Chapter 19 #2
“It wasn’t you. It wasn’t your fault. In the absence of decent parents, teachers mean a lot.
Mrs. Converse hurt you. It was … it was the principal, Jack Condzella, who made me afraid.
He’d always been so nice to me, but when I tried to tell him about my dad hurting my mom, hurting me, he said I had to be careful saying things like that because it could ruin my father.
” Her throat went dry. “He wouldn’t listen to me.
But it was more than that. It was never that he didn’t believe me; it was that my dad was more important than I was. ”
“When was that, Perry?”
She blinked. “I was maybe eleven.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was humiliated. And I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t care. I never wanted to talk about it. I never wanted to repeat it.”
Carson was breathing hard, fury and murder in his eyes. “School personnel are mandatory reporters.”
She nodded. “I know. I know they are, but he didn’t protect me.
He just made me feel like … what I was afraid of was true.
I didn’t matter. What I said didn’t matter and I let it affect me for a long time.
I let that make me scared. That was the time when I started questioning myself, how loud I shouted when we played. ”
He shook his head and pressed his forehead to hers. “That was wrong, what happened to you. I wish I could have protected you from it.”
“It wasn’t your job to protect me from everything.” The truth was, Carson’s attempt to protect her had caused its own kind of pain.
Despite his good intentions.
But it was just life; she was beginning to accept that. There were so many beautiful, wonderful things, and also so much tragedy. So many opportunities to hold on to pain forever, or … let it go so you could experience something new.
“You really went swimming in that white dress so I could see your underwear through the fabric, Periwinkle?” he asked, his tone vaguely scolding, rough and sexy.
“I did. But I was playing with something more dangerous than I was ready to handle.”
The truth was, the fire between them would have burned them both up back then. Maybe it would have been worth it. Maybe.
“I wanted to dance with you,” she whispered. “I dreamed of it.”
He kissed her forehead, and she closed her eyes. “I can dance with you now.”
She wasn’t sure if that was enough to erase her regret. But she wanted to dance with him anyway.
He took his phone out of his pocket and flicked through it for a moment.
Then he pushed play on a song that she liked.
He knew she liked it, because he knew her.
Then he extended his hand and pulled them both up to a standing position.
He pulled her close, his fingers laced with hers as he began to sway her in time to the music.
This didn’t feel like friendship with sex.
This felt like something else. It felt like something deep.
It felt like letters sent from overseas and the hope of building a future. It felt like a stolen, breathless moment at Outlaw Lake, and the decision to stay instead of run.
It made her heart swell, and her chest ache.
It made her long for things she didn’t want to put into words. But he held her close. And then he twirled her, and she was dizzy when she came back to him, when she rested her head against his chest. They danced like that until the song ended.
Over their lives, over the years, she’d felt there were shifts happening inside them. But it had never actually happened. Until now. Until this.
Perry hadn’t understood the true bravery behind Mae Tanner’s decision to pack her life up. She’d thought of leaving home herself, but it wasn’t the leaving that took courage. What took real bravery was deciding to be the author of her own story.
It was unwinding herself from the expectations of other people and doing the brave thing for herself even when no one else could make sense of it.
It had been brave because Mae had stepped away from all the things that could have protected her.
Perry was so very, very good at protecting herself.
She’d seen moving away as a radical act, but had it just been running?
Carson gripped her wrists, his eyes blazing into hers, the shift between them hot, sudden.
She could see it now, the intensity he’d felt back then that poor teenage virgin Perry had thought was anger. All this stunning male intensity that she’d been so certain was rage at her woman’s body. It was, in a fashion. But not the way she’d thought.
“Come home with me,” he said.
“Carson …” Her stomach went tight. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t sleep in a bed that you shared with her.”
She felt like her skin had been pulled tight over her entire body.
She wasn’t trying to hurt him, she wasn’t trying to rub stinging nettles into a wound neither of them could magically heal, but she needed to say something.
