Page 21 of Take Me Big Boy
All you have to do is ask, mocks a small voice in my head.
“Did something happen?” I ask, afraid to reach out again and be met by rejection. “Matt, can you stop and talk to me?”
He stops mid-reach for his shirt and turns to look at me. For a second, his eyes meet mine, and what I see there nearly breaks my heart.
“I don’t think this is going to work out.”
The crack widens, and blood drips from the slice to the heart. “What is not going to work out?”
“Everything,” he hisses, grabbing the shirt and pulling it on. His hands shake on the buttons. He doesn’t seem to notice. “You, the physical therapy. Everything.”
Another piece falls as the crack grows. “I told you I’m not going to quit.”I’m not giving up on you, is what I really want to say.
“You don’t have to quit,” he grinds, running a hand through his hair. “Just—just go, Ashley. Please.”
I step in his way when he goes to turn away. “What do you mean, go? Yesterday, you—”
“Yesterday was a mistake!” The words come out too loud, and he flinches at his own voice. “All of it. The whole—everything. It was a mistake. I’m not who you think I am, Ashley, and I’m not going to keep pretending I am for one more goddamn day.”
“A mistake.” I say it slowly, tasting it, hating it. “Matt, two weeks ago, you couldn’t lift your left arm above your shoulder without your face going gray. Yesterday you finished a full upper-body set with the resistance bands, three rounds, no compensation. Two weeks ago, you couldn’t crouch to feed Penny without bracing on the counter. Yesterday, you dropped into a full bodyweight squat and came up clean—and the versionof you from week one wouldn’t have made it halfway down before his knee went out.”
I pause, taking a deep breath. But I have to continue.
“Don’t tell me yesterday was a mistake when I have the data on what your body can do now versus what it could do when I first walked through your door. You have made progress, Matt. Real, measurable progress. We both know it.”
He’s silent. His jaw works. He doesn’t look at me.
“Matt.” My voice cracks on the word. “Look at me. If yesterday was a mistake, what about the day before? What about the day you let me massage your head when the migraine almost put you down? What about the day Penny first leaned against your leg, and you stood there like she’d handed you something fragile? Were those mistakes too?”
“Leave,” he says. Quieter this time. It sounds less like an order and more like a man holding the door shut against his own grief.
This time, there is more than just blood that spills from the ruthless slice he keeps delivering to my heart. There are tears, too, but I refuse to let them fall.
Pride keeps the question in my throat. He doesn’t get to make me beg him for an answer.
“You’re a coward, Matt Galloway.” My voice doesn’t shake, which surprises me. “That’s what this is. You’re scared of whatever happened in your head last night, and you’re taking it out on me because you think it’ll be easier to push me away than face me.”
He flinches—a real one this time, the kind that goes through his whole body—but his face shutters fast. “Leave.”
“I’m going. But you should know—being scared isn’t a reason to be cruel. And you were cruel today, Matt. I won’t forget that.”
I pick up Penny’s leash, tap my leg once for her to come, and slam the bedroom door as I storm out. The tears swim in my eyes, blinding me as I stomp down the hall to the front door. Penny whines beside me, confused, glancing back at the bedroom we just left.
I don’t let the tears fall yet, and I make sure to slam the front door just as hard as we step outside. I walk to my car, and when I start to open it, the tears decide to fall.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
I cover my hands with my face as I let out the tears choking my throat in violent sobs. Penny whines and bumps my legs with her head. I know what this is. I know what he’s doing. I’ve watched him for two weeks now—the way the migraines flatten him, the way the nightmares wake him three hours into sleep, the way he won’t say what he saw when his eyes go somewhere I can’t follow. He didn’t sleep last night. Something climbed into his head between when I left him last evening and when I walked in this morning, and he hasn’t let it back out. This is a man holding the door shut against his own grief, and he just told me to leave because I was on the wrong side of it.
I’m not going.
I’m not driving home. I’m not telling my boss I quit. I’m taking a walk. I’m letting Penny stretch her legs and giving Matt the space he asked for, and then I’m coming back to that door. If he tries to send me away again, he’s going to find out exactly how stubborn the woman he picked actually is.
Because I did pick him too. Whatever he thinks happened back there, whatever ghost climbed into him overnight, I amnot the one who’s leaving. I’ve watched this man hold himself together with his teeth for two weeks, and I’ve watched him let Penny lean on him. I’ve watched him reach for me at three in the morning when his nightmares wouldn’t quit. I know what’s underneath the way he just spoke to me, and it isn’t that he doesn’t want me. It’s that he doesn’t think he deserves to.
But he doesn’t get to make that decision for both of us. Not without a fight.
I wipe the tears from my eyes and look around. The Galloway property spans acres into undeveloped desert. A walk first. Air, space—give him an hour to remember he isn’t actually alone, then I go back through that door.
