“I know that.”
“It would be easier to just move on from this. I don’t know if there’s anything you could say that would take away the hurt I felt reading that letter. Lies or truth, it still broke my heart. And you felt the same when I moved away. Maybe there’s just too much hurt here,” I ramble, hating the sound of every single word.
His eye roll is unexpected. My responding laugh is startled, jolted.
“Try and run again, hellcat. I fucking dare you.”
29
ROWE
She doesn’t getthe chance.
Of all the things I’ve done in my life, trapping Tilly in my bed while we talk like grown fucking people is the easiest. Her glare doesn’t scare me, nor does the promise of whatever she’s planning on saying in a desperate attempt to piss me off. I’ve been weathering this woman’s storms from a young age and have more than enough experience to know better than to let her pull back right now.
The moment I let her slip away, I’ll lose this moment, with no promise of seeing it again.
“You were my best friend,” she says, spitting it like she hates that fact when I know that isn’t true.
“Yeah, I was. And I knew my letters were selfish. Getting closer and closer to you was a fucking cruel, selfish act, Tilly. I don’t know what either of us were thinking growing a friendship through letters sent every few weeks. It wasn’t going to do either of us any good, but I still couldn’t stop. I clung to you while I was locked up, and I got too fucking reliant on hearing from you. The only reason I didn’t lose my mind was because I kept remindingmyself thatany dayI’d get a letter from you, and that once I did, everything would be okay again.”
The palm she’s had rubbing my sternum presses harder into me, anger flickering to life in her gaze. “And you think that it was any different for me? I grew dependent on seeing my name scrawled on an envelope, clinging to the writing inside. As long as you kept sending them to me, it didn’t matter how miserable I was. Nothing about our friendship was healthy, but I didn’t care. We gained a closeness in those few months sending letters that we hadn’t in the last ten years prior.”
“I didn’t believe you. That last letter you sent was the reality check I’d been unknowingly begging for. Your red pen was smudged, but I still made out the words you wrote, and they scared the shit out of me. If you need a reason for why I said what I did to you in my last letter, this is it. I knew that we’d gotten so tied up in our desperation to feel normal again that we’d become this . . . intertwined, co-dependent being. Whatever you were feeling then, I hadn’t let myself believe it to be the truth. And even if I would have, I can’t promise you that I wouldn’t have done the same thing. We had to stop.”
“So, you hurt me instead.”
I don’t hide from the truth of her statement. “Yeah, that’s exactly what I did.”
“Are you going to tell me the truth now?”
“There isn’t a truth that will fix what happened,” I say, trying to keep my voice soft despite the growing unease in my chest. “I shouldn’t have been as cruel as I was. But I don’t take back what I told about us not being more than friends. That’s the last thing we needed to happen then.”
She exhales softly, some of the tension leaking from her expression. I shift my hand to cover hers, softly guiding it away from where she’s attempted to shove it straight into my chest cavity.
“It would have been so fucking stupid,” she mutters in frustrated agreement. “I don’t know what I thought would have happened. I’d come for conjugal visits once a month, and we’d live happily ever after?”
“That doesn’t change that I hurt you. I was a careless motherfucker.”
“Can we be done talking about this now?”
I grunt a laugh. “You gonna keep holding that fucking letter against me if I say yes?”
“Are you going to keep holding my marriage over me?”
“Those two things aren’t equal.” My mouth morphs into a scowl.
She digs her tongue into her cheek and narrows her eyes. I tighten my hold on her wrist, daring her to shove me again.
“For someone who didn’t love me back then, you sure do hold a grudge for me moving on,” she smarts.
“Is it a love declaration you’re after here, hellcat?”
In a flash, she’s got me splayed on my back and her hair raining down over my face. I grow still beneath the sudden change of her body pinning mine and hold her electric gaze. Her palms move flush to my pecs and press just hard enough to keep me in place. The move wouldn’t do shit if I truly wanted out from beneath her, but I’m content right here. She can play my body like a fucking fiddle if that’ll keep her on top of me.
“I’m not foolish enough to expect that again. I’m just curious why you’re so bothered that I got married. What exactly about it pissed you off the most?”
“Just because I didn’t believe you when you told me how you felt doesn’t mean that I hadn’t wanted it to be true. Like I said, our contact was fucking selfish. And I’m far from a selfless man, then and now. I may have thought you were lying, but that didn’t mean I wanted to find out years later that you’d moved on to someone else not all that long after we stopped speaking and youtook off. You fucking married him, and all that did was prove to me that I’d been right to begin with. Yeah, that pissed me off. It ruined any dream I’d had of getting out and finding you outside waiting for me,” I explain, my voice tight, restricted.
