“I can do that.” He says it so simply, and I can see in his eyes that he’ll answer any questions I have.
God, I don’t even know how to start, and it makes me more frustrated with myself.
Sighing, I relax back into the couch and say what’s truly on my mind. “I feel like I don’t know how to act around you anymore. I’ve been mad—no, angry. So damn angry for so long, and I don’t really know how to move on from that. This awkwardness I’m feeling is not me at all, and I hate it. I don’t want to be awkward around you, but I don’t know if I’m ready to let go of the anger either.”
He nods, and I appreciate that he doesn’t just attempt to placate me immediately.
“I didn’t really expect your anger toward me to just go away when I told you everything. I’m honestly a little shocked that you aren’t holding on to it a hell of a lot harder.”
I chuckle at his words because he’s not wrong. I expected my resentment to last until I died, but it just … isn’t.
“Same, honestly, but after everything you told me, it just feels silly to hold on to it when you went through so much.”
“Rina, don’t forgive me or act like everything is okay because you pity me. I don’t want it or need it. I did a horrible thing to you, and I don’t think what I went through with my injury negates that. I know saying sorry again won’t help, but I need you to know hurting you was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. I never wanted to let you down, and I know I should have explained things before now, but I was scared. You had so much going on in your life, and I didn’t want to add any stress to your already busy life. It’s a sad excuse, but at the time it’s all I had.” It’s basically a reiteration of everything he told me the first time, but the sadness and pain in his eyes make me want to figure this out. Move past the sorrys and the fuck-ups.
“No more apologies. Please. I really want to move past this, and I don’t want this weird space we’re in to continue. I want to be able to see you in Sal’s and say hi without feeling this stabbing in my heart. I want to be able to text you randomly and not scroll through my phone to ‘The Asshole.’” His bark of laughter at that makes me smile. “I just want to get to a place where things feel normal.” I know I’m not making a ton of sense, but that’s why I wanted him to come over, so I could make sense of how I feel about him and figure out if moving past all the hurt is a real possibility.
“Am I really ‘The Asshole’ in your phone?” he asks, and I pull up my phone and show him, biting my lip to hide my smile. “Fitting. Can I be one hundred percent honest here, with absolutely no pressure or expectation from you?”
“Always.”
“For me, it’s always been you. When I think about marriage or babies or my future, it always has you in it. That hasn’t changed to this day, and it won’t change anytime in the future. My ideal is that we aren’t just friends or neighbors who wave as they pass each other on Main Street.”
His words send a rush of warmth to my heart, and I know with every inch of my scarred heart that if it isn’t Arlo, it’s no one. The problem is, I don’t forgive him, at least not right now, and no matter how we both feel, we both have too much to work on at the moment.
“I’m going to ask something really unfair, but it’s the one thing I haven’t been able to get past since we talked,” I tell him instead of addressing his declaration.
“Ask me anything, Emmerdeur.” I want to shove him for using that name because he knows it does things to me.
“Why wasn’t I enough? You made a decision because you thought I wouldn’t want to be lonely with you gone all the time, but you didn’t even talk to me. You didn’t talk to me then, and you waited fifteen years to talk to me after. Why wasn’t I good enough to just talk to?” My voice is barely above a whisper as vulnerability pours out of my soul.
“You were everything, and I was a coward. It’s every bit the reflection of me and not you.” He scoots forward and wipes the tears falling. “I was scared shitless on that mission, and when one of my best friends died, I talked to his widow and I panicked. I didn’t want that for you; hell, I wanted literally anything else for you other than an officer knocking on your door telling you your husband died. I fully admit it was the wrong decision, but then I got hurt and I thought about them calling you with me in the hospital on the other side of the world. It reinforcedmy thought process and when I came home, you hated me anyway, so I just … let you hate me. At the time, it felt like more than I deserved.”
“You punished yourself,” I murmur.
“In a way, I guess I did. Until recently, I didn’t really have a reason to shift that way of thinking,” he says.
“What happened recently?” I ask.
“I realized that no matter what happens between the two of us, I haven’t been a man I can say I’m proud of. I’m not a man deserving of you, and I decided it was time to make a change.”
“What does that mean?”
He takes a deep breath before sliding his hand over to mine. He grips it tight as he starts talking. “I went to the doctor finally. My back has been bothering me a lot since I pulled Lennox out of the cabin, and I’ve been avoiding getting it looked at. I also started therapy.”
Woah, not what I was expecting at all.
“And how is your back?”
“Fucked, but not as bad as I thought.” He laughs.
I slap his shoulder. “That’s not even remotely funny!”
“Okay, sorry.” He chuckles. “I basically have a disease in my back around my spinal fusions, where it’s overworked.”
“Fusions, as in multiple?” He told me he smashed his back, but shit, I don’t think I really realized what that meant.
“Three, and my hip is completely replaced and full of metal. So, airports are a good time.”
