Page 24 of The Write Track
“No.” I vehemently shook my head. “I never wanted that from you. I never asked for anything like that from you. All I wanted was for us to have a partnership.”
“Did you though?” He cocked his head. “Because that’s not how I remember it. You were always on me about what I could bring to the relationship. I wasn’t doing enough. I didn’t express my feelings enough.”
I reached for my latte to give myself a moment to collect myself. He was pushing buttons. No matter what he said, that was what he was here to do. I wasn’t going to fall for it, either.
“I never asked you to express your feelings,” I said when I was certain I wouldn’t start screaming at him. This man was utterly frustrating. What was worse, he was manipulative. Nothing he was saying to me was truthful. He was even lying to himself. He’d told himself a specific narrative and was embracing it because that was best for him.
At one time—for a long time, actually—I’d allowed him to get away with that. I had no intention of doing that again. Not ever.
“Of course you did,” he said. “Nothing I did was ever enough for you.”
“I never pressured you to give me more,” I countered. “I was afraid to do that because, deep down, I never thought I was good enough for you.”
“I never said anything of the sort.” He had the balls to pretend to be shocked by my words. “I never looked at you any differently, despite how you were raised.”
And there it was. The backhanded way he insulted me while pretending he was doing something else.
“There’s nothing wrong with how I was raised,” I replied.
“I didn’t say there was. It was just very different from how I was raised.”
“You pretend that you were raised better than I was,” I snapped. “You think because your parents have money and you were invited to all the best parties that you’re somehow better than everybody else.”
“Do I pretend that, or are you so embarrassed about how you were raised that you put that on me when it’s really you thinking it?”
“I don’t have a problem with how I was raised,” I gritted out. “I had a great childhood.”
“With a flake of a mother and an absentee father.”
He wasn’t wrong. My mother, by her own admission, was a flake. I barely knew my father. This was what Preston did, though. He belittled me with insults hidden behind simple statements. I hated it.
“My mother is the best person I know.” I chose my words carefully. “She’s a bit of a flake. She would tell you that. She finds joy in life, though. You’ve never found joy in anything, at least not as long as I’ve known you.”
“I found joy in you.” He said it with all the sincerity of a used-car salesman.
Rather than argue, I asked the obvious question. “When?”
That threw him. “What do you mean?”
“When did you find joy in me?”
He obviously hadn’t been prepared for that question, because he finally faltered. “I don’t think I understand the question. I found joy in everything you did.”
“Give me a ‘for instance.’”
“I don’t… I…”
“Just one memory of you finding joy in me,” I pressed. “I’ll wait.” As if to prove my point, I took a big bite of my sandwich and methodically chewed. By the time I’d swallowed, he stilllooked lost. “You didn’t find joy in me, Preston,” I said when it became obvious he wasn’t going to come up with an answer. “You just didn’t like explaining that I was the one who left you.”
Anger flashed in his eyes, but he shuttered it quickly. “You took what happened with Tiffany too personally. It had nothing to do with you.”
“You cheating on me had nothing to do with me? How does that work?”
“I didn’t look at it as cheating. It was just… stress relief.”
“Hmm.” I sipped my latte again, if only to give myself something to do with my hands. “That’s quite the hoop you’re trying to jump through.”
“It’s true. I love you. I have always loved you.” He showed no emotion. No, that line was just an item to be checked off his to-do list. It always had been.