They were going to have to talk about it.
She was going to have to give him some honesty.
“I wanted you back then, Carson. And I was your friend. I don’t want you to feel like I was lying the whole time.
I think that’s what’s the hardest about this.
It feels dishonest. Like I wasn’t really your friend.
Or like I was lying in wait, only there because I wanted you in a physical way.
But that wasn’t it. That wasn’t what I was doing.
Not ever. Sometimes I could be happy with what we had.
Sometimes I thought things were changing, and then they didn’t, and I learned to accept being just friends all over again.
You went away, you left me. And it was like I was broken in half. I only felt right when you came back.”
He nodded. “Me too. I missed you so much while I was gone. You don’t even know. The military was hell, Perry.”
“You never talk about it.”
“Because we quit talking.”
She realized how true that was. They saw each other, and they took solace in each other. They were there for each other. But they knew so many things about each other’s lives that they didn’t often dig deep as they had been recently.
They could exist beside each other in quiet comfort, and there was something nice about that.
But it didn’t leave room for him to share what the military had done to him.
She hadn’t wanted to know. He had revealed bits and pieces of his marriage in the last couple of weeks.
She had never asked before then. It wasn’t by accident.
“When you came back engaged, I thought I was going to die.” She didn’t like to think about that time. She didn’t like to revisit it at all. Not in her own mind, much less bring it back to his.
“I hated her,” she said. “I really hated her, Carson. At first. But then it turned out that she was a really nice woman. And I thought you loved her. I thought she made you happy. That meant I couldn’t hate her.
How could I? She gave you something no one else did.
But a little over a week ago, you told me that wasn’t true.
And I’ve had to figure out what I think about that, about everything, since then.
” She shook her head. “I know it sounds selfish, I know it sounds bad to say that your tragedy hurt me too. But it did.” She took a deep breath.
“You’re supposed to marry your best friend, right?
So if you got married to somebody else, then I couldn’t be your best friend anymore. ”
He grabbed hold of her arms; he held her close. He held her hard. “Perry,” he said, “you were always my best friend.”
“But I just knew then that nothing was ever going to happen between us. Don’t you understand that? Because I think part of me always did think that we would … you know everybody in town kind of thought that too.”
“I just didn’t want to break you.”
“You did.” Tears fell down her cheeks. “You did. You broke me because you didn’t choose me.
” The words were plaintive and small. “And maybe I don’t have any pride.
Maybe that’s my problem. Because I don’t even think I should be with you now.
Because you didn’t choose me. You chose her.
And she’s gone. How am I supposed to contend with that?
I’m still angry, but it’s tragic. I’m afraid I’m a petulant, greedy woman. ”
“Perry,” he said. “I wanted to save you from this, from me.”
“Carson, you were all I wanted. I can never … I can never be special enough. Oh, I hate it. I hate saying it. It sounds so small, and so ridiculous. But no one has ever put me first. My dad didn’t choose to be a decent person.
My mom didn’t choose to make me her priority.
The principal didn’t think I was as important as my dad.
You didn’t choose me. To be your girl. The same issue keeps repeating itself, and I am thirty-two years old, so I know how immature I sound. ”
“I’m really sorry,” he said. “I just didn’t want to hurt you. I mean that. Perry, I did choose you. To be the most important person in my life. The most important. That’s what you have been to me always. She wasn’t …”
He turned away. She knew that this conversation was impossible. It felt unfair. “There was never any point in my life when I saw an example of a good marriage, one that mattered. When I met you, you were more important to me than anything else. I wanted to protect our friendship.”
“But I don’t understand why you got married at all.”
“Because … it was selfish. I thought it would fix me.”
“Why couldn’t you have been selfish with me?”
“I don’t … Perry,” he said. “It was different with us—it always was. Alyssa was an army brat and she was from a family that … functioned so I knew she could help me build a life.”
“I’m not good enough because my family is broken?”