A coward. He was left facing the fact that he was a coward.
It was why her forgiveness had been more of a burden than a relief. Why he had felt stripped down afterward.
In some ways, he could understand why her mother had been so desperate to deny that same forgiveness. It was just like she’d said to him earlier. He was walking away. He was the one leaving when someone was waiting for him with open arms.
Leaving was so much easier when you could leave with a cloud of sulfur behind you. Knowing that everyone hated you. That you had broken things beyond repair.
That you at least deserved to not be loved now.
That was what he’d done. That was why he was so dedicated to believing he was a villain. Because maybe if he didn’t deserve love he wouldn’t...crave it so much anymore.
But Rebecca wasn’t allowing that. Wasn’t allowing him to burn the bridge. She was making sure he knew it was still there. And he liked to burn bridges. It was the only way he knew to manage that yawning canyon inside of him. To make sure he placed it between himself and the person he needed to escape from.
Rebecca didn’t do that. She was brave. She faced down everyone. Her mother, him. She had stood between himself and Jonathan, defending him. She hadn’t hidden. That woman didn’t have an ounce of skittish in her.
No, he was the one on the run.
And now that all of his excuses had been taken away, it was impossible to justify.
He took a deep breath, squinting out toward the lake at the full moon reflecting across the surface. Rebecca’s house was there. Rebecca was there. He ached for her, to hold her in his arms. He ached with the need that wouldn’t end, he knew it wouldn’t. Because that was how he loved.
Deep, destructive. He didn’t know another way. He was still too broken to drag her down into it. Into him.
How could he ask for a love like that? When his own mother looked through him and his own father had barely ever seen him.
He was too broken for such a thing.
“So, fix yourself.” He said those words out loud, his breath visible in the dark air.
He knew what he had to do. He knew it wasn’t because he was too busy that he had been avoiding his father. Knew it wasn’t because he had been caught up in everything else. No, he was avoiding his father because that was what he did.
In that, Rebecca was right. Initially, he had been using her. To put distance between himself and his family. Because she had never been the reason he left. It had always been them, always been him.
He laughed, the sound swallowed up by the thick pine trees and the dense night. He had come back to town bound and determined to fix Rebecca Bear, and he had found that she wasn’t broken. Instead, she had shown him the million different ways he was splintered into unfixable pieces.
Maybe it was time he went and fixed one. He didn’t know if he could ever be what she needed. Didn’t know if he could ever justify trying to make a future with her.
Hell, he didn’t know if he had the balls to give himself over to the kind of love he felt like he could have for that woman.
But he did know that if she could stand on her own two feet and face all of her monsters, then he could damn well go face a few of his own.
* * *
REBECCA WOKE UP to pounding on her door. Her heart slammed against her chest, mimicking the rhythm. She scrambled out of bed, padding down the hall and wrenching the door open, her heart freezing completely when, for one moment, she thought it might be Gage.
But no, it was Jonathan. His arms were crossed across his broad chest, his expression matching the steel-gray clouds outside. “Good morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” she mumbled, taking a step back and gesturing for him to come inside.
“It’s ten thirty. I didn’t think you would still be asleep.”
“I had a rough night.”
“Did you go see her?” Jonathan looked like he hadn’t slept last night. It was strange to see him looking like this. Careworn and concerned, when normally he was impenetrable, at least from her point of view.
It took her a moment to realize that he was concerned about