Chapter 31 #2
“How could it not be? Your dreams faltered, so you turned your focus on me.”
“I applied you for this program weeks ago and just got the news of your acceptance yesterday.”
My gaze shoots up to him, eyes narrowing. “So even when you thought you’d get drafted, you were going to send me away?”
“Send you—?” Liam makes a choked noise, tearing at his hair. “I understand you have a history of codependency, Paige. I’ve always known this. But I’m trying to show you there’s a healthier way to be in love.”
“What’s healthy about deceit?” I ask.
“I wish it had never come to that,” Liam admits. “But I can’t give you up, and I can’t let your life revolve around mine either.”
He doesn’t want me to be like his mom: purposeless without his dad.
I hate how much sense it makes.
I hate that Liam won’t just let it happen anyway.
“The whole fucking sky, Paige.” He looks at me sadly, his voice in mourning. “I wish I could show you what you are from my eyes.”
I push my thumbs to the bridge of my nose.
My heart feels like it’s being fisted. “I’m scared,” I cry softly.
“Nobody has ever treated me like you treat me. I’m afraid of the me that you see.
Most of all I’m afraid she’s a sham, and it’s everyone else who got it right.
I’ve always followed other people’s lead, and if I stop doing that, I’ll be this whole other person I’m not even sure I want to be. ”
“I’m afraid too,” Liam whispers. His eyes squeeze shut.
“I just lost one of the most important things in the world to me. It’s gone.
Because I ignored the signs, left the symptoms untreated, and then it got ugly and wrecked me.
” He flicks his eyes open, his focus on me concentrating. “I’m not losing you the same way.”
“You don’t have to lose me at all,” I say fiercely.
Bargaining.
“We can forget about Belmont,” I whisper, stepping toward him. “If you never bring it up again, I’ll forgive, and you’ll forget, and we’ll stay in Knoxville until you graduate and then we’ll figure it out.”
His head cocks, suspicious. “Figure what out?”
“What we want to do.”
“You mean what I want to do, now that plan A is off the table.”
I shake my head. “Baseball was just one thing about you, the same way music is just one thing about me. We’ll focus on other things.
We’re young, and life is so big! My dad raised five daughters and then moved to France in his fifties.
There’s infinite possibility in our future, and I know you’re feeling wrecked, and unsure what comes next, but I’ve been living like this for a while now and I’m doing okay. ” I manage a self-conscious laugh.
Liam’s jaw ticks. “Music isn’t a thing about you, Paige.
It is you. I’m not saying it’s the only thing you’re good for, but the entire time I’ve known you, I’ve watched you walk through the world, perceive it, connect to it, in this one specific way.
Refusing to nurture that instinct is you cutting yourself off from at least half of your ability to feel.
And love. And grow. Not everybody is built that way—I’m certainly not—but from the bottom of my heart, I believe that you are.
Please listen to your own instincts. Forget about all your sisters, your parents, Maisy, Evan—forget about me.
No more being the tagalong. What the hell do you want? ”
My hands ball into fists at my sides. I ignore his question, embarrassed, as ever, not to have an answer other than You, I want you.
“So, I was going to be in school, and you were going to play baseball, and we weren’t going to be together. Do I have that right?”
“It would’ve been up to you,” Liam says honestly.
“I would have done anything to make it work. Anything. I still am. But why do you think I’ve been holding out all month admitting you’re the love of my life?
Asking you to be my girlfriend? I didn’t want you prioritizing me if your golden opportunity came calling and I was playing baseball in fucking Washington state. ”
“Maybe that’s where my codependency comes from,” I seethe. “Other people’s belief that they know what’s best for me.”
He looks at me with so much sadness. “You don’t want to go to Belmont?”
I shake my head vigorously. “I do not want to go.”
“You don’t want to get a free music education? You don’t want to be in community with other songwriters for the first time in your life? There’s no part of you that is even a little bit interested, even if you’re also scared?”
“There’s no part of me,” I say, “that is even a little bit interested.”
He doesn’t believe me. But he’s in that body and I’m in this one. And my body wants my music to stay just mine.
“And you’re furious with me for doing this?”
“Furious,” I say.
“It’s the biggest breach of trust I could ever do to you?”
“The biggest.”
“Especially if I don’t regret it? And don’t plan on dropping it?”
I nod, sobbing quietly, knowing he’s leading this somewhere. “Yes, Liam, especially then.”
“Then are you ending this?”
There’s a challenge in his eyes, and now I’m trapped.
Because staying with him would be a spineless copout—unless I admit Belmont is something he wasn’t totally wrong about.
Unless I admit he helped me get something I actually want.
And prompting me to be the one to end it is his way of saying Prove to both of us you’re not so codependent that you’d stay with me even though you feel like I irrevocably betrayed you.
I can’t forgive him. I can’t. I forgave Maisy twice, and she deserted me anyway.
Folly went to find our mom, and the woman wouldn’t cross the street for her.
At some point, I have to learn the lesson of when to stop clinging.
“Don’t do this to me,” I say shakily, my tears steady. “Don’t make me do this by myself.”
His face splits open and he reaches for me. “Okay, fuck. We’ll both—it’ll be both of us,” he whispers, and I nod, forehead on his chest.
I can’t even end this relationship on my own.
How embarrassing.
“I can’t apologize to you,” Liam says, voice breaking. “Because I’m not there yet.” He gulps. “And on top of that, I wish you were more appreciative of the way I’m trying to be with you. The man I’m trying to be for you.”
I shudder under his hand as it travels down my spine. A final touch. “And I can’t say thank you,” I tell him. “Because I’m not grateful to you for doing this. I’m hurt by it, and I feel deeply misunderstood.”
My wet cheek swipes across his T-shirt. Liam pushes me into him gently, his chin moving over my forehead.
“So, in that case,” he says, every word sounding like it hurts, worse and more acutely than when his shoulder was torn open. “Seems we’re at an impasse. And I guess we need to…”
“End it,” I say.
He whispers I love you into my hair.
Stage four: depression.