“I know.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice cracked, and I hated how small it sounded. “That isn’t my style. I don’t do that. I don’t use people that way. I hated myself even while I was doing it, but I wanted you to look at me the way you made me look at you. I wanted one second where you couldn’t pretend you didn’t care.”
“I couldn’t pretend,” he said, voice low. “That was the issue.”
The space between us felt alive.
My fingers curled into my sweatshirt. “I thought you came here to talk about forgiveness.”
“I did.” He took one step closer, and water dripped from his hoodie onto the tile. “I just need you to understand I’m not standing here saying I forgive you while pretending I was clean. I was cruel on purpose. I broke things on purpose. I wanted you to cry on purpose, and I am so fucking sorry for that.”
The apology didn’t land like the word sorry usually did.
It landed with weight. With intention. With him standing in the wreckage and pointing to the pieces that belonged to him.
“I’m sorry for doing everything I could to make you cry,” he said. “I’m sorry for every time I saw your face change and kept going because some sick part of me wanted proof I could still reach you. I’m sorry I made you pay for hurting me by turning myself into someone unsafe.”
I blinked hard, but the tears came anyway.
He saw them and looked almost physically pained. “I’m not done,” he said.
A laugh shook out of me through the tears. “That sounds threatening.”
“It might be. Emotionally.”
“That is the worst kind from you.”
His mouth twitched, but it didn’t last. “My mom said something to me.”
“About me?”
“About me,” he corrected. “About what I was calling forgiveness.”
I wiped under one eye. “Your mom knows about this?”
“She knows enough to make me feel like I’m eight years old and caught lying about breaking a lamp.”
Despite myself, I almost smiled. “I like her.”
“She’d like you too.”
That hurt.
He saw that too, and his face shifted.
“She would,” he said more quietly. “Even knowing the mess. Maybe especially knowing there’s mess, because she has no patience for pretty lies.”
I looked down at the floor between us. “What did she say?”
“She asked if it was forgiveness I was refusing, or acceptance.”
My eyes lifted.
Easton took another step, slow enough to let me stop him. I didn’t.
“I’ve been stuck on that,” he said. “Forgiveness is easy when the wound is small. Someone bumps into you, says something stupid, forgets to call, breaks something that can be replaced. They apologize. You forgive them. It’s clean enough to hand back without losing skin.”
His voice roughened.
