SO, GO IF YOU NEED TO. BUT KNOW THAT I’M HERE. AND I WANT YOU TO STAY.
She’s blinking fast, tears streaming down her cheeks. I look down before I lose it myself.
IN ONE SHORT NIGHT, LOVE, YOU GAVE ME BACK MY LIFE.
JUST THINK WHAT WE COULD DO…
IF WE HAD FOREVER.
I drop the last card and wait, my grizzled, grey heart in her hands.
CHAPTERNINETEEN
Jules
I’m stunned and a little broken. Very broken, actually. Shattered.
My heart, so tightly contained in my chest for so long, has just burst wide open. I can’t control the tears. I don’t even try. It would hurt to hold any of this in.
“Come here,” I hear him say, through the wave of salt tears. “Come here, love. Come on, darling. Don’t bloody cry.”
I’m lifted and, without apparent effort, swung into his arms. He takes my seat, cradling me, rocking me.
“I’m…I’m…I’m a mess,” I tell him, just so he understands. “And I don’t have a place to stay. And and and I gave up my job and—”
“It’s all right. It’s fine. It’s all right, love. We’ll figure it out. I’m bloody loaded, aren’t I?”
“I can’t guarantee that—”
“Nor can I. And that’s the beauty, in’t it? No guarantees, no promises except that we’ll give it a go and see what happens? Do you want that? Do you? If you don’t, I’ll survive, but if you do—”
“I do! I do, oh my God, I do. So much, but it’s scary. What if…” He leaves me? Or dies? “What if we lose whatever this feeling is? Or I hate the way you chew? Or we can’t get along for more than a week before things blow up? Or I’m a horrible girlfriend or you’re an axe murderer or…”
“Exactly. This is dangerous. As fuck.”
“So dangerous.” I pause. “What if you stop wanting me?” I imagine Dad and his wife, Mercedes, and the twins they had less than two years after Mom died.
“Or you me?”
“No way.”
“You’ll get bored and need to move on, or—”
“No way,” I tell him, earnest and sure. And then, sensing I need to add some kind of explanation, I push out the words I’ve denied even to myself all these years. “I’m done running away.”
“Yeah?”
“It’s not my fault my dad didn’t want me. After the accident.”
“Hewhat?”
“You know how you asked about him? Last night? Well, he was hurting, too. It’s just his way of dealing with it was to move on. Completely. He he he replaced mom so fast and then replacedme.”
“Oh, my sweetheart.”
“But it was fine, you know? ’Cause I couldn’t stay still anyway. And Nan’s always happy to see me, although she’s busy with her own life and then it was like,funto just move on to the next place, you know? And meet new people who liked me and I was loud and entertaining and happy and made lots and lots of friends.” The realness of what I’m saying hits me, low and hard to the stomach. It hurts, but it’s also a relief to get it out. Airing the truth instead of running from it. “I’ve been running for more than a decade and I don’t know how to be still.”
“Well, I’ll just have to chase you, then, won’t I?”
