CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
KNOX
“Maybe it’s time to quit. Call it a good run, and just get the fuck out,” Matti says yanking me out of my head and back to the present, where I’m seated beside him in the backseat of a town car.
Apparently, someone on my team caught wind he was picking me up and arranged for a service, completely defeating the purpose of having a friend pick me up.
“I feel like I’ve said that recently,” I mumble, looking out the window at the cars and buildings passing by.
“I feel like maybe you should say it again. See how it feels now.” I can’t tell if Matti’s fucking with me or if he’s being serious.
I do know this. “I’m not quitting.”
“Then why do you look like this is the last place on earth you want to be?”
I sit up taller and peel my eyes away from the window. “It’ll pass.” According to Kenley, everything I’ve felt since the moment I met her will.
“I don’t get it.” He kicks at my boot, same as he used to do when we were kids, and he was trying to get a rise out of me. “Last time I talked to you, everything was all fairy dust and butterflies. What the fuck happened?”
“Fairy dust and butterflies? Where are you getting your analogies from?”
He laughs. “I was facetiming my nieces on the way to the airport to pick you up.”
If I recall, Milli and Bea are seven and five now.
So, I guess that checks out. “Maybe it was all fairy dust and butterflies,” I admit, giving in to the comparison, ridiculous though it sounds in a conversation between two men in their forties.
“Maybe it still is. I don’t know. Kenley got all freaked out.
And at first, I didn’t buy into it...but then.
” The shit she said at the airport got in my head.
“I’m never going to need her,” I say the thing that’s been weighing on me for hours.
“She’s been scared all along that I would come back here, get on the bus and go on with my life like nothing happened.
And the truth is, I could. I’ve always been able to.
Because I don’t need anyone in that way. Not even her.”
Matti does a strange, slow clap. “Congratulations, man. You’re an adult. I got news for ya, you’re not supposed to need anyone.”
I frown. I know he gets what I’m saying, I don’t know why he’s acting like he doesn’t. “Obviously. I just mean -” But he cuts me off before I can finish.
“I know what you mean.” The smirk he’s had since before we started this conversation disappears.
He almost looks pissed when he goes on, “You mean you don’t need Kenley the way Emmery always wanted you to need her.
But you didn’t let Emmery down because you didn’t care enough, or because you didn’t need her the way she claimed to need you.
All that shit was just about control. And you know that.
So, don’t go using it against Kenley now. ”
“I’m not.” He still doesn’t get it. It’s starting to piss me off too.
“If anything, I’m trying to protect her.
Right now, she doesn’t think I’m coming back.
So, maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe I should just let her go, because I know and you know, that I could.
At any point moving forward, I could let her go. ”
“Like she let you go.”
I feel like he just threw me a curveball. “What?”
“Well, you’re all worried about the fact that you don’t need her, but have you stopped to notice that she doesn’t need you either?”
Unexpectedly deflated, I sink back into the seat. “You’re right. She doesn’t need me.” I even asked her. I specifically said the words, ‘what do you need’. And the answer wasn’t me.
“You’re not supposed to need each other.
That need is what makes shit toxic, it’s what poisons a relationship, fucks with the trust, creates manipulation, invites a desire for control.
You don’t want to need her, any more than you want her to need you.
” His smile slowly comes back. “That’s the single biggest thing Ness and I always had going for each other.
It’s why we were as strong as we were for as long as we were. ”
“Would you do it again? With Nessa? If you had it to do over, would you? Take the kids out of the equation, say you had those either way, would you do it to have those years with her? Even knowing how it would end? How much it would hurt both of you?” I always just assumed the answer was yes.
Now that I have a firsthand view of what’s at stake, I no longer feel right making that assumption.
“Without a doubt.” Matti nods, the smile still there even if it doesn’t hide the pain that still shows through whenever Nessa comes up.
“I’d do it a hundred times over. Lose her every time for the years I got to call her mine.
” He leans back, kicking out his right leg.
“And she would too. That’s the beauty of never needing anyone.
