That pain, that’s what she needs to give me. More of it. All the pain. But she just looks heartbroken.
“Because I want to be with you,” she whimpers, her voice warbling and her eyes filling with tears as she makes herself as small as possible there in my lap. “I don’t want to be mad at you. I just want you to-to-to—”
“To what?” I explode, holding back this awful urge to throw her off me just to, I don’t know, to escape but also to hurt her, because I’ve already hurt her so much and it’s not working. None of it works. I just need her to—
“To stay with me!” she cries out, and instead of running from me like she should or take the pound of flesh I owe her, she just drops her head back down, burying it in my chest like Donovan does when he’s having a meltdown.
“I’m not going anywhere! I just fucking told you I—fuck, Tilly! Fuck you. Fucking grow a backbone, for fuck’s sake.”
I want to take back the words immediately. I can’t believe I just yelled that at her. And when she replies with the weakest, most pathetic, “Why are you being so mean to me?” I want to take back everything I’ve ever said and just crawl into the little box Gabe built under the back deck for Joss’s pet raccoon.
But I’m too worked up. I don’t know how to stop myself from screaming, “Because I love you and you deserve better than me! And you deserve better than you.”
And everything stops.
The air is sucked right out of the room.
There’s nothing left.
She’s the mother of my child and the person I want to spend forever with, but I’m an asshole to her, and she’s no kinder to herself.
Her bottom lip trembles. Her breath is exquisitely ragged as her chest, full and firm and slightly sticky with the paint of the jersey she wears, my number emblazoned on her chest and my name across her back, flutters against me. She staresat me with giant eyes and whines, “That’s how you tell me you love me?”
Okay, yeah, that could have been delivered better or saved for another time or addressed already, but this is who we are. “Yeah, it is. Because I never want to let you go, but I can’t take care of you if you’re not taking care of yourself, too. And I’m going to grind you down to nothing if you don’t stand up for yourself. I need you, Tilly, I need you forever, and I don’t know how to do this with you if you’re not willing to match my forever.”
“If the cancer comes back—”
“Stop!” I bellow, but this time, I sit up and slam my lips into hers, just because I need her and I hurt and it has nothing to do with my ankle. It has everything to do with how I’m still more stressed about her than I am about the blackmailer when the blackmailer is probably going to end us homeless, just chasing her gigs.
Until she decides it’s too inconvenient to tell me she’s feeling off, and by the time anything is done, she’s terminal.
I kiss her harder before I drop back down. “Just . . . stop. You’re not listening to me. The cancer? We can’t control if the cancer comes back. We can’t control how sick Donovan is going to get. We can’t control if I’m going to get injured on the field again. But we can do things that will make what we can’t control easier to manage, and you’re not doing it. I need you healthy, Till. I can’t be fighting you for every single thing. I . . . I can’t be halfway across the country trying to keep my career going and stressing if you’re okay.”
Yet again, she gets this sad look about her. “I’m s—”
“Stop. Do not apologize. Stand up for yourself. And tell me how you feel about how I treated you all that time I thought you were scamming me.”
I see the way her bottom lip moves. I know she’s gnawing on it, probably going to draw blood if she keeps going. I can’t keep pushing her like this, but I can’t let it go.
“I felt sad,” she whispers like it’s the most shameful thing in the world. “I was so scared that if I didn’t do everything just right, you were going to abandon us. And I felt like I had no right to ask for help from you, so the minute I did, you were going to realize that you didn’t need to be there. It didn’t make any sense that you were there. And I’m . . . I’m . . .”
She drops her head right back down and throws her arms around my waist. But when she squeezes me, her nails dig in.
Like,reallydig in.
“And I’m so mad at you I could spit teeth,” she admits, but instead of that anger, I hear defeat. “Twenty million dollars? That’s an insane amount of money. Absolutely un—I can’t even imagine what I’d do with that, but I wouldn’t be in that apartment.”
That’s it. That’s what I need her to start saying. “Why didn’t you ask me about it?” I push.
“Because I wasn’t entitled to it!” she says with more gusto and more biting nails. “I didn’tknowyou were Donovan’s dad, you jackass! I made twelve thousand dollars last year, and you were making me buy diapers and borrowing my car and-and-and—” She flops off me, nearly knocking my knee and just fucking everything up, and then pushes me to slide over enough for her to take half my pillow. “Why didn’tyoutalk to me?”
“Because I was happy.”
“You were miserable.”
“I wasn’t, actually. Or, I was happy being miserable? I wanted to keep Donovan, and he needed you, and it got comfortable. Once I thought I knew what happened to themoney, it didn’t matter anymore. As long as you didn’t take more, and it didn’t make any sense for you to blackmail me again when I was right there, I decided I’d rather just forgive and move on.”
“So then is it really so strange that I did the same?”
