Chapter 31
Pace
It was incredible how I was still able to function with my heart shattered.
Every morning, I moved through the motions of life and spent every waking moment in my head. I debated how to undo the hurt I’d caused Sophie, explain that while ill-timed, my mortifying proposal had been sincere, and how I could show Sophie why I was broken.
But then I would hear Kaylee’s words, that what we’d felt wasn’t that serious, even though I had done everything to take care of her. I would remember how Levi had retreated and not needed me at all, and I would not send the message, not speak the words to Sophie.
The days of December turned over in the calendar. The town buzzed with a festive energy that was lost on me; I wasn’t really there.
I made myself busier than ever. I searched for every and any task I could find around town.
I helped decorate the town square. I cleared snow from the sidewalks.
I never stopped moving because if I did, the reality of my loneliness crashed down on me.
I couldn’t look at my barren house and not think of Sophie’s cozy home.
I couldn’t sit on my almost-new couch and not think of our SHMOS.
I was a shell of a man, pretending to be normal.
I worked harder than before I’d found that damn list.
I pretended to be my old happy self as the people of town not so subtly poked and prodded at me.
“What’s going on, Pace? You good?”
“You’re not your usual happy and smiling self.”
I hadn’t been keeping things as under wraps as I thought. And when I brushed off those questions, they were instantly followed up.
“Where’s Sophie? I loved seeing her around.”
“Tell Sophie we’d love to have her over.”
It was going to be like this. It was going to be Sophie for the next decade now, and not Kaylee.
Because they couldn’t understand what I did wrong to lose her.
They didn’t see that underneath all my willingness to help other people, there was something inherently wrong with me.
I wasn’t enough to keep those who I loved.
As much as I’d made myself available to the town, I actively avoided Levi.
The irony was not lost on me that I was doing to him exactly what he had done to me when he was hurting: hide.
That thought left me even more miserable.
I didn’t want to be this version of myself, but I didn’t know how to shake this self-recrimination and malaise of guilt either.
Today, I was down in my home gym, trying to abuse my body until the thoughts stopped.
But it wasn’t working. I growled as I picked up the weighted bar for another set of bench presses.
I groaned and tried to push the bench press bar up to the sky, but it got stuck on my chest. The utter frustration and shame of my actions made me weak.
That fucking list.
It’d been leaked and I—
I couldn’t let myself think about the horror and fear on Sophie’s face.
It all caught up with me.
These last weeks, I’d pushed so hard to outrun my thoughts that once I stopped, I just collapsed.
I lay on my back, unable to do another rep.
I stared at the ceiling. Breaths coming fast, muscles twitching from exertion.
The pain of missing her sat on my chest heavier than the bar resting on it. I missed her so much.
I closed my eyes, and the second I did, she was there. No miles of running made me stop remembering the smell of her shampoo as I held her in my arms. No amount of bench presses could block out the feel of her when she came around me.
I was close to tears, wondering if I would ever be able to lift this bar again.
A pair of hands materialized to help me lift the weight. I pushed with everything I had left as I said, “Fuuuuuck.”
The bar was placed back on the stand. Levi stood with arms crossed and an angry look on his face.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You know better than that.” He glared at the bar we’d just reset.
I sighed, hiding my face in the towel I used to wipe my sweat.
“Shower and get dressed. We’re going out,” he demanded.
“I don’t want to.”
Mustering the energy to do any of that felt impossible. It was clear to me now how pain could lead people to a life of solitude. It was easier to convince yourself that nobody wanted you to begin with, that you were helping them by staying away.
“Too bad.”
A different towel hit me in the face.
After struggling through a shower and throwing on clothes, I walked with Levi in stubborn silence the short distance to Main Street and the Lily Carmichael Gallery. I wasn’t ready to be the first to talk.
After unlocking the back door and flipping on some lights, Levi strode in.
I sighed and fidgeted with my winter hat at the threshold. It was cold today, and there was the smell of snow in the air.
“No more avoiding shit. We are going to talk,” he said as he moved through the room, lights coming on as he went. “Come here.”
A nervous nausea gripped me, and I couldn’t remember the last time I ate. We went to the back room.
“Claire and Sophie went out to Bookers the other night,” Levi said, and it was like he punched me in the gut.
