Chapter 50 - Lily
Lily
Dean’s face shuttered as he drew his hands into his lap.
Look at him.
His judging eyes no longer existed. His messy hair matched mine. Tired features and lips tightened from stress. A man who pushed himself to save me the previous night. A man who chose a place that brought him misery for me. He once said I might regret choosing him over Deer Lake.
“Did it ever occur that you might be wrong?” Dean’s dishevelment hid his handsome looks, but I saw the rest. “Your imagined future isn’t real. We are. This.”
“I’m not wrong. I come from nothing. Trash. Deer Lake saw it in me.”
“That doesn’t make anyone there right. It’s prejudice.”
“It’s experience.”
“Answer me this. What was your first thought after learning about the comet? The very first. Where did your mind go?”
“You. Before he told me, my mind went to you.”
“Then what?”
“Getting to you. Saving you.” Dean looked past me, remembering the moment. “There was a family on the beach with me. I warned them to go. They thought I was crazy.”
“You tried to warn strangers? Dean, what you’re describing isn’t trash. It’s the opposite. That’s the work of a—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“It doesn’t make it untrue.”
“You don’t understand. Your father pushed me to join the military, and sometimes I ask where my life would have gone if I hadn’t.
” Dean’s head drooped when mentioning my dad.
“We can say I’d have been a lawyer or opened a business, except I wouldn’t.
I’d have died, or been in jail for some crime I committed.
Maybe burglary. Probably murder, because that’s in me. ”
“That’s another imagined future. Dean, look at me again. You described the perfect life for me, except it didn’t exist.”
“Yes, it did. A family who loved you and a job, and that fucking Stephen guy.”
“You remember him?” My turn to confess. “I made him up to cause you jealousy. He’s based on a friend of a friend I met once and never dated.”
“You what?” A smile threatened his face. “It worked.”
“You know what else? I lived with a roommate in an apartment my father subsidized. A homebody who went on three dates the year before because Violet forced me. That doesn’t match your story because it’s the reality, because the rest isn’t real. It never would have been.”
“Maybe.” He shook his head, casting off my words. “No. This is different. I kill people, and I don’t mind doing it. That guilt you experienced? I never have, not once.” Dean tapped his chest. “Don’t you see? Your brother guided me to my job because he saw it in me. Healthy outlets and all that.”
I took his hand and squeezed it. “You aren’t a weapon. Don’t forget that.”
“That’s the thing. I am. With the right person aiming and telling me where to shoot, you’ve seen it.
” He sighed and closed his eyes. “What if I didn’t have that?
Ryan helped me, and then you came along.
The answer to your question is yes. I knew our ending before we started that week.
I realized your attraction was as strong as mine, and I let myself be with you for one week.
That other part, the weapon part, didn’t exist. We did. ”
“You never considered the idea that it could continue? We could keep going?” I licked my lips, wishing for one answer, and knowing I’d receive another.
“Not for me. Our last night, I sat in a chair and watched you sleep, telling myself I could be something different, except I’m not. Same job and childhood. The same everything. So I wrote a few lines on hotel stationery, kissed you on the lips, and I left.”
I blinked to stop the threatening tears. Neither of us needed those. “To protect me from you?” To protect me from that part of himself, under the assumption I deserved better, and without asking me. A grown-up version of my smothered childhood.
“Until your brother called and asked me to get you. I warned him.”
“Is this where you tell me he gave you permission?” I spat the last word, disgusted by it after all we’d been through.
“Not those exact words. Ryan said to do whatever was necessary. That time in your apartment? You were terrified, and I enjoyed my control over you. It gave me pleasure. I decided your fate the minute you opened your apartment door.”
My mouth fell open, knowing he spoke the truth. I didn’t doubt any part of his explanation. He’d hinted several times. Hints I often ignored because I don’t listen. “That’s a big claim, considering the way you left me. You didn’t respond to a single text or anything. I blocked you, remember?”
“Except I saw you,” he said, and rubbed his temple. “Do you think blocking is enough to stop me?”
Not even a little. “What am I missing?”
“Listen to me this time. Did you realize I knew where your bedroom was? I knew where you kept your medicine and which kitchen cabinet held food. Do you remember I asked to close the blinds?”
