Chapter 51 – Sidney #2
Even now . . . with him mad at me and the fear that I won’t win this battle and he won’t accept my apology, I still want him. I want Grayson any way I can get him, even if what he’s willing to give me will never be enough. I’ll just keep wanting more.
After the food is gone, Dylan and Emerson and Betsy take a bow, which leaves me wondering if they knew about our fight . . . our demise . . . and so they helped spearhead this little romantic dinner. They accept our thank-yous before they take Luke home and leave us alone.
We no longer have an excuse not to talk about the elephant in the room.
An awkwardness settles around us.
“That was adorable,” I say.
“It was.” He rocks back on his heels before nodding toward the steps. “There’s a balcony of sorts upstairs if you’d like to get some fresh air.”
“There is?” I ask, but I’m already following him as he climbs the stairs. Blindly and with little hope that we might be able to salvage whatever is left between us.
“Yes. This used to be where Emerson lived. When she ran the skydiving school, before she ended up buying it, they converted the loft for her should she ever need a breather.” He laughs as if her taking a break is ironic.
He opens a door into a small studio apartment.
There is a bed in one corner and a kitchenette in the other.
We walk through the modestly decorated space to another door.
When I step out onto the deck, I’m blown away by the view.
Runway lights, trees beyond the strip of asphalt, and hills covered in vines in the distance.
There is a soft breeze that blows my hair across my face, but it feels good against the warm night around us.
When I turn to find Grayson, he isn’t staring at the view, but rather, at me. His expression is intense. His eyes are a sea of uncertainty. I want to crawl into his arms. I want to stay right there for as long as we can, so we don’t have to figure out what needs to be faced.
I’m afraid to be the first to speak.
“What are we doing here, Sidney?”
“Looking at the view?” I say to try to add some levity, but he doesn’t even crack a smile.
“I’m serious.” He exhales. “What are we doing here? Are we pretending that we’re something we aren’t?
Are we simply accepting that we only have a few weeks left together before you leave and that we’re just going to enjoy the time we have?
Or should we call it quits now and save ourselves from the inevitable? ”
“Grayson.” His name is barely audible when I speak it, but only because every other part of me is dying inside. “I screwed this up.”
“You did . . .” He shakes his head and takes a step toward me.
“But I did too. I screwed up a lot of times and it wasn’t fair for me to ask your forgiveness time and again .
. . but you did. And then the first time you screw up, I didn’t give you the same courtesy.
But damn it to all hell, Sidney, you’re leaving, and you didn’t tell me? ”
My sigh is loud and loaded with the mixture of emotions warring inside me. Fear. Hope. Desperation. Love. Everything I feel and am so damn scared to express. “This wasn’t my intention. To come here. To find you. To fall for you.”
His breath hitches and I know he heard me.
“I know you have a life to get back to. Well you know what? So, do I. A life that had no room for you in it, but goddamn it, you’ve weaseled your way in somehow.
Now what am I supposed to do? I have more than myself to protect here.
I have Luke to think about. I have . . .
Christ.” He runs a hand through his hair and paces to the railing before bracing his hands on it and staring at the view beyond. “This will never fucking work.”
The pain in his voice owns me, and I keep hearing his dad’s words in my mind. “If you’re not going to stay, let him push you . . . But if you’re going to stay, I hope like hell you’ll fight for him, because he’s worth every misspoken word and uttered curse and ounce of confusion.”
Is he pushing me, or is he making it easy for me to leave without regret?
Fuck that. There will always be regret. That much I know.
“We could try to make things work. Weekends and little trips back and forth,” I say and then realize how stupid it sounds. How shallow it sounds. That’s no way to have a relationship.
“I can’t make you happy here. This isn’t some big fancy town where trendy nightclubs pop up as quickly as they shut down, and Michael Kors isn’t likely to set up shop any time soon.
There isn’t anything here but Luke and me and goddamn grapes on the hill.
That’s not enough to make someone like you stay. ”
“Someone like me?”
He groans in frustration. “That isn’t what I mean.”
“It’s what it sounds like.”
“It can sound like whatever you want. It seems in your world I’m staying and I’m leaving don’t really seem to have any significance, so does it really matter?”
“Don’t be a jerk.”
“I’m just telling the truth.”
“So are you saying you want to end this—?”
“Sid—”
“Are you pushing me away because you’re too scared to say you want to make this work?”
“Dammit—”
“You think that I think I’m too good for you and Luke and this town and so it’s easier if—”
“Quit putting words in my mouth, Claire!”
And right there is the dagger to my heart. Right there is the exact reason we could never work.
It’s one thing to accuse me of being like her. It’s another to call me by her name because deep down he just can’t get over her.
I take a step back.
“Sid . . .”
I take another step.
“Sidney.” He reaches for me, regret and fear and heartache playing across his features. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean—it was a slip of the tongue. You were thinking I was referring to her and then . . . FUCK!” He shouts and bangs a fist against the railing. “I didn’t mean it.”
He meant everything by it. My heart already knows it.
“You may not think you do, but you did. You have held me up against her pretentious pedestal since the minute you opened your front door almost six months ago. And you know what? Back then, you probably had every right to accuse me of being like her. I was. But things have changed, Grayson. Being here . . . working for Rissa . . . meeting Luke . . . being with you. That has changed me. It has changed me in ways I never saw coming. So for you to stand there and call me her name, it just proves that you don’t know me at all. ”
I stand tall, my shoulders square, and in this moment, I realize everything I just said is true.
This place has changed me. The people in this town were a huge part of that.
And not only did they change me—how I look at things, how I look at other people—they also made me realize how empty my life was before.
How hard it’s going to be to go back to it, step into my old life, and not miss all of this.
“You’re right . . .” He takes a step toward me, and all I can do is shake my head and take a step back.
“You’re not the same person who set foot here.
And I’m not the same man you met. People change.
Minds change. Sometimes it takes longer for a heart to forget what was done to it in the past. I guess it’s taking mine longer than most.”
I love him. It’s plain as day to me as I stand here livid with him for telling me I’m just like Claire while at the same time being man enough to admit it.
“But how long is too long to wait?” I ask him, knowing that if he isn’t over her in eight years’ time, when will he be?
“There comes a time when you have to choose whether you’re going to remain rooted to your past and the things she did to you, or to take a step forward with a clean slate.
You always have a choice, Grayson. What do you choose? ”
Choose me.
“It isn’t like that.”
Choose me.
“It isn’t? You tell me that I made a mistake and you’ve forgiven me, but with that one mistake, you’ve already talked yourself out of believing this could work before we ever had a chance.
” There is defiance and accusation and desperation in my tone.
He has to see what he’s doing, that he is so scared of possibly getting hurt that he’s shut himself away from so much of the good in life as well.
I love you.
Don’t you see that?
Why can’t you see that?
“I’ve already asked one woman in my life to stay—the only other woman I’ve ever let in—and look how that turned out for me. So, I’ll be damned if I ask you, too.”
“I’m not looking for you to ask me to stay. I’m looking to hear you tell me that you want me to.”
“Same difference.”
He’s so frustrating it’s maddening. “That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? You’ll never be over her, and I refuse to take second place.”
“I was over her the minute she walked out my door,” he says through gritted teeth.
“You were? It doesn’t seem that way from where I stand.”
“Really? I told you I wanted to try for something here. For us to figure this out . . . and you lied. How does that not make you like her?”
I stare at him, sick to my stomach and more than knowing I’m in an uphill battle that I don’t think I can win. When I walked into this hangar tonight, I was still one hundred percent undecided I wanted to fight for him.
But I’m fighting.
Because, with him standing in front of me, I know.
It’s just that simple.