And I allowed myself to go through life like that until I met her.
Seeing her struggle made me realize I had been doing the same thing. Taking on the weight and responsibility of things that were beyond my control. Trying to protect everyone by risking my own happiness.
I didn’t want that for her or me.
Nor do I now.
I slowly walk around the ring toward her. She put it between us intentionally, to have a physical barrier, but I’m not going to let her do that. I’m not going to let her run until she hears everything I have to say.
“I knew what I was doing was wrong, that it was dangerous, and not for the reasons you think. Because I knew from the first moment I saw you where we would end up.”
Her tear-soaked eyes flash with her agony. “In bed together based on lies?”
I shake my head. “No, in love with each other.”
My statement hangs in the air between us.
Bishop just stares at me like she didn’t even hear it. Her passive expression doesn’t fool me, though. Inside, she’s raging. She’s fighting a battle I can’t see and is losing it.
Finally, her bottom lip begins to quiver. “Don’t say that.”
“Why? It’s true. I’ve been in love with you since?—”
“No!” Her scream echoes through the empty gym, ringing in my ears and cutting me off with the force of her objection. “You don’t get to come in here and say words like ‘love’ because you think that’s going to somehow undo all the lies you’ve told.”
“I don’t think that.”
But she has every right to feel this way, to believe that what I’m saying now comes from a place of wanting to go back, but that’s not what I want at all.
I never wanted to lie to her.
I never wanted to put her in this position.
Going back would mean returning to keeping things from her, and I will never do that again.
“How did you think this was going to end, Gage?” Bishop remains frozen in place, trembling so violently that I wonder how much longer her legs will hold her up. “How did you see any of this playing out in your head? Because it couldn’t have gone on forever, the lie…”
Her voice cracks slightly on that final word.
And I know it’s going to take a lot more than just my explanation to convince this woman that everything we had was real because she will never believe me.
But she might believe herself, if I can get her to listen to that voice inside her own head she’s fighting so hard to drown out right now.
BISHOP
Gage inches toward me.
As much as I want to back away, want to put as much distance between us as possible, want to run the other way and find somewhere safe from his eyes, from his smile, from that look, I can’t seem to move.
I’m rooted in place, frozen by indecision, paralyzed by fear, because every single one I’ve made lately has been wrong, especially where this man is concerned.
I trusted him. I let him in. I showed him things I never shared with anyone. I changed because of him. And he didn’t just let it happen. He pushed and pushed and pushed for it. He did all of that knowing he was keeping this massive truth from me, that he was lying.
How did he expect this to end?
Certainly not with me finding his secret lair and discovering he wasn’t who he said he was—or that he was in name only.
And he hasn’t answered my question.
