Chapter 63 Cody #2
"No," I say. "I don't." I look at my hands on the table.
"I do what works, and I do it until it stops working, and then I do it harder.
" I pause. "That's what I did with you for two years.
I loved you the only way I knew how, and the way I knew how was — it was wrong, Adela.
I know it was wrong. I knew it was wrong when I was doing it, and I did it anyway because losing you was more terrifying than being wrong. "
She's very still.
"The cameras," I say. "The cheating. The laptop. Hell, even the lake house." I look at her. "I'm not going to sit here and explain them away. There's no version of any of it that's okay, and I'm not going to insult you by trying to construct one."
She looks at the table with her jaw clenched.
"I used to think love meant keeping," I say. "That's the only way I knew how to do it. You keep the thing you love. You make sure it can't leave. You build walls around it, and you call the walls protection, and you tell yourself it's the same thing." I pause. "It's not the same thing."
"No," she says quietly. "It's not."
"I know that now." I look at her face. At the profile I have been looking at for two years — across dinner tables and in car windows.
"I think I always knew. I just—" I stop.
"You were the first thing I ever had that I was afraid of losing.
Everything else in my life I could replace, rebuild, or walk away from. You were the first thing I couldn't."
She's quiet.
"That's not an excuse," I say. "I just need you to know that it was real.
" I look at her. "All of it. Everything I ever told you.
The I love yous, the I need yous, and everything in between — it was real.
It was the realest thing I've ever had, and I know I destroyed it.” I breathe.
“I didn't know how to hold something real without crushing it. "
She looks up at me.
Her eyes are doing the thing they do when she's holding something back.
"Why the OnlyFans?" she says.
I look at the table.
"Don’t say the money," she says. "I don't care about the money. Why those women? Why any of it when you had—" She stops. "When you had me. The one thing you apparently loved so much."
I breathe.
"Because I could," I say.
She looks at me.
"That's the honest answer," I say. "Not because I didn't love you. Not because you weren't enough. Because it was available, and maybe…” I shrug. “Maybe I had a control and power issue, but don’t hold me to it, Adela. I ended up in a coma because I wanted to fucking quit. I saw my chance to get out, and I took it.” I stare at the food for a moment.
“I did what I could to leave because I love you. You mean so much more to me than anything else.”
We look at each other across the kitchen table.
“Here’s the thing,” I say, tapping the table.
“We’ve been together for a long time. I don’t feel like I need to convince you I’m going to change because you know me, Adela.
You have always known me, and I got caught up in some shit.
It was like a moment of weakness, if you want to put it that way.
You know I would never do it in my right mind, and I’m back.
All of that shit with Theo, it wasn’t my character.
I know you can vouch for me. I know you know me better than anyone, so please––”
Fuck, I told myself not to plead.
"You can't just decide to be different," she says.
"Adela––"
"It doesn't work like that."
"I know." I look at her, patting my heart. "But you know me.” I start hitting my chest harder. “You know me!”
"Cody," she says.
"Adela."
"I loved you." She says it quietly and carefully, like she's been holding it for a long time and has finally decided to put it down in the open where we can both look at it. "Before any of this. Before I knew any of it, I loved you so much that I transferred colleges to be with you.”
“Baby, I know.”
She winces. “Let me finish. I was so sure about us back then.” Her voice doesn't break, but it comes close. "I was so sure."
"Baby, I’m sorry," I say.
"And you—" She stops. “Everything you did.”
"I’m so fucking sorry." I reach for her, but she pulls away. “I’m sorry, Adela. I am.”
"How do I come back from that?" She looks at me. Not angry. Not performing anything. Just a girl asking a real question. "How do I look at you and not see all of it. How do you come back from knowing that the person who loved you most was also the person who—"
"I don't know," I say, cutting her off. I can’t hear her fucking say it again. I told Theo and Beckett that I’d let her choose, but I’m not letting her go. I don’t give a fuck about keeping my word with them because all that matters is her.
“I need you to hear me. You can be mad at me, Adela, but don’t throw away everything we have together because of my stupid fucking mistake. It won’t ever happen again. I swear on my grandfather’s grave. I swear on my life. My heart is yours and only yours."
She looks at me for a long time.
The morning light sits between us.
"I'm still angry," she says.
"I know."
"I'm going to be angry for a long time."
"I understand."
"And you need to know that what happened in that hospital room—" Her voice drops. "That didn't go away. That's not something I'm going to just—"
"I know," I say. "I'm not asking you to."
She looks at her hands.
I look at her hands too.
I think about every version of this girl I've known — the one in the blue dress at the party, the one in cherry print pajamas with Maeve, the one in my hospital room with her composed face doing the most convincing performance of her life, the one in this kitchen right now with her hands wrapped around a cold mug and her eyes tired and her composure finally, finally put down.
This one.
This is the one I love most.
The one with nothing left to perform.
"I'm not going anywhere," I say. "However long it takes. However angry you are. I'm not going anywhere."
She looks at me.
Something moves across her face.
Not forgiveness — it's too soon for forgiveness, and we both know it. But something. Something that was closed six weeks ago in a hospital room that is not entirely closed right now in this kitchen in the early morning gray.
“Stand up,” I say, standing from my chair.
I pull her into a hug. A tight, genuine hug. I’ve needed this for months.
“I know I fucked everything up, but I’m going to make it up to you.”
She doesn’t hug me back at first, but then her arms fall around me, and we stay in this hug for some time.
She pulls back. “Why am I here, Cody?”
I release her and rub my face. “Because… I’m not the only one who wants to talk to you.”
She picks up her mug and drinks her cold coffee.
“Okay. Send them in. I want to get it over with already.”