CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WHEN THEY FINISHED, they were still breathing hard. And she didn’t feel relaxed. Didn’t feel satisfied. She felt needy. Like an endless, aching well of need.
She rolled over onto her side and looked at him. He had his eyes closed, his face turned toward the ceiling.
And she felt alone.
She reached out, pressing her fingertips against his chest. “Please,” she said. “I need you to talk to me. To help me understand why you feel the way you do about...everything. Why you think you can’t have children. Why you think you can’t get married. Because I love you, Finn, and if I didn’t then maybe I wouldn’t need to know. But I do. And I need to feel like maybe you might love me too.”
She had expected that he wouldn’t immediately burst forth with declarations. What she hadn’t expected was for him to roll away from her. The sudden movement was so shocking, left her so cold that she shivered.
“Lane...”
“It’s not ridiculous. Actually, what’s ridiculous is saying it like it’s a revelation. I’ve always loved you, Finn.”
He turned back to her, one dark brow raised. “Right. And that’s what you mean. You love me, because I’m your friend.”
She sat up, moving to the edge of the bed, putting even more space between them. She picked at the top of the bedspread. “No. I just mean... I’ve always loved you. And over the past few weeks, it changed. I should have known that was a possibility. I think actually I always did. That’s why I didn’t want you to know anything about me. It’s why I didn’t share my past, why I never... Why everything was so strictly platonic. Because I knew. I knew what it could become. At least, somewhere deep down inside of me where I keep all of my excellent self-protective instincts. And trust me, I am excellent at self-protection.”
“You’re rambling,” he said, his tone completely flat now.
“Well,” she said, standing up and stomping her foot. “You probably aren’t going to like what I have to say anyway, so maybe don’t rush it. Maybe we can take a detour into something ridiculous like Robert the mouse.”
“You have two options. You can stop talking, or you can finish.” He stood too, crossing his arms over his broad, bare chest. “We are not going to draw it out like this.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re going to go, if that’s going to be the bottom line of this little conversation, then I need you to hurry up and fucking go.”
She felt like she’d been slapped. He was angry, that was obvious. And to a degree she had expected some pushback from him. After all, she had been enraged when he kissed her. When he had confessed his attraction to her. When he had pushed her into this space that she hadn’t felt prepared for. That she had been hiding from.
So yes, she had expected something of the same from him. But not this. Not this outrage.
“You think I don’t know what this is?” he asked, his expression drawn, angry. “You think I don’t know what it looks like right before somebody walks away? I am an expert in abandonment, Lane Jensen. I know exactly what it looks like when someone gives up.”
“Do you? So you recognize that that’s what you’re doing,” she said, not caring that her tone was accusatory.
“You think I’m the one giving up? That’s where you’re wrong. You’re changing the rules. Changing the rules so you don’t have to play the game anymore. If that’s what you want, because you’re too scared to keep doing this...”
“You really do have your head so far up your own ass,” she said. “I told you everything. I laid my pain out right in front of you, and you won’t give me anything back. All you do is throw up defenses, throw up walls. Everything you’ve ever accused me of and more. And you do your very best to sidestep by turning it back around on me.”
He looked stunned. Like she had hauled off and hit him. Well, it might just come to that.
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“If there was nothing, then you would tell me what was going on.”
“Why? We’ve managed to have a friendship for the past ten years without you knowing all the details of my childhood. If you want to trade, if that’s what you need to feel okay about your own past, I guess I can see the point. But otherwise...”
“You’re not an idiot, Finn. Regardless of the fact that you’re doing a really great impression of one right now. It has nothing to do with me wanting to feel like I’m not alone in having a really crappy past. It’s because... It costs me to let go. Because I’m trying. Because there’s still this big ball of pain and fear in my chest, but I’m trying to move past it. I’m trying to make sure it at least doesn’t control my life. That it doesn’t control everything I do, that it doesn’t dictate who I love, or what I can have. I lived that way for too long. With one foot in the past. Pretending that I was moving on while I did everything—absolutely everything—in deference to that pain. To coddle it, to keep it precious and safe, and in its own little place where I could go back to it, remind myself of why I needed to be safe, and not demand anything, not love anyone too much. I don’t want you to do the same. I don’t want the man I’m with to be stuck in that place I’m trying so desperately to get out of.”
She pushed her hair back from her face, suddenly very aware of the fact that she still didn’t have any clothes on. But she didn’t make a move to collect them either.
“Do you think that a few moments of confession down by the lake healed everything inside of me?” she continued. “It was just a start. And this is me trying to continue. This is me trying to be healed.”
“Right. So you think that knowing what happened to me is going to make me decide that I’m wrong about love and marriage?”
Something inside of her shrank down, died a little bit. Or at least, got really, really sick. “Well,” she said, her voice small, “kind of. Because it certainly started working for me. I can be patient, Finn. I don’t need you to say all the words today. I just want to know that we maybe could work toward that. That you could.”
