Chapter 23 #2
“Walker, don’t. Not because I don’t think he deserves it, but because I don’t want him calling the police on you. And you know he will, and you know that jackass Jaden Martin is the police chief. And he’s going to take Alan’s side.”
Walker took a step back then, and she took hold of his arm.
“We haven’t ordered yet. We’ll go. But it’s not for you.
I just don’t want to be in the same room as you.
I cannot believe that I almost married you.
The reason that I hooked up with Walker so quickly is because it was life-affirming.
I almost gave my life away to the wrong man.
Thank God you ran away, because I wouldn’t have, Alan.
I keep my promises. But thanks to you being such a coward, I’m free.
So, yeah, sit in here and have your sad hamburger. Walker and I can just go home.”
They turned away from him, and she half expected Alan to try to take a swing at Walker, but honestly, he probably didn’t because he sensed that Walker was happy to go to prison.
When they got back in Walker’s truck, his breathing was still heavy, jagged. His eyes were wild, and he almost had the look of a drowning man out at sea, looking for something to rescue him.
“It’s okay,” she said, putting her hand over his.
They drove on in silence, and the feeling that had been building inside of her all day took shape. Became something she could put into words. And as soon as they pulled up to the front of his house, she curled her fingers around his. “I love you.”
He looked over at her sharply, that same wild look that had been there before still present in his eyes.
“No, I just need to say it,” she said. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it today.
And I think this is what love is. You make me the best version of myself that I’ve ever been.
You helped me realize all these different things about my life, about myself.
You helped me realize that I’m not broken, that I can have great sex, that I deserve to be listened to, that I shouldn’t feel shame.
That’s love, Walker, and I never had it before this.
And I think it’s been sitting there, dormant all these years.
I know that a crush isn’t love. I know it’s not.
But it was the seed of it. And I just buried it, left it alone, didn’t give it the air and light and nutrients it needed, because it terrified me. But it’s you. It’s always been you.”
“Oh,” he said, his voice hard, just in that one syllable, hard enough that she knew whatever he said next was going to stab her clean through. “Now that I’m good for your reputation, you can see all that?”
Ouch.
That hurt, and it was also valid. She couldn’t prove that it had nothing to do with that. That she’d really changed, rather than his position being what had changed. That she’d realized that she wanted him, that she always had, and she’d been denying herself.
But her throat felt tight, and it was hard to get the words out, let alone the right words. “I get that. I get why it feels that way, why it looks that way. I do.”
“It doesn’t just feel that way and look that way, Addison. That’s what happened. I helped you. I dug you up out of this pit. I made you something other than just a jilted bride, and now, now you can be seen with me.”
“That’s not why,” she said, but she could feel a wall going up between them, all his issues, all the shit that Alan had just said to him about his mom and the man that everyone thought was his dad, all the stuff that clung to him.
That wasn’t his fault, that he couldn’t get away from, the things that hurt him now.
And most of all, she thought about what he’d said about how he liked to keep a certain amount of his pettiness, his anger, his issues in place.
He said because it fueled him. But it was about protection. In the end, it was about protection.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I deserve this. I do. Because I did do that to you. I did treat you the way that everyone else did, but it was actually never because of you. It was always because of me. Not because I thought something was wrong with you, but because I thought it was wrong with me. I was scared and I was wrong. I was just wrong, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you. I swear that I will. I will grovel, I will beg, Walker. I’ll beg.
Please, give me a chance. Give this a chance.
Because I love you. And it is the most real thing that I’ve ever had in my life, and everything else that came before it was fake.
Everything was all for this facade, and I don’t care about it anymore.
I don’t want it anymore. I just want you. ”
But it was like a wall went up completely, and he couldn’t see her anymore.
His expression was completely hard, and he turned the engine off and got out of the car.
Then he turned toward her. “This is just one of those things. It’s too little too late.
And now you’ll have a little bit of an idea of how I felt back in high school, I guess. ”
Then he closed the door and left her sitting there in his truck.
And she realized she couldn’t go back inside of his house.
She realized that she was finally going to have to go back home to her father and confess that everything was a disaster.
Because it was. There was no spinning it.
There was no PR. She didn’t even care about PR.
When Alan had left her, it had damaged her reputation.
Having Walker leave broke her heart. And that meant that nothing else mattered all that much.
She got into her car, and she sat there for a while with the engine off, her hands on the steering wheel.
When she started the engine, and turned the car around, she stopped for just a moment.
He was watching her.
She knew he was. She smiled now, even through her tears.
She would always be able to feel when Walker was watching her.
Even if they never spoke again.