He walked up the steps into the house, and he put his hand on his chest. He felt like he was having a heart attack. His whole body hurt. And he was alone. Which was exactly how it should be. Because he deserved to be alone. He fucking did. He deserved to be without Jessie. Without his mom.
Because he had never really fit. And so he had to be good at this isolation thing. It was really the only thing.
It was fine.
But he felt for some reason as if he had just severely broken something, and if he thought about it, he had a feeling he would figure out exactly what and why. But he hadn’t asked for this. He hadn’t asked for any of it. He hadn’t asked to be born; he hadn’t asked for his half siblings to resent him. He hadn’t even asked for this whole election debacle.
He growled and threw his elbow against the hard side of the wall, cursing when he left a dent in the drywall. Why was this so fucking hard?
Living. Being a human.
About the only thing that hadn’t been hard was being with Jessie. It was all the surrounding things. It was …
He thought of her face. Of the hurt in her eyes when he had sent her on her way.
He wasn’t going to dwell on that. He just wasn’t.
He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.
But then, maybe Michael hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.
Chapter 17
I ran again, to another town. Another life. Because I couldn’t trust what Benjamin offered me. All this time I wouldn’t write his name. Now it’s all I can do. I didn’t want to hope. But now I’ve let fear take the best thing I’ve ever had away from me.
—Belle Martin’s Diary, June 1870
Jessie cried all the way home. And she couldn’t even say why. They were sticking to their agreement. So what was she supposed to say back to him?
It was going to be over after the election. She knew that. She had known it the whole time. There was no doubt about it. There was no question. There was no reason to be upset.
But ithurt.
Because being with him felt like it was something different. Had felt like it was something different for days now. Maybe even weeks.
But he had just said he needed time alone.
And you just left.
Of course. Because pushing back would mean dropping her mask. Because pushing back would be opening up her chest and revealing truths she wasn’t even certain of herself.
She pulled up to the front of her trailer and curled her hands tightly around the steering wheel. She was in love with him.
No. She didn’t want it to be true. She didn’t want to be that big a cliché. She didn’t want to be that sad.
She loved him.
How long had she loved him?
Well. Not all that long. She hadn’t known him before. Maybe she’d had a crush on him, maybe she’d been attracted to him, but thelove thing … That had built over the course of the last month and a half. When he had surprised her at absolutely every turn by being a more wonderful, sensitive human being than she’d ever imagined him to be.
He was smart. He was just wonderful.
He was great in bed. He taught her how to be herself. Gave her the strength to do it.
Except today, when she had needed to do it most, she had faltered.
She had not stood her ground.
