use you like this. All the time. Without giving a damn that it was costing you. That it was killing you. I would take from you until there was nothing left. And you would let me. Because you think that’s love. So don’t cry when I leave you, Rebecca. I’m doing you a kindness, even if you can’t see it.”
“No. Don’t do that. Don’t you dare. From the moment you came back to Copper Ridge this is what you’ve been doing. Telling me what’s good for me, telling me what I should think about you, what I should think about myself. I’m done with that. You can walk away, Gage West. Walk off into the sunset if that’s what you need to do. I’m never going to be able to keep you here if you don’t want to stay. But by God, do not tell me that I’m better off. Don’t tell me what I should feel. Don’t tell me what I should think. And do not tell me that you’re doing it for me when we both know you’re doing it for you. Stop it. Stop making me a victim so that you can feel benevolent. If you think you’re a monster, then you own it. Then you walk away knowing that you hurt me. That you destroyed this. That we had something you refused to let us keep.”
“Does that make it better for you? Then all right. This is for me. I’m leaving because I want to. Goodbye, Rebecca. I think it would be better if we didn’t see each other after this.”
“But what about...” She looked around the room, scanning to see if she could find her clothes. They were there, evidence of just how much she had changed because of him. That she didn’t feel the need to grab them now. That she was angry she would have to get dressed, and pretend none of this had ever happened. That they would have to go back to being something different than they were before. That she was going to have to hide again. “What about the store?”
“It’s yours. That’s how it was always going to end.”
“With you getting exactly what you wanted me getting—nothing?”
“You are the one who decided that maybe I could be Prince Charming, Rebecca. I never pretended to be anything of the sort. Anyway, you’re getting the store. You aren’t getting nothing.”
“Wow,” she said, deadpan, collecting her top and her pants. “Lucky me.”
“I want to tell you something,” she said, pulling on her clothes, tugging her shirt over her head.
“Go right ahead,” he said.
“I love you. And when you’re wandering the earth again, self-flagellating, pretending that you’re beyond redemption, I want you to know that somebody back here in Copper Ridge loves you. And she would have given you a chance. You are the one who wouldn’t take it. You’re the reason you can’t have love. Nothing else. Just your choices. If you made a different one... Your whole life could be different but you won’t. Because you’re afraid.”
“Only an idiot isn’t afraid of something that can destroy them.”
“I guess I’m an idiot.”
And then Rebecca walked out of his bedroom, taking the stairs down to the entryway two at a time. She flung open the door, taking a deep breath of sharp, night air, not caring that she had forgotten her coat, that she had nothing to protect her against the elements.
She was raw and exposed anyway, it might as well extend to this.
She wrapped her arms around herself, walking down Gage’s driveway and heading back toward her house. It felt like a lifetime had passed since this morning. Since she had first come to his door and asked him to help her with her mother.
She felt like an entirely different person.
She looked up at the sky, uncharacteristically clear, blue velvet and shot through with fragments of light. Too many to number.
She supposed that was a good reminder. That even now, in the middle of the darkness, there was hope. That there was light.
Right now though, all she could focus on was the darkness.
She couldn’t remember anything hurting this bad since she was a child. Since her mother had abandoned her. This was what she had been protecting herself from. It made sense. She couldn’t call herself a coward, not when this pain felt terminal.
She had been smart to protect herself.
She huffed out a laugh, her breath visible in the frigid air.
The sad truth was she simply had let herself care enough about