to beg.
Didn’t want to beg for him to love her most and best because...oh she’d begged her own mother for it and she couldn’t ever forget that.
Why can’t you just love me as much as you do Rose and Pansy?
I do. You’re such a big help.
And she’d heard the truth in those words.
I do when you’re such a big help.
He said nothing. He only stared at her.
“No, Griffin, it was fine when we were supposed to be friends. Friends helping each other. Because what is our time around the dinner table going to look like? The anniversaries that we have to mark. The things that we remember. And we’ll just pass it all forward. If we have children... Griffin, neither of us are going to be able to handle that. Because you’re going to be afraid you’re going to lose me, that you’re going to lose the child. I’m going to be afraid that somehow we’ll leave them behind. There’s reasonable, and then there’s baggage no one can carry.”
And she’d love him. And try and try and he’d realize when she couldn’t be as useful as he needed her to be that it wasn’t love like he’d felt for Mel. That maybe it wasn’t love at all. And she couldn’t bear it.
“Stop carrying it,” he said, his voice hard. “That’s a choice you can make. It’s a choice that I’m making. Because you know what? They didn’t give it to us. We gave it to ourselves.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. That’s not what it means when you say you have baggage. Nobody chooses to pick it up.”
“Yes, you fucking do. You choose it every day. And I have. Believe me, Iris. I have gotten up in the morning and I have picked the heaviest ones and I have put them on my shoulders and I have carried them around. I know what it means to choose sorrow. I know what it means to choose grief. To choose to live my loss rather than living the love that I had. I know what that looks like. And I know what it looks like when you choose to remember the good instead of only marinating in the bad. I know what it feels like. Yes, you have a choice. To be what happened to you, or to find a way to be you. You don’t have to carry the darkness.”
“Fine then,” she said. “It’s me. And if it’s me, then you should feel free to be rid of me.”
“I don’t want to be.”
“You don’t have a choice.” She scrambled, putting her clothes on, a sick weight settling in her stomach. “I can’t. None of what you’re saying rings true for me and I don’t even think it’s going to be true for you tomorrow. I think you want it to be true. I think you want to be healed. But I don’t think you are.”
“I’m not broken,” he said. “I’m not because I refuse to be.”
“We don’t get to make a choice.”
“We do. And I think that’s what scares you. You could live whole, right now, with me if you wanted to and you’re running out of excuses. You’ve got nothing but fear.”
“I’m being smart. And I was the virgin, Griffin, you’re the one who should have known better.”
“You know what I know? I know how dangerous it is to have a life you love. I know what happens when you lose it. So when I stand here and I show you the life that I want, the life that I want to have, you better damn well listen to me. And you better understand what it costs. Don’t you tell me what I feel, what I don’t feel. Don’t tell me I’m not smart. I know I’m not smart. I am wildly, incredibly hopeful. I have faith. And you know how much it cost me to find it? I had to piece together bits of a tattered soul that I wasn’t even sure had enough left to it to make a damn thing. And now I want a life. And I want it with you. That is brave. It isn’t easy. There is nothing easy about it.”
“No. And I want easy. I don’t want this.” She stumbled back, out of the house. There was only one car. Dammit. Dammit all. She hated everything. She really did. Everything was a mess. It was a disaster. She started walking down the driveway.
“Don’t you dare.”
“I’ll call my sister.”
“The hell you will, Iris Daniels. Get