He starts toward the porch, but his head is turned toward the trailer. I put down my wineglass. “What are you doing here?”
That finally gets his head to swing toward me. He finds me, or probably just a dark shadowed outline of me, on the porch and starts to climb the stairs. “I came to get you back.”
I wish those words made me feel good and loved and gave me hope, but they don’t. “Ty, I don’t want to work through this.”
He opens the screen door. “I can’t believe that.”
“You’re going to have to,” I reply and glance at his car. “You came all the way back from Toronto?”
He nods. “I can’t just walk away. I’m not going to let you.”
Oh God. Why is this happening? He’s standing in front of me, looking anguished. Guilt floods me. “I’m sorry, Ty. I handled it poorly. I know that. But I still know that it’s the right decision. We can’t be together anymore.”
“I begged for your forgiveness. I quit my job so I wouldn’t even work with her anymore. I let you move to San Francisco without me. I put up with all your tears and mood swings and—”
“Let me move? Put up with me?” All the guilt I was feeling turns to dust and is replaced with the strongest sense of validation I think I’ve ever felt in my life. “When did you become that guy? The one who thinks being in a relationship means you control another person’s actions? That you have the right to give me permission like you’re my parent, not my partner?”
“That’s not what I meant!” he yells, but it’s exactly what he said. “When did you become the girl who walks away from a decade-long relationship in a fucking airport line?”
“When my dad died. When my life became too hard. When I decided I couldn’t lie to myself anymore,” I yell back. “I can’t trust you. I want to. I tried to. I can’t.”
“I told you, she didn’t mean anything. I was lonely. You were spending all your time at your parents’. We were barely seeing each other.” He runs a hand through his light blond hair, causing a big chunk of it to stand up awkwardly. “And then you told me you wanted to go to San Francisco and that we could do long distance. You didn’t ask. You told me!”
“I don’t have to ask your permission or get your approval on how I deal with my dying father,” I reply heatedly. “You should have been supportive. You should have been understanding.”
“You should have fucked me,” Ty blurts out and I freeze. “We hadn’t had sex in a month.”
“So four weeks is your limit?” I ask and every fiber of my being is drowning in sarcasm. “I’m sorry I didn’t see that section in the relationship handbook. I thought that if you’d been with someone for years and you claimed to love them and want to spend your life with them, the grace period for wanting to fuck like a porn star when you just found out your dad was dying a slow horrible death would be longer. My bad. I’ll read the fine print next time. With someone else.”
I start toward the interior of the cottage. “Go home, Ty. Or go to a hotel. I’m done.”
I feel his fingers wrap around my arm—tightly. Too tightly. I wince as I spin to face him. He has a look in his eyes that’s a dangerous mix of desperation and frustration and it makes my blood run cold. “You don’t get to end this with a sarcastic rant. You said you’d forgive me and you’d give me a chance.”
“Let go of my arm,” I say firmly, eerily calm.
He ignores me. “I’ve had lots of chances to be with someone else since you ran off to California. I could have fucked tons of girls, but I didn’t. I swear to fucking God I didn’t. Even though you’ve been a horrible bitch to me almost the entire time.”
“Let go of me,” I repeat. “And get the fuck out of here.”
“No.”
“I think you mean yes.” The voice comes out of the darkness behind Ty. It’s hard, rough, menacing and I’ve heard it before—repeatedly—when I was a teenager. “Because when a woman wants you to leave, you leave. And you also take your hands off her when she tells you to. Or else guys like me do it for you, and trust me, buddy, you don’t want that.”
Ty’s fingers slowly loosen and he turns around. I hear the screen door open and I fumble for the switch on the wall, flooding the porch with a creamy yellow light from a bug-deterring bulb in the wall sconce.
Holden is standing just inside the door, his shoulders back, his fists clenched by his side and his bearded jaw tense. The look in his eyes is hard, unforgiving, dangerous. Ty is not a small guy. He’s six feet and broad, but Holden looks like a bear in front of him protecting his cubs—protecting me.
“Who the fuck are you?” Ty asks. He looks tough and he sounds harsh, but I know him and I know he’s shocked and probably intimidated by this hulking stranger.
“I’m her neighbor,” Holden replies and takes one simple but aggressive step forward. “And I heard her tell you to leave. So I am here to find out if you need help with that since, you know, you’re still here.”
“I’m having a private conversation with my girlfriend,” Ty tells him.
“Ex-girlfriend,” I mumble and absently rub my arm. I’m dazed, I think. He’s never laid his hands on me—ever. I look at Ty. “I’m sorry you came all this way. I’m sorry it has to be so…messy. But you need to leave. I think we both need to cool off.”
Ty looks furious and, at the same time, devastated. “Ten fucking years, Winnie, and you can’t let me stay in a guest room?”
“House is under renos,” Holden says easily. “Winnie shouldn’t even be staying in it. All the extra rooms are filled with crap or covered in dust.”