My stomach twisted. “You called it a fishbowl.”
“I closed those blinds because I knew your neighbors across the way could see into your apartment. I knew that because I’d been there before, several times.
There’s a weak spot on your balcony’s sliding glass door.
Press the bottom corner and handle together.
It slides right open, with no sound.” He spoke as if he read from an instruction manual.
This wasn’t real. “You stalked me.”
“I looked after you,” he said. As if that mattered.
“Big difference.”
“To make sure you were safe. I kept my distance, but I saw you all the time. Looking back, your brother never gave me an address or instructions. I think he knew.” Dean wiped his face.
I hoped it reflected embarrassment and a little shame.
“I never stayed away from you, even when I believed we couldn’t be together. ”
“To protect me from you.” The full weight behind that statement hurled itself at me.
The room spun. I twirled my ring between my thumb and forefinger.
“You aren’t trash, and I don’t deserve to be put on a pedestal, safeguarded from the world’s harms. People are more complicated than that. We’re more complicated than that.”
“If it matters now, I’m sorry. For the pain I caused you a year ago, and all of it since. I screwed up.”
“So did I.” I raised a finger to stop any protest. “You didn’t want to go back to Deer Lake. I saw it and refused to examine why, at least not the way you deserved. You were so miserable our first night there. I noticed it, and I ignored it because I wanted to be home. You stayed for me.”
“What did you expect me to do?”
Dean’s question broke my heart and repaired it all at once. For him, there was no choice. Only me and us. Tears welled, and I let them fall this time.
“Exactly as you did, and nothing different.” I wiped my cheeks and sniffled. “You stayed for me, and you were miserable the entire time. You saw truths I blinded myself to. If we say you used me last year, it’s fair to say I used you now.”
He drew back with obvious shock. “You could never. Lily, no. This is where I want to be. It’s all I’ve ever wanted since...
” His features softened as he leaned towards me.
“Since the beginning. You forced me to confront the parts of myself I don’t like.
My fucking father, may he rot in hell, Deer Lake, my choices.
I want to be with you. You are all that matters.
That ring on your finger?” He gestured with his head.
“From the moment you slipped it on, I considered you my wife. That’s the word I hold in my head and heart, because that’s what you are to me.
You’re the one. You’re the only one, in all my years, who made me wish I were someone different. Something else.”
“I don’t want anything else. I want you and me.”
He wiped his nose. “I don’t know the future; none of us can, but at least for me, it’s us. I love you.”
I couldn’t answer.
“Well?” he asked. Dean’s tone betrayed his nervousness. I pulled off the ring and set it in my palm. “No. I refuse to believe this is our end.” The nervousness changed to panic. “I won’t accept that. You’re locked up with me all winter, and I will spend every day convincing you otherwise.”
I covered my mouth to stop a laugh. “Maybe weapon is the wrong word, or maybe it’s correct.
Does it matter? Loving a person is accepting the ugly and the beautiful.
All the sins and flaws we try to hide.” I placed the ring in his palm and offered my left hand.
“You gave it to me the first time. Tradition requires you to put it on your bride’s finger. ”
The ring fit like it was made for me.
Silence grew, this time from contentment rather than anxiety.
The fire crackled, flooding our small cabin with heat and shrinking it, so its sterility gave way to coziness. Our place. For us.
Somewhere else, far away, our loved ones struggled while we were trapped. For now, the cliché applied. We had all the time in the world.
“That day at the jewelry store, I told you it was for protection. I wasn’t honest then, but I am now.” Dean’s neck bobbed as he took a deep swallow. “I’ll earn it. I want to be the man you see when you look at me. To be worthy of you.”
“You’ve always been the man I see, Dean. This is the first time we both realize it, that’s all.”
“You forgive me, then?”
“I think I forgave you a long time ago without realizing it.” The knot I carried in my stomach unwound and disappeared. “The hurt was there, and yet every time I considered leaving or giving up, my heart led itself back to you. We forgive each other.”
“I love you.” Dean’s chuckle turned into a sweet sigh. “Our wedding day.”
“The one we dreamed of.”