She's very still.
"The cameras," I say. "The cheating. The laptop. Hell, even the lake house." I look at her. "I'm not going to sit here and explain them away. There's no version of any of it that's okay, and I'm not going to insult you by trying to construct one."
She looks at the table with her jaw clenched.
"I used to think love meant keeping," I say. "That's the only way I knew how to do it. You keep the thing you love. You make sure it can't leave. You build walls around it, and you call the walls protection, and you tell yourself it's the same thing." I pause. "It's not the same thing."
"No," she says quietly. "It's not."
"I know that now." I look at her face. At the profile I have been looking at for two years — across dinner tables and in car windows. "I think I always knew. I just—" I stop. "You were the first thing I ever had that I was afraid of losing. Everything elsein my life I could replace, rebuild, or walk away from. You were the first thing I couldn't."
She's quiet.
"That's not an excuse," I say. "I just need you to know that it was real." I look at her. "All of it. Everything I ever told you. TheI love yous, theI need yous,and everything in between — it was real. It was the realest thing I've ever had, and I know I destroyed it.” I breathe. “I didn't know how to hold something real without crushing it."
She looks up at me.
Her eyes are doing the thing they do when she's holding something back.
"Why the OnlyFans?" she says.
I look at the table.
"Don’t say the money," she says. "I don't care about the money. Why those women? Why any of it when you had—" She stops. "When you had me. The one thing you apparently loved so much."
I breathe.
"Because I could," I say.
She looks at me.
"That's the honest answer," I say. "Not because I didn't love you. Not because you weren't enough. Because it was available, and maybe…” I shrug. “Maybe I had a control and power issue, but don’t hold me to it, Adela. I ended up in a coma because I wanted to fucking quit. I saw my chance to get out, and I took it.” I stare at the food for a moment. “I did what I could to leave because I love you. You mean so much more to me than anything else.”
We look at each other across the kitchen table.
“Here’s the thing,” I say, tapping the table. “We’ve been together for a long time. I don’t feel like I need to convince you I’m going to change because you know me, Adela. You have always known me, and I got caught up in some shit. It was like a moment of weakness, if you want to put it that way. You know I would never do it in my right mind, and I’m back. All of that shit with Theo, it wasn’t my character. I know you can vouch for me. I know you know me better than anyone, so please––”
Fuck, I told myself not to plead.
"You can't just decide to be different," she says.
"Adela––"
"It doesn't work like that."
"I know." I look at her, patting my heart. "But you know me.” I start hitting my chest harder. “You know me!”
"Cody," she says.
"Adela."
"I loved you." She says it quietly and carefully, like she's been holding it for a long time and has finally decided to put it down in the open where we can both look at it. "Before any of this. Before I knew any of it, I loved you so much that I transferred colleges to be with you.”
“Baby, I know.”
She winces. “Let me finish. I was so sure about us back then.” Her voice doesn't break, but it comes close. "I was so sure."
"Baby, I’m sorry," I say.
