He could have died.
My knees go weak and I think I’m about to crash, but he catches me and holds me up. “Lana, baby, don’t do that. I’m fine.”
I’m not fine.
I could have lost him.
“But you aren’t,” I cry. “You could have died and I would have never known it, Christian!”
“I know.” He sniffles and his voice shakes when he repeats himself, “I know.”
“No, youdon’tknow! You leave, I don’t know about you for years other than what I see online and you just… You just…”
“It was kept quiet—All of it. I overdosed and they savedme. And then I got clean. I got sober. I went to rehab,” he says. “And now I’m here.”
I swallow and he pulls something out of his back pocket. It’s our jar. The faded, sloppy writing is stained on the glass, spelling out,house jar.
“What is that?”
“These,” he shakes the jar, “are all of my chips. Each and everyone of them that I’ve earned the past year and a half.”
“Chips…”
“Sobriety chips.”
I steal the small Mason jar from his hand and turn it, shake it, inspect it. It’s our old jar—our house jar.We added money to it all the time. Money we were going to use to buy a new car and a house. It was filled with the money that I found left on the counter, and now I know he took it as if he knew he was going to come back to me one day.
He came back to me.
“All of them,” Christian breathes. “Every single one of them, I put in that jar, thinking of you. Of the day I’d come back and get you and we’d finally have that house. I had to take it with me, I’m sorry.”
“Christian…”
“For four years, you are the only thing that has been on my mind,” he says. “But for a year and a half, I have been planning this day. It didn’t happen the way I thought it would or wanted it to, but I’m here…and I fucking love you.”
I shake it again, gently. It’s filled with something much better now. “A year and a half?”
He dips his chin.
These were the confessions I was waiting for…
“And you…” I swallow, turning our old house jar—still stained with the sharpie. “You went to rehab.”
“I was…not well, Lana,” he rasps. “You have noidea how badly I don’t want to be my dad.”
I should have trusted him tonight. “Christian, I…”
“I wanted to be the person you deserved. The person who deservedyou,” Christian says, his voice cracking. “But no matter what I do, I’ll never deserve someone like you. So, if I have to, I will get on my knees and beg you to love me anyway.”
My hands tighten around the jar, my mouthing opening and closing with words I want to say but can’t seem to find.
“You were right to kick me out earlier,” he continues. “I know what ‘the store’ meant, I just… forgot.”
“Then where did you go?” I croak quietly, hugging our house jar.
Christian pulls something from his front pocket. “This one is new. I got it today at a meeting that Nico told me about the day I came back into town. I started going that same week, and I’ve been going every Friday. It’s been a year and eight months today.” He holds out the chip for me to take. “I had to go to the store to grab pies because I promised I would be the one to bring the snacks and desserts this week.Thisis why I’m here. Because I can be. I’m okay enough to be here and tell you…” He releases an exasperated breath. “To tell you I have missed you. Everyday for the past four years, and I have been miserable without you. I havenothingwithout you—Iamnothing without you.”
“Don’t say that,” I choke. My chest is tight to the point of pain and my hands are trembling around the chip in my hand and the delicate jar in the other. “You areeverything, Christian.”
