Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
He didn’t remember ever thinking that was true.
Ever even considering if he got to have needs.
There’d always been someone’s needs that had been more important.
Even when he’d been a kid, as great as Mom had been, as much as he’d loved her and hadn’t fully realized the nightmare going on in that house, Dad’s needs had been paramount.
Everything had revolved around his moods.
That wasn’t Mom’s fault, but she’d ensured it.
To try to stem the tide of abuse, no doubt.
Then he’d been a homeless teenager. There’d been only the most basic needs, and those hadn’t always been met. In the army, he’d been trained that he had no needs. His only service was to the army.
Even lately, so much of being back in Marietta was about Dad, about solving the case, proving the case, this trial.
Everything except Sam was about something else. And she was standing there, hurting and terrified he was leaving her, telling him he got to have needs.
“I love you,” he said, not sure when he’d fully come to grips with that.
Probably when he’d let her see his leg. But he hadn’t said it. He’d only let that feeling sit there.
Afraid of his own needs.
She looked at him like a fully formed second head had just erupted from his neck. And that he’d spoken in a foreign language while that happened.
“I … I don’t understand,” she said.
He laughed, oh it wasn’t joyful, but it was a laugh. “Fuck, Sam. What the hell is there to understand?”
“You just … I can’t…” She was shaking her head, those tears still shining in her eyes even if they didn’t fall over. “I thought…”
He waited for her to cycle through a few more I’s, none of them I love you too.
“You don’t think I get your issues? Why they’re there?
” he demanded when she couldn’t seem to form a coherent thought.
“You’re looking at me like I shot you. I’m not bailing, Sam.
I just need some space. It doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or don’t want to.
How many ways do I have to prove it to you? ”
“You don’t,” she whispered.
“Then why do we keep winding up right here? You ready for me to walk out that door and not come back?”
“Sorry, you being great hasn’t cured me of my legion of issues quite yet.”
He laughed. He had no idea why, or how, but it just … erupted out of him. What a fucking mess this all was, and somehow, she was the one perfect thing in the middle of it.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded.
“Hell, I don’t know.” But he looked at her and sighed, getting a hold on laughter that was somehow both elation and defeat. “I love you, and I’m sorry about your legion of issues, but I need to be alone tonight. Okay?”
She studied him.
Eventually, she nodded. “Okay.” And she didn’t look quite so appalled, quite so hurt.
Quite so scared.
He pressed his mouth to hers, because all those things in her expression killed him, and because it soothed something inside of him. Even if he kept it light.
He didn’t want to be tempted to stay, not when there were all these conflicting things swirling around inside of him. Pain and fear and fury and love and laughter and none of it made sense.
He moved past her, started heading for the back door.
“Nate?”
He stopped, afraid to turn around. Afraid of whatever she was going to say. But he stopped and he listened.
“Maybe if you get my … issues, I get yours. You don’t have to talk to me.
You don’t have to perform or pretend to be anything but pissed and confused.
You don’t have to go hide away all those emotions to deal with them until you know how to be direct about them.
You could just … deal with them. Here. With me. ”
He knew how much it cost her to say those things. He knew how much so much of what they kept doing cost her. Because it was no easy feat to fight what you’d been shown your whole life was the truth.
It wasn’t fair to him, but he supposed it wasn’t fair to her either. Because—a lesson he’d never had to learn because it had just always been clear—life wasn’t fucking fair.
He turned to face her. She looked worried. About him.
“Because I love you too,” she said, not even tripping over the words. “Though it’s a hell of a day for those kinds of confessions.”
Confessions. Like it was some dirty secret.
Nate swallowed at how tight his throat had gotten. “Dad could get out of jail. His sentence could be nothing. I don’t know how to sit with that. It makes me fucking furious, and I don’t want to be him. Taking that fury out on everyone else.”
She crossed to him and put her hands on his face. “You could never be him.”
He wished he had that conviction inside of him. But hers made him realize she was right about some things. Isolating was just wallowing.
Staying was proving … something. Even if only to himself.
“I know you want to believe there’s something good in Bo,” he said, not to belabor the point.
Maybe to sidestep the whole I love you thing until he got a better handle on it, but because he didn’t think she fully understood how he felt about Bo.
God knew he didn’t. “I’m not saying there’s not. But I recognize too many things in him. A lack of backbone for one. He came here because someone told him to. He likely left because someone told him to.”
“Why would they get him here, then tell him to leave?”
“They needed him for something. Now they don’t? We don’t know. We probably won’t. Can’t. I think this is one of those times we’ve just got to weather the storm, Sam.”
“Okay,” she said reluctantly. “But together, right?”
“Yeah. Together.”