Page 168 of What We Break
"Because I didn't want you to see that part of me."
"What part?"
I look away. The parking lot's empty except for us and the rigs. The sun's getting lower, throwing long shadows across the asphalt.
"After she left, I got dark. Really dark." The words come out rough. "I turned into someone I didn't recognize. Someone I didn't respect."
Laine doesn't say anything. Just waits.
"She was..." I blow out a breath. "She was the last thread. After Jared died, I was barely holding it together. And she was there, you know? Through all of it. The funeral, the nightmares, the days I couldn't function. I thought if she could love me through that, maybe I wasn't as broken as I felt."
I can feel Laine's eyes on me, but I can't look at her.
"When she left that note, something snapped. I stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped being anything close to human."
I don't tell her the rest. The nights I sat in my car outside the apartment she'd moved into. How I knew when her lights went off, when they came back on, who came and went. The bottles piling up in my passenger seat. The thoughts that got darker and darker until I couldn't tell the difference between love and something that would land me in prison.
I was one bad decision away from destroying my life. And I couldn't stop myself.
"Blake found me." My voice is barely above a whisper. "I wasn't answering his calls. Wasn't answering the door."
The memory hits me like a freight train.
I was sitting in the dark, phone in hand, her location glowing on the screen, trying to convince myself that if I justsawher one more time?—
The door came off the hinges.
Blake stood there, chest heaving, and I'd never seen him that scared. Not when we were kids, and not when we were in combat.
He looked at me. At the bottles. At the phone in my hand.
And then he started swearing. Arabic first, then Pashto, then Spanish, then languages I didn't even recognize. Just a steady stream of profanity in every language he'd picked up across three continents while he crossed the room and sat down next to me in the filth.
When he finally ran out of languages, he just said: "Okay. We're done with this."
He didn't leave for three weeks. And when he finally went back to his place, it was only to pack. He moved in for good.
"He pulled me back," I say finally. "From the brink of something I wouldn't have come back from."
Laine's shoulders crawl up around her ears. When she speaks, her voice is soft. "That's why you two are the way you are."
"Yeah." I finally look at her. "He's the one who showed up when no one else did. He's the reason I'm standing here."
She steps closer. Her hand finds mine.
"I haven't been that guy in a long time," I say. "I thought I was past it. But this morning, when I saw your face on that call... I felt it again. That panic. That certainty that you were going to leave, and there was nothing I could do to stop it."
"So you tried to leave first."
"Yeah." The word comes out broken. "I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry."
Laine's quiet again. Her hand is still in mine, but her brow is furrowed. We’re not out of the woods yet.
"I don't do this, Reid." Her voice is quieter now. Less steady. "I don't let people in like this. I've spent my whole life making sure I could leave before anyone else did. And then I met you, and I thought... I thought maybe I didn't have to do that anymore."
She looks away. Swallows hard.
"And then you were ready to walk away like it was easy."
