Been There Done That (Leffersbee #1) - Hope Ellis Page 0,98
I don’t mean to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. But if I’d stayed, I would have. It wouldn’t have been intentional, but it would have happened all the same. Maybe not directly, but I have no doubt the Iron Wraiths would have taken their pound of flesh from you. We were in a terrible cycle of enablement and co-dependency, my mother and me. I thought it would be simple for me to leave; we both did when we made our college plans. I thought I could start over, you and me, at school, away from our families, and we could live life for ourselves. But it never would have been that easy. You would have sacrificed yourself, bled for us, forsaken your own future and plans. And been flattened by every relapse, every disappointment. I had to get our shitshow away from you. Even if it hurt at first—”
“At first?” She looked ready to maul me. “You think that was something I just got over? You think it was that easy?”
I shook my head. “It sure as hell wasn’t easy for me. I never got over it.”
“And all I was left with was that letter,” she repeated, and I now had an idea of how much anger and angst my hastily written missive had caused her all those years ago. “A generic letter with no detail, only saying you were sorry you had to leave and you’d be back.” She shook her head again. “And everyone else knew what really happened. Everyone but me.”
“Only your parents know. And my Aunt Nan. And, of course, my mother knew.”
“I still think you should have given me the opportunity to decide for myself. Didn’t you understand how much I loved you? Don’t you know what I would have given to have made it work between us, even long distance?”
God, this hurt. God, this was so hard.
I gave her the naked truth. “I knew if I told you, you’d have come to me. And I’d have been too weak to stop you. I knew if I saw you, I’d weaken. And I loved you too much to be weak. I didn’t want to fail you again. I told myself that when I did go back, I’d go back as a man. In charge, not hiding, with all the resources I needed to change the narrative. Not as a little boy who needed his girlfriend’s parents to bail him out of trouble.”
“So that’s why you’re back now.”
“I’m back now because I have something real, of substance, to offer you.”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t care about your money. I don’t care about things—”
“I know you don’t. But it matters to me. Because I couldn’t be what either of us needed that night. And it cost us everything.”
She yanked her hand away from mine. “No, you egomaniac. What tore us apart was you making a decision for the both of us. You took away my choice when you made the decision for me. I didn’t get a vote. I didn’t get a voice. I just got left.”
She sat back, arms crossed, face full of a grief I’d fought like hell to keep from her.
I lifted my hands. “I loved you, Zora. More than I loved myself. And when I realized the best thing I could do, the most loving thing would be to stay away from you, I did it. Even though it damn near killed me.” I leveled a glance at her. “I know I didn’t come back for two years, and that was to keep you safe. It hurt like hell, being apart from you. But your parents had sent word that everything was calm, no one had approached you, and I knew I’d done the right thing in the end. So I focused all of my attention on reaching my goals as fast I could. I worked like hell to get my company off the ground, get funding. I didn’t want to come back empty-handed. In my mind, I thought I’d come back, scoop you up, and bring you with me when I’d secured a living for us, a good one. That plan fueled me and helped me reach milestones so much faster. I didn’t know that you’d transferred to Northwestern, and I never knew you and Leigh tracked me down in Michigan. But when your ring came back in the mail, with that cryptic, cruel note . . .”
“It wasn’t cryptic or cruel. It was matter of fact. I