“I want you to move in with me,” he said. “Be...what we are now. But in my house. That’s what I want. I want to have this, have you. I don’t see why it needs to be anything else.”
“Friends and sex,” she said. “Friends who have sex. Friends who are roommates and have sex. That’s it.”
“It’s good, Lane.”
“No,” she said.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because,” she said, her tone desperate. “Because I know exactly what it’s like to live with people who don’t really love you. To feel isolated and alone with people who really should understand you. I know what kinds of decisions those people make on your behalf.”
“Are you comparing me to your parents now? That seems a bit convenient.”
“Well, aren’t you comparing me to yours? Isn’t that what’s happening? You’re talking about abandonment like you think I would leave. Finn, I’m not going to leave. I have been your best friend for ten years, and now I’m more. And you think I’m going to walk away from you? Why would you think that? And don’t tell me it won’t help to give me a reason. I need something. Because I’m standing here screaming at you bare ass naked with my whole heart and everything else just kind of wrenched out in the open for you and you’re looking at me... I don’t even know how you’re looking at me. That’s the problem. I can’t read you. I don’t know what you’re thinking. I don’t know what you want. And don’t say to have me. Because that’s not enough.”
“I’m not enough for you,” he said, “that’s what you’re telling me. And you’re trying to make out like I’m the one that’s being selfish?”
She growled, grabbed hold of one of the pillows on the bed and slung it back onto the floor. “I want you to try,” she exploded. “That’s what I want. I want you to do something other than stand there with a blank expression on your face. Tell me who you are, Finn.”
“I am less lovable than my mother’s abusive boyfriend,” he said. “That’s who I am. Is that what you want to hear, Lane?”
“What?” Her stomach plummeted.
“Yeah. That’s the rest of that story. I walked in on the guy my mother was dating beating the ever-loving hell out of her, and I kicked his ass so good the cops got called. And you want to know what? My mother wanted to press charges against me. I stopped him from beating her up and she wanted to press charges on me.” Finn’s voice was vibrating with rage. With pain. And Lane felt it all echoing through her. “Of course, nothing stuck because it was clearly justified on my end. But she also wouldn’t press charges on him. Right after that, they left. And I didn’t want to end up in some foster home, so I took my ass down to Copper Ridge. To my grandfather’s ranch, because it was the only place on Earth I had ever spent a decent summer.” His lip curled, and he moved across the room to his dresser, taking out a pair of jeans.
“Then I spent almost twenty years breaking my back for this place, for that old man, and he left everything to my brothers. Split evenly between us like we were the same. Like that had to be fair, when nothing else in our lives was. Of course, wasn’t fair to me. But that’s how it works. You love people, you pour everything into them, you give them everything, and then they kick you in the balls. You want to know why I don’t want to get married? Why I don’t want kids? That’s why. I’m not a masochist.”
“But when you thought about getting married you were thinking of a hypothetical woman.” She crossed the room, put her hands on his chest. “This is me.”
“Is that supposed to reassure me? The woman who hid her feelings even from herself for a decade is trying to tell me that I don’t have to worry about things getting tough and her running away?”
She pulled away from him. “That was low.”
“It was honest. But it’s a dead end either way, Lane. It doesn’t matter. Because I don’t love you like that.”
She felt like she’d been slapped. “You don’t? You don’t love me like that? You dreamed of having me for ten years, and you couldn’t force yourself to not want me.”
“You’re underestimating just how extremely fucked-up I am. You’ve seen the way I treat my brothers, the way that I feel about my family. There’s only so much I can give. Why can’t you be happy with that?”
“Because I’ve been living with not enough for way too long. That’s been every moment of every day since I left Massachusetts. Taking little bits here and there. Cherry-picking my friendships and what I shared in them. Keeping you close to me, obsessively so, because something in me knew that I needed you, but I didn’t want you to be everything, God forbid, because then I might get hurt. So I shoved you to the side, and you’re right. I made you my handyman because I was too afraid to make you my boyfriend. So I dated easy men, men that I knew wouldn’t hurt me, but would give me just enough evidence that I was normal that I would never have to deal with all of the...bleh inside of me.”
“Why would you want to change everything?” he asked, his voice rough, raw. “Just... Why can’t this be enough?”
She shook her head, a sudden onslaught of tears slamming against the back of her eyes. Because she realized that she was losing this. Losing him. That he wasn’t going to back down. That he wasn’t going to tell her someday maybe she would have his whole heart. All of him.
And she was tempted. Tempted to just say okay. That she would live with him. That she didn’t need him to love her. That she could love him enough for both of them, and that maybe she would even be able to lie to herself when they made love and he held her at night, and tell herself that he loved her, even if he couldn’t say it.
