Casey drops my hands and steps back.
“I slept with Lauren.”
What I see reflected in her eyes brings down everything that remains of my life.
“And do you want to know the worst part? He forgave me. I can’t even forgive myself, but he forgave me.”
Casey backs away, horrified by my confession.
“That night, in the pool… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know where to go. But I wanted to stay. Fuck, I really wanted you!” I raise my voice. “I never wanted anything but you.”
She shakes her head, falling limply onto the sofa.
“But I wasn’t a future. You deserved a man. Not someone like me, who could never give you anything.”
I step towards her and deliver my final piece.
“My illness, all the treatment… At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about it. But a few years later, I had a check-up… I finally realised the full extent of everything.”
Casey lifts her eyes to meet mine.
“I can’t have a family of my own, Casey.”
I see her breathing catch in her chest.
“I’m almost infertile.”
I see the realisation spread through her face.
“And I know that everyone always says there are other options, other ways… But I would never want to place this burden on you, because…you’re everything, Casey. You’re my everything.”
Maybe this is all too much at once. But there’s no point in pretending anymore that she could ever love me. There’s no point making her believe that she could have a future with me.
I step away from her.
“Here I am, Casey. This is Nick O’Connor. A man who doesn’t know what to do, who has nothing to give. I’m a disappointment. A man who’s only ever been happy once in his life. Do you know when that was?”
She shakes her head.
“When you told me, at my parents’ house, that you knew what my favourite colour was. That was the happiest moment of my life. Because it was the truth, and you knew it. You knew something real about me.”
She closes her eyes, letting the tears tumble freely over her cheeks.
“I wanted to stay that night. I didn’t want to leave. But what could I have given you? You were only nineteen. You wanted to be a doctor, for fuck’s sake! What was I? I had nothing to my name apart from a one-way ticket to New Zealand and a two-year work contract. And then what? What would I have done? What the fuck could I ever have given you? Lies? False hope? What, Casey? What? You deserved everything, and I had nothing.”
She flicks her eyes open again, the pain inside them piercing through me.
“You could’ve let me decide.”
“What would you have chosen? The little kid who never grew up, with a deep-set fucking fear that he wouldn’t even make it to next year?”
She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know what to say. She just looks at me, a thousand emotions passing in front of her eyes. But I can’t see what I need, what I’d hoped for.
I can’t see forgiveness.
I pull myself to my feet and head towards the stairs, knowing that, as soon as I walk out of that door, I’ll have nowhere to come back to.
71
