“Tacos on Saturday, Pizza on Monday, Chinese on Sunday. You try to eat healthier on the other days of the week to make up for days you load up on carbs.”
A thousand questions race through my mind, but I need one he should know. Something from my career, something I once thought he barely noticed.
“When did I sell my first song?”
“Two months after we got together. It was two days before your birthday. I gave you flowers the next day, but you thought I was giving them to you for your birthday and assumed I just got the day wrong.”
I sink to the floor, hugging my knees to my chest. “What was the name of it?”
“Broken Lullabies,” he answers quietly. “It was about you growing up in a broken home without your dad and wanting better for the kids you would have.”
“When did I have my first article write-up?”
“October eighth. Marcy Longwood wrote it, and I have it framed and hanging on the wall in my office.”
A single tear escapes, tracing a slow path down my cheek. “How did I get the big scar on my knee?”
“You were at the top of the incline on your road. You and your friends decided to do something stupid that day and ride as fast as you could down it. About halfway down, you hit a huge rock and went over your handlebars. Your knee caught the same rock and busted it open. Thankfully, you only ended up with about fifteen stitches that day.”
“So, why? Why did you always act so uninterested in everything related to me?” I cry.
“Because I was fucking terrified, Hayvin. I was so damn scared to get too deep with you even though I’d passed that point the first few weeks we were together,” he admits, his voice broken and shameful.
“That doesn’t make sense, Alek. What in the world made you so scared?”
“Love. Love made me scared, Vin. But I’m realizing it also made me hurt you.”
I scoff. “Love didn’t make you hurt me. Your fear did. Fear that you should have talked to me about. I told you what I wanted when we got together and warned you that if you weren’t in it for the long haul or couldn’t give it to me, you needed to walk the hell away. You made promises to me. If it’s anyone’s fault for me hurting, it’s my own because I recognize that I should have left you a long time ago. The first time you brushed my feelings away, and kept putting Jerica between us. Why did love scare you, Alek? Because I never did anything to make you fear it.”
“It was never you. You didn’t make me fear anything. You, Hayvin Marie, were the one who taught me to love.”
“Stop lying,” I snarl.
He sighs. “I’m not, baby girl. Not about this. I never showed you. Never let you see.”
“But why? What was so awful about letting me see that part of you? What was so damn bad about letting me know I mattered to you? Why was it so hard to let me fucking seeyou?”
“Because that gave you power. It gave you something that I couldn’t control.”
“Love? Alek, nobody can control that. Your heart is in the driver’s seat there.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t control my heart, and letting you know you had it would give you the knowledge thatyoudid.”
“So it was better to constantly hurt me? To make me feel like I wasn’t enough? It was better to make me feel inferior to Jerica because you werescaredof me?” I shake my head. “I just can’t make it make sense, Alek.”
“Because it doesn’t. Not anymore. There were so many things that I wish I could go back and do differently with you, Hayvin. The first would be claiming you to the world. I kept you away from everything in my life because you were mine. I shared you with Charlie, Keaton, and David. They were the three most important people in my life. I justified that as being enough.”
“It wasn’t,” I interrupt.
“I know that now. I know I diminished your importance in my life by doing that, which was unfair and disrespectful to you.”
“There was so much more that was disrespectful to me than that.”
“Jerica,” he states, and I swear I growl.
“You made me feel like her placeholder. She was on this pedestal above me, and you couldn’t see that,” I tell him. “Or more like you didn’t want to.”
“I never meant to,” he replies solemnly.