I know every day we both showed up, we both wanted to be there. ”
I frown. “So, who stopped showing up?” I remember Matti not going home one break and instead coming with me on a surf trip. Looking back, I always knew it was the beginning of the end. But I never put it together quite like this. It can’t be right. It couldn’t have been Matti who wanted out.
“We both did.” He shrugs. “All it took was one time. She told me she needed space to sort through some things. That she was going to take the kids and visit her great aunt in Indiana for a few weeks. Her trip fell right into a window of time I was coming home, but with the empty house waiting for me, and Nessa needing time to herself...”
“You decided not to go home and came with me instead.”
He nods.
I still don’t get it though. “Did you ever find out what she was trying to sort out?”
“I don’t think she was getting what she needed out of our marriage anymore.
The kids were getting older. They still needed her to drive them everywhere and arrange everything, but they didn’t need her like they did when they were little.
Suddenly, she said she just felt empty. The kids had their own lives.
I had mine. She’d set aside her career to take care of a family that no longer needed her to.
So, she needed to find new ways to fill her cup. ”
I guess she did just that. Last I heard, the yoga studio she opened up was thriving. Not that anyone was surprised she’d found success by combining her business degree and her lifelong yoga practice.
“Can I ask you one more thing? One more thing that’s totally none of my business and you probably don’t want to talk about since it’s a shitty topic to trudge up already.”
He snorts. “Do we have boundaries around that shit?” He waves for me to spit it out. “Let’s hear it.”
“Why didn’t you just go after her? When she went to stay with her aunt, I mean. If you knew she was pulling away, why not follow her instead of tagging along with me?”
As soon as I ask it, I regret it. Matti suddenly looks as defeated sitting here now as he did the day I went with him to sign his divorce papers.
He looks out the window for a long while before he finally answers.
“Going after each other wasn’t what we did.
We always excelled in letting each other go.
It’s what made us strong where other people fell apart.
We never asked each other to stay, we never tried to pull each other back.
We trusted that in giving each other freedom, we gave each other the choice to show up.
We knew to rejoice when we did, and to respect each other’s decision when we didn’t.
” The way he says it, like it’s rehearsed, makes me think he’s given himself this same speech, the same explanation, over and over and over again.
“Ever think of going after her now?”
He stares at me, like I’ve just said something crazy. Then, slowly, he starts to shake his head. “No more talking about me and my fuckups in love. My problems are beyond the scope of fixing for the moment. Not to mention, I prefer to focus on your shortcomings over my own.”
I let out a laugh. “Gee, thanks.”
“Seriously, though. Take need out of the equation. You love her?”
I don’t even have to think about it. “Yes.”
“Good.”
“How is that good. You of all people know that love isn’t enough.”
He nods. “It’s true. It’s not.”
“So, what is?”
“You have to want her.”
“I do want her.”
“You have to want her more than anything.” He goes back to staring out of the window. “Know why Nessa never asked me stay? Never asked me to quit music, and choose her?”
“Because it wasn’t what you did?”
He shakes his head, eyes still cast out at the world going by. At the past already gone. “Because she knew I would have if she’d asked. She was always my first choice. And she always knew that.”
KENLEY
It’s been twenty-four hours since we left Knox at the airport.
Twenty-four fucking hours. I’ve hated every second of it.
Not because I can’t stand being away from the man for even a day.
I can. I could do three hundred and sixty-four days a year without him, if I knew that one day of the years was all ours.
That even apart, we were together. And he was offering that, offering a life together built out of the lives we created apart, practically begging me to let him give it to me, and I just couldn’t accept.
Because I was too fucking scared.
I’m still scared. But now my fear is shifting. Now I’m starting to fear I did the one thing I was trying so hard not to do, I went and fucked it all up.
I’m still mid internalized panic attack when Sloan comes strolling into the kitchen, grinning about something she’s looking at on her phone.
“Entertainment via memes this morning?” I ask, getting down a bowl for her. She’s been on a cereal kick the last couple of days.
“No.” She sets down her phone to open the fridge and get out the milk while I pull the box of puffed chocolate rice from the pantry for her. “It’s just a text from Grandma Bean.”