“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, Flynn. I knew that you were going to need to say this to me one day. And I just … I have been trying to outrun my bad decisions. Trying to make myself feel better. But you …”
“I love you. That’s the thing. I’ve never hated you. That’s why it hurts so much.”
“It was like that for me too.”
“But I didn’t have any control,” he said, and he couldn’t worry about whether or not it hurt her feelings. “I was a kid. And the onlyperson who ever made me feel like I was good enough was Grandpa. Nobody else did that for me. I didn’t fit in the family picture, so … I didn’t fit.”
“I know it doesn’t mean anything now. I know it’s too little, too late. But I know that I made the wrong choice.”
She wasn’t wrong. And he was going to live with the damage of her decision forever. There was no easy fix. His childhood was a mess because of her. But as for its being too little, too late for them, he realized there was a choice. She’d had all the power when he was a kid, but he had it now. Their relationship could be what he wanted it to be. It could be what he needed it to be.
He got to decide how hard he was going to make it for her.
And he realized he just didn’t have the energy for any more hard. More than that, he didn’t want it.
“It’s not too late,” he said. “Because I don’t want it to be.”
“But …”
“I know. I blew things up. But if we’re going to have a relationship, everybody else has to stop treating me like I’m invading their lives. They invaded mine.”
His mom couldn’t quite laugh at that, but it was true.
“I can talk to them.”
“And it’s going to be especially hard to do now. Because of Jessie and the election.”
“Probably,” his mom said. “She ran a hell of a campaign, that girl. She’s really something.”
“Thanks. I think she is too. But I …”
At least it isn’t love.
Why did he think it wasn’t love? Because it didn’t hurt?
Because being with her felt easy? Because she felt like an extension of him, his other half? Because he didn’t have to be all sorts of different things to make her want him?
That was …
He was letting his messed-up family define love.
And that realization really did blow his mind.
“Mom I … I have to go. I have to think about some things.”
“I really do want to fix this. As much as you’ll let me. As much as I can.”
“I’m not going to make it hard.” He took a deep breath. For the first time, he felt he was taking a full breath. “Because it just shouldn’t be.”
He got into his truck, drove all the way to the top of Lonesome Ridge. And he stood there, a man apart from everything. Even himself, just for a moment, as he let this new revelation wash through him. As he thought about his grandfather. About Austin, Carson, and Cassidy. The people who loved him. The people he loved.
Jessie Jane.
Yeah. He loved her. It hadn’t been a fight. It had been a fight to stay away from her. For far too many years.
He … he fucking loved her.
And he had been too stupid to recognize it because it hadn’t been a knock-down, drag-out fight. Because in the end, it had been a fight not to love her.
