not understand now, but one day he will. He deserves the world and when he finds it, I know he’ll thank me for this.
In the end, this pain will all be worth it.
For him.