“But that’s what it is. That’s the truth.”
“Bullshit. I purposefully made everything you did and everything you said sound rotten, so I didn’t have to suffer a single feeling for you. I crushed you to sparemyself,” he said, and oh, he was very close to her now. He was using his height, his shoulders near looming.
And it should have worked.
For a second it almost did. She heard the words and her heart sank. Looked up at him, and sort of quailed. He was, in that one heartbeat, the asshole she had once thought of him as, back in college.
Then she caught that fractured light in his eyes.
The way he was straining, like he had to force himself to stay where he was.
A million tiny details she’d unearthed throughout the journey they’d had together. And now a million more she was remembering. Seeing afresh. The door opening, the restaurants, the music, the affection, all suddenly turned on their heads.
He didn’t do them because he was playing a game. He did them because the game meant he could get away with them, she thought. Then answered, in the rush of feeling that followed.
“But that isn’t true, though, is it. You’re lying. That’s a lie.”
“What do you meanthat’s a lie? You know it isn’t. I’ve seen it in your eyes a million times—that hurt when I dismissed everything you are. Everything you love. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Emmett, I made you throw away your stories. You don’t evenwriteanymore. All you do all day every day is fruitlessly try to help dipshits like me.”
“I stopped writing because I didn’t believe in the things I wrote.”
“Right. Because of me. Because I made you see how thin and mean the world really is. I made you believethat’s all you could ever dream of. Just the cruel reality, and never the possibilities, the hopes, the wonder of what could be.”
“Everything else in my life did that, Miller. You were the only one who didn’t try to. Because you can tell me this, you can tell me you did it to purposefully hurt me and crush me, but I can see now that you didn’t. You didn’t do that because you had feelings for me. You did it because you just didn’t believe in it yourself. Becauseyoudon’t believe in the wonder of what could be.”
“Oh, gimme a break. That’s not it.”
He snorted, rolled his eyes.
But she saw those eyes return to her, right at the end. Uncertain, waiting for an explanation he clearly didn’t want to hear. But maybe he did at the same time. And she had it. She had it for him. She knew now what to say. The veil had lifted and there it all was: the truth. “But Miller, if it wasn’t, you wouldn’t have been shocked when I told you on that stage that you’d hurt me. You would have known you had,” she said.
And he went to say something directly after she had. She saw him do it—he took a breath, the words were almost out. Then slowly, slowly they sank back down inside him. And as they went, she saw the understanding sink through his dark gaze, through his body. It made his chest hitch; he took a step back.
While her whole world spun on its axis.
“You didn’t think anything you said mattered to me, did you,” she said, and he tried to shake his head. Hetried, but she could see him already failing. “You thought I was sure of myself, that I was certain I was right, that romance was real and good, okay. That passionate was the right way to be. While you just dwelled in the darkness of being sure it wasn’t, confused how anyone could be like me. Maybe even wishing you could be the way that I am. Trying to be. Yeah, I see it. That’s what all your books are, aren’t they. Striving to get to where I was,” she said, almost outside herself now.
Like someone who could do a magic trick, but only when it wasn’t one that would help her. A million problems for everyone else solved, and she hadn’t even been able to see the solution for herself when it was right in front of her face.
And she was right, too.
“I don’t—” he started to say.
Though she could see he was too caught to pull the rest off.
His gaze seemed to turn inward, like he could grasp it now.
Which of course only made it worse. Her face crumpled before she could hold it in. And her voice wavered like fuck when she tried to explain. “Oh god, I’m right, I’m actually right, I’m really right, for the first time I’ve got it right. You were just drowning and I didn’t get it. I thought you just hated me, I thought you hated love, and you were just looking for a way into it the whole time,” she said, half of her still caught in the mindset that she must hide her emotions from him.
Half of her knowing she didn’t have to.
He didn’t see the tears streaking down her cheeks and curl his lip.
He seethed at himself. Only ever at himself. “Even if I was I shouldneverhave made it your problem.”
“So you’re still going to beat yourself up, then.”
“Maybe I fucking deserve it, did you ever think about that?”