“I’m tired of walls,” she said, her voice wobbly, thin and defeated. “Everything inside of me has been like a maze. And I just felt trapped in it. Lost in it. Claustrophobic. I want more than that. I want to be free of that. My ex-boyfriend got married—he had a family. He has the adoration of millions of people. I don’t even want that. But I want to be something other than my past. I want to be made of something different. I realized that all this time I’ve pretty much been made of my love for you. Even though you were my friend and nothing more, even though I did everything in my power to pretend I didn’t, I loved you. For you, I want to be open. I want to be free. I want to be everything. But I can’t chain myself to somebody who won’t do the same.”
She felt her entire posture begin to fold forward, collapse. All of the hope, all of the strength drained out of her. It was hard to feel anything but lost while she watched this brief glimmer of an imagined future slip through her fingers.
His face was still hard, impassable. For the first time she wondered if there really was nothing beneath it. If he was as damaged as he said he was. If being abandoned by his father, then by his mother—his mother who he had been trying to protect, who had called the police on her own son—really couldn’t feel things the way that other people could.
It was terrifying. Like suddenly realizing that the floor beneath her was quicksand and she was going to be swept right down in it. Nothing was certain in that moment. Nothing was stable.
“You know what I have on offer,” he said, his tone flat. “If that’s not enough... Then go now. Because I will be damned if I give you a place in my home and you leave me then. If I make room for you in my life and you take off like everybody else just because I’m not enough for you.”
She knew there was genuine pain beneath his words. They were coming from a place of hurt. But she didn’t really care. Because right now she was hurting. Because she was watching him ruin this thing between them, this thing he had pushed for, this thing he had wanted, because now he was being asked for something. Being asked to give everything she had.
And that just made her mad.
“You were the one that wanted this,” she said, her voice low. “You were the one who pushed for this. And this is what you wanted? To hold us in some kind of weird limbo for all of eternity? Yeah, I get that we were both in pretty deep denial when this started, thinking that we could do that, but I don’t think either of us actually believed it. Of course there were going to be feelings, Finn. But I’m ready to deal with them.”
“I made my position clear.” He took a step back.
“You’re willing to let me walk away? For what? For pride?”
“You won’t walk away,” he said, his confidence staggering. “You never have. And I don’t think you will now. You need me.”
He said the words in a monotone, but they were vibrating with urgency. With emotion that betrayed the fact that he wasn’t as unshakable as he was trying to appear.
“You’re right,” she said slowly. “I do need you. I need you for so many things, and I always have. But I need you to need me too, Finn. Anything less isn’t going to work.” Slowly, she walked over to where her clothes were and began to pull them on. They felt heavy, and her limbs felt like they were filled with lead.
She waited for him to say something. Waited for him to stop her, but he didn’t. Instead, he let her get dressed all the way. Let her walk to the bedroom door.
She stopped, her throat tightening. She bit her lip to keep from crying right there in front of him. She had already broken down in front of him too many times. And yes, he’d held her. He’d braced her. Because he was a wall. And that was easy for a wall. But asking him to bend, asking him to soften, asking him to make himself vulnerable to her in any way... He wasn’t going to give in.
And it reminded her too much of the life in her past. Of living with inflexible, distant people. Of feeling alone in a home that had an actual staff. Because if you could maintain that kind of detachment then you could easily send your own child off to have a baby on her own, to hide her pregnancy from the neighborhood, from the garden club.
Because your own self-preservation would always be more important.
Finn wasn’t her parents. She knew that. But it was far too close. Far too close to everything she had run away from once already. To the things that had damaged and wounded her beyond repair—or so she’d thought.
As she opened the bedroom door and began to walk away, something broke inside of her, and she wondered if she was right back where she’d been as a seventeen-year-old girl driving into town the first time. If there was something in her that would take another decade to heal.
Then, as she made her way down the stairs and out the front door to her car, all the time hoping that he would come after her, she realized something. That it might take ten years for this pain to heal all the way, that it might never heal all the way. But that she would be able to live even with the pain there.
Because she was stronger now. Because she refused to hold on to it. Because she refused to be defined by all of the things she didn’t have. By all of the second-guessing. By the life that someone else was living.
She was broken. She wasn’t destroyed.
That was because of Finn. Ironic now that he was the one causing this destruction when he had been the one to heal so much of it before.
No less ironic, she supposed, than the fact that he was the one ending things when he was the one who had pushed for things to begin. That he was the one who was afraid now, when he had been as confident as a bulldozer in the beginning.
Tears slid down her cheeks as she drove down the winding highway toward her house. It was dark outside and her headlights bathed the road and the bottoms of the pine trees in a wedge of yellow. It was the only light in the darkness.
She laughed. She supposed since it was so dark she was going to have to make her own light.
She would. She would make her subscription boxes, she would laugh with her friends. And sometimes, only sometimes, she would cry.
Because she loved Finn Donnelly with all of herself. Without reservation. And he refused to let himself love her back.