of time with me, but trust me, I’ve had more than thirty years inside this body, and I know me. Do you want to know the absolute truth, Rebecca?”
“You’re going to tell me whether I want you to or not. In fact, I think if I don’t want you to, you’re even more likely to tell me. Because you’re blowing this up, aren’t you? The last thing you want to hear is that I love you. It scares you. You’re going to ruin this.”
He laughed, the sound cruel, unkind. “It was never supposed to be something that could be saved. It was ruined from the start.”
“Because of you?”
“Hell yes. Why do you think I behaved the way that I did growing up? Because all I cared about was myself. Satisfying myself. There was always this thing inside of me, this hungry beast that wanted to be satisfied, and nothing has ever proven to be enough for me. Not alcohol, not women, not driving too fast on two-lane roads in the dark.” He took a deep breath. “It was a relief.”
“What was?” she asked.
“Finally doing something bad enough that I couldn’t come back from it. Do you understand? That accident was the best thing that ever happened to me. Because finally I could look my father in the face and tell him what I thought. Finally, I could leave. I could walk away from this place, from everything in it. All of the dissatisfaction, all of the...”
“What? Are you still going to tell me it let you walk away from becoming your father?” She felt like she had been slapped. Felt raw and wounded. Just as she imagined he wanted her to feel. But even though she knew that was what this was, it was impossible for her not to have an emotional reaction.
But this, she had a feeling was actually honest. It was unfiltered, because he wasn’t trying to spare her, but it was real. She had wanted reality. Had wanted to know what was going on inside of him, what tortured him, what made him feel like he couldn’t come back. What made him so desperate to cling to the fiction he had created. So now, it was beginning to come out, and no matter how much it hurt, she couldn’t reject him because of it.
She couldn’t.
So she steeled herself, not with the shield of false strength she had used all of this time, that angry victimhood that had defined her for so long, but with love.
Love was stronger. Stronger than the past. Stronger than old wounds. Strong enough to take on a few more.
At least, she hoped it was.
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Because you’re right, if I had really cared about that, I would have stayed. I just wanted relief. From myself. A chance to get away from this family and everything about it that hurt.”
“What hurt you so much?”
“No, we’re not going to do this,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because there’s no point to this. Because I’m going to walk away from you in the end, and if you really want me to leave you worse off than when I came, we can keep going down this road, but I don’t think you actually want that. Because I’m going to leave you alone. Just like I promised I would in the beginning. Just like you said you wanted. Don’t go changing the rules now because I’m not going to adapt to this new plan of yours.”
“It’s not a plan. I’m just in love with you. And in the beginning I wanted you to walk away because I was angry with you. And because I was afraid to need somebody.” She looked at him, clarity rolling over her like a wave. “And so are you. You’re afraid to want somebody. You’re afraid to need them. Is that why you spent all of this time walking through your life alone? Because God forbid you accept any help? God forbid you accept any love? What happened to make you so afraid of this, Gage?”
“What do you think love is, Rebecca? I’m asking you honestly.”
She thought back to the ways her life had changed since he had come into it. The way that he had filled all of those empty spaces inside of her. He had taken care of her, and she had let him. Hadn’t felt hard, or terrifying. There was peace in it. A kind of completion that she hadn’t known she could have.