Page 113 of Bound Lives
I take a step around the table.
She doesn’t move.
“I’m not angry you had a raft.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“I’m angry the raft texted you here,” I say. “I’m angry he gets to be uncomplicated.”
“Uncomplicated?” She huffs. “You think my life is a choose-your-own-adventure with all the traps clearly labeled?”
“I think you deserve easy.” I stop an arm’s length away. “And I’m not easy.”
“Finally,” she says. “Truth. We did promise each other honesty, after all.”
She looks at me, really looks, and I feel it like her hands are on my ribs, like the way she touched me last night when I moved inside her.
“I didn’t come here for Lance,” she says. “I didn’t come here for you, either. I came because Angie invited me, and I finally agreed that I needed to get away. That’s why I came.” She grabs my shoulders. “But I stayed for you, Henry. For you. And I’m tired of running from the thing I want.”
“And what is that?” My voice is a rasp I don’t recognize.
“You,” she says.
Her word lands low and bright in my chest.
I drag a hand down my face. “Okay. Fine. I’m mad. I’m jealous. I’m every stupid thing a man is when he realizes too late that he set his own house on fire.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not fair.”
“I know.” I hold her gaze. “Neither was telling you we had no future when what I meant was I didn’t know how to be a man with a past that ugly and still deserve you.”
She goes still.
The words spill out of me now. “I killed him. And every time I close my eyes I see his face and I hear the shot and I know I’d do it again. Every damned time. To save Angie. To save Jason. To save you, Tabitha. It was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. How do I live with that? Being glad I ended a life?”
“Henry—”
“How do I tell you to bet on me when I don’t recognize myself in the mirror yet?”
Her eyes shine. With anger? Something else? Hell if I know. “By not making my choices for me.”
I close the last space between us. It feels like stepping off a cliff and discovering I like the fall. “I lied,” I say, steady now. “At the ranch. I lied because I was a coward and because I thought keeping you from me would keep you safe.”
“From what?” she asks, a whisper. “From your feelings?”
“From me,” I say. “From the parts of me that break things.” I breathe once, twice. “I’m not fixed. I don’t know if I ever will be.” Another breath. “But I want you. In every way that counts. And if there’s a future left that has my name in it, I want yours written next to it.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. The only sign she’s breathing is the flutter at the hollow of her throat.
“Say the word,” I tell her. “Tell me to walk away, and I’ll try. I’ll fail and try again and fail prettier the second time, but I’ll try. Or tell me to stay, and I will. I’ll stand here and say out loud that I was wrong.”
She steps into me. “If you didn’t mean it,” she says, voice shaking and sure at once, “then prove it.”
Thirty-Three
Tabitha
If you didn’t mean it, then prