You can do this, Chloe. You can trust him, was the mantra I kept repeating in my head. I knew I could. I knew I could tell him, and he wouldn’t judge or call me ignorant for how I’d felt or how I’d stayed.
I was trembling when the words began to spill from my lips, but Gavin held me, and I repeated that mantra again.
“When I was with him… at first, things were amazing. I thought, 'this is it.' This is what love should be. I felt safe, protected, and desired. He made me smile. I didn’t even realize how much I was already pulling away from my family and friends, desperate to fill every moment with him. I think I feared he would lose interest if I didn’t. However, after a few months, when things became more serious, he changed. He started trying to keep me home. He never wanted me to leave the house, and when I did, he accused me of cheating on him. He began checking my phone at night while I slept. He came to my work almost daily to ensure I wasn’t having lunch with anyone else. He told me my family hadn’t reached out because they didn’t love me when it was because I had become someone unrecognizable.”
“I feel like all I ever did was defend him in those early days. I said his job was hard, and that was why he was so frustrated all the time and why I needed to stay home—to make sure he was happy and taken care of, that all his needs were met no matter the cost to myself. I said he was protecting me when they asked me to join them for family dinners or even to see them. I told them he was suspicious because he'd had so many unfortunate previous relationships. I thought… I thought I could heal him. If I did what he asked, if I was the woman he needed me to be, he would learn how to love.”
I paused momentarily to breathe, and Gavin wiped away one of the tears from my cheek.
“Do you want to sit down?” Gavin asked.
“No,” I said. “No, I can do this.”
“You can also do it while sitting if you like,” he said.
I knew he was just trying to lighten my troubled heart, and I wanted to kiss him for it. But instead, he entwined our fingers together, and I squeezed them back.
“Take your time,” he whispered.
I inhaled a deep breath, ready to get it out. “It took me four years to realize what he was doing wasn’t protection and that when my friends had told me I had changed, they didn’t mean it as an insult. They were worried about me. Only I didn’t know any better. I thought that was how love was supposed to feel, that everyone eventually lost their dreams when they met the person they thought they would spend the rest of their lives with.”
“What made you finally see it differently?” he asked.
“I, uh… I didn’t make the coffee,” I answered.
“What?”
“God, that sounds even more stupid,” I said, but Gavin wouldn’t let my hands go. “Fuck… Ah, one day, I woke up, and I couldn’t catch my breath. All because he was already in the shower, and I hadn’t started the coffee. And the panic I felt… the absolute terror and anxiety of him getting out of that shower, and I wouldn’t be standing there with his coffee and bagel ready… I had a panic attack and was crying over fucking coffee.”
I started trembling as I remembered it, tears clouding my vision as pure panic swam in my veins.
“And when it wasn’t finished for him by the time he was ready to go, there was no ‘don’t worry about it, I can stop by the shop next door to the studio on the way in.’ There was no reassurance that such a small mistake wasn’t a big deal. No. He screamed at me. He called me worthless and stupid and threw the coffee machine against the wall. He told me I didn’t love him because if I did, I would have made sure he had what he needed to get through the day. He accused me of being in love with someone else. And then, he broke up with me.”
I wiped my face harshly, my heart stammering in my chest. I had to take a moment to collect myself. The memories were almost too much for me to experience again. But I would get through it for Gavin.
“It wasn’t unusual for Aidan to leave a few days after an argument and return with material gifts to make up for it. Promises that he never intended to keep. And I fell for them every time, thinking I was the problem. The only difference that night was that I met Lana. I think I pushed her away so many times. I pushed and pushed, and I returned to him one more time. However, there was something about how she made me look at things, and it was like I woke up from a fever dream where I’d been a prisoner. Packing still terrifies me. Walking out of that door for a final time and never looking back… I can still remember how scary it was. We had been broken up for three years when I met you. And I think on that Valentine’s night with you, I felt something I had once felt for Aidan. The desire and need for another, except it was even stronger with you. And it frightened me.”
“I have worked myself to the bone at becomingmeagain,” I kept going. “Some days, it still feels like it isn’t enough. And I think, when I started dating Tyler, I thought, okay this is the one. This is safe. Here’s someone nice, who likes me, who isn’t dangerous by any means—someone I knew I wouldn’t fall for so quickly I’d forget everything I’d worked my ass off for. I even still hide a part of myself when I’m with Tyler.”
“Do you hide anything when you’re with me?” Gavin asked.
I thought about it for a beat, letting the tear roll down my cheek. “No,” I realized. “No, with you I feel like my whole self.”
Gavin’s forehead came to a rest against mine. He held my hands between our bodies, and for a moment, neither of us spoke. My entire soul had been laid out before him. Everything that had molded the person I was, he now knew.
“He doesn’t deserve you,” Gavin whispered. “Neither of them did, and fuck, I’m not even sure I do. You deserve to feel what love is. You deserve to be your complete self. You deserve to be happy and loved and desired, and I will do that. I swear to you, Chloe. Every day, for the rest of eternity, I will be everything you need me to be. You’ll never have to worry about whether you’ve lost a part of yourself. Because I love you, and I love you for who you’ve allowed me to see. Therealyou. I love you for every freckle on your shoulders, every person you flip off at a hockey game, for your smutty books, and how you don’t know what your face is doing when you think someone is crazy—“
A blurt of a laugh left me, and he smiled slightly in return.
“Believe me, Chloe,” he begged. “For every moment of every day, for the rest of our lives. Let me love you.”
“I don’t want to be scared anymore,” I managed.
“You don’t have to be,” he promised.
My eyes closed as we settled there, my hands on his cheeks, the noise of the beach so close and yet so far. A weight had been lifted off my shoulders, and I felt so much more at ease. I just had one thing left to do, and I had to do it, no matter how much it scared me or how much I dreaded doing it.
I had to do it.
