8. Carve You Out My Chest #3
"And I know you already answered me tonight, Ru.
In that kitchen. I heard you, and I believe you, and I'm not asking you to prove it again tomorrow like tonight didn't count.
" I held her eyes so she'd know I meant that part clean, no hedge in it.
"What I'm trying to say is harder than that.
It's not about whether you still want this in the morning, but whether I can actually let you hand me this right now, tonight, with Madeline's face still sitting behind my eyes and a mess out there I made that's got nothing to do with you and everything to do with what I need to go clean up. "
"Dillion, I already –"
"Let me finish." I looked past her at the black glass, the rain still working it, because if I watched her face through the rest of this I wasn't going to make it through clean.
"Tomorrow I'm driving Madeline home, and on that ride I'm going to try to be a decent man about something I handled real bad.
I don't know what that costs yet, or how long it sits with me after.
And I need you to know that if you need space from me while I figure that part out, if watching me carry that guilt is more than you signed up for, that's allowed.
I wanna give you that space to be honest about what you can hold right now, same as I'm trying to be honest about what I can. "
I made myself keep going, even though every part of me wanted to stop right there.
"But hear the other half of it too. I'm not offering you a door because I doubt what you told me in that kitchen.
I'm offering it because loving you right means never once making you carry something that's actually mine to carry.
Madeline's mine to answer for. I know tonight complicated things.
So if that's what's sitting in you right now, if you need to go back to your mama's and just breathe without me in the room for a while, that's allowed.
That's your out, and I won't hold it against you if you need more time.. but I will come get you Ru, I promise."
"I know what I'm getting into, Dillion." She reached over, took my hand.
"I heard some of what Madeline said, and she has every right to be upset.
But you're sitting there acting like tonight proved something about who you are, and it didn't. Tonight is the most scandalous thing you've ever done in your whole controlled life.
One night doesn't turn a man into somebody bad, or into a monster.
" Her thumb slowly moved over my knuckles.
"She's known you a few weeks. I know you, Dillion.
I know the man I've fallen in love with, and the only complicated thing about you is your recipes. "
I chuckled at that, low, but it softened something in me too, because underneath the joke I was still feeling like the lowest kind of man alive.
"I hurt her bad, Aurelia." I said it plain. "Even before you got here."
"You did. Turns out even good men do that sometimes. Doesn't mean you're not still one."
I tried to take that in as much as my conscience would let me. I'd deal with the rest of it later. Right now I needed her to rest.
"We'll talk it through tomorrow, when your head's out of the storm, and your heart's slowed down enough to hear itself."
"Fine. But I'm not leaving, Dillion. I didn't cross that water to turn around the second things got hard for you.
" She said it defiantly, no room in it for argument.
"You want to take a few days to sit with what you did to Madeline, take them.
I'll still be here. I meant everything I said in that kitchen. "
"You so stubborn, Ru…I love you. Want you so bad it's got a taste.
I just —" I stopped, started again. "I don't ever want to relive tonight.
The look on Madeline's face when she flipped that light on.
I never want to put that look on a woman's face again.
Not yours, not anybody's. And I got to atone for what I did to her somehow.
I don't know yet what that looks like, and I need you okay with me figuring it out, even if it takes me somewhere heavy for a while. I need to know you can watch me carry that without it changing what you feel. I want you to sleep on it, so you can decide with a clear head if you really want to do that.”
"Fine." She breathed it out just as the far lightning came, white and sudden, lighting her up like a photograph before the dark took it back.
"Sleep now." I pulled her in, felt her go soft against me as I began to understand the particular cruelty of what I'd just done, holding somebody that close while handing them a way out.
Both at once. Because that's the only honest way I know how to love anybody, with the door unlocked and my whole body hoping she never touches the knob.
I lay there holding a woman I'd just handed the door to, and understood, underneath all my fear, that I meant it. Every word. If she chose that ferry come morning, I'd drive her there myself, and mean that too, even knowing it'd be the hardest thing I ever built without a recipe.
I held her while she slept, while I hardly received the gift of slumber myself. I just laid in the dark waiting on whatever the morning had already decided, the way a man waits on a verdict he halfway knows, but doesn't want to believe until it's read out loud.