“Is she—that’s good,” I said instead of asking what I really wanted. Was she okay? Did she hate me?
“She’s doing good. Despite . . . everything,” he said.
“I’m glad they’re friends still. And she’s getting out,” I said honestly. Even though jealousy roared through my blood. It was the most I had felt in days.
“It’s painful to lean into the things that scare you, but that’s the only way to get through them,” Levi said.
“Yes. Exactly. That’s what I’ve been telling Sophie this whole time.”
He blinked at me, unimpressed. “I wasn’t referring to her. Even though she is a badass, this isn’t about her.”
“What isn’t?”
Everything felt like it was about her. The air that I breathed was about her. The low-hanging winter sun in the sky was about her.
“Whatever is going on with you lately,” he said.
“Why you decided to propose to another woman instead of just talking to her.” He held up a hand when I opened my mouth to defend myself.
“And don’t even pretend that you are fine.
Because you were struggling before you found that list, and you used helping Sophie to avoid whatever is going on with you. ”
“Don’t sugarcoat it for me.” I slumped onto the stool in the small back office.
“Tell me I’m wrong.”
I couldn’t tell him that, because looking back, I realized that he was right. I had been avoiding things, and the list and Sophie had come at the right time.
“I really did want to help her,” I said.
“Of course you did. You are a good person, Pace.”
“But?”
“And you were using it as an excuse to avoid thinking. The same way you work so many hours at the firehouse, and you sacrifice every moment of free time to help everyone. You are terrified to be alone with your thoughts.”
“I am not,” I said, fully aware how petulant it sounded.
“You can’t avoid hard truths. You talk about her being brave and facing her fears, but you aren’t doing that.”
“Not on purpose,” I snapped. I tugged off my hat, scrubbing my hands through my hair.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on with me.
I thought I could just work harder. I didn’t even think anything was wrong, really.
Like I had nothing to feel sad about. I thought I was okay, but then, I don’t know.
Sophie came into my life, and it was like I’d been in a room full of smoke only to step out into a bright and sunny day.
I was excited to wake up. I was hopeful to see her every day.
I fell for her so hard. Every moment I wasn’t with her, I couldn’t remember how I had functioned before.
” Here, Levi gave a sympathetic nod of understanding.
“And it’s so fucking scary because I thought I knew what love was, but I wasn’t even close.
I feel like I can’t breathe when I imagine her not in my life, and this list was always just a flimsy excuse. ”
My voice broke, but as the words poured out, the truths were coming together to form a puzzle that I could finally see after all the pieces had been mixed up and turned around in my head.
“I feel scared all the time, and it wasn’t until I saw Sophie leaving the ball that I realized I was waiting for her to be the one to go.
I had been braced for her to leave from the second I forced myself into her life.
I thought maybe if I made myself invaluable to her that she would want to stay.
I thought if we were married, then . . . ”
I stopped talking because only when I was about to say it out loud did I hear how fucked up it sounded.
“You thought she wouldn’t leave you,” he finished.
I shuddered a breath. “Ironic, right? Since it was proposing to Kaylee that made her leave.”
“That’s not why Kaylee left. Kaylee hated this town because of her family. It was never about you. It was about this place. Plus, Sophie isn’t Kaylee,” Levi added.
I rubbed at my chest. This wasn’t about my ex; he was right. But that fear that gripped me was so real. “I know, man. I hear how stupid it sounds out loud, okay?”
Levi nodded with a frown. “I get it. Trust me, I do. The need to control, so the pain can’t get you.”
And I believed him. I remembered talking to him in this very place when he thought that he’d lost Claire.
“Exactly.”
“But the pain comes anyway,” he said.
I groaned.
“I-I love her so much that I don’t think there is any way she could possibly love me back that much in return. She’s just going to wake up and realize this facade of me that everybody sees is just that, and there’s nothing worth sticking around for.”
I glared at the floor, avoiding his gaze.
Shame burned through me at my confession. I couldn’t handle this vulnerability that I’d let him see, even as my best friend. Even knowing that if the situation were reversed, I’d be fucking thrilled he shared with me.
“Can I show you something?” Levi asked as he stood and moved into the gallery.
I cleared my throat and got up to follow him. “Sure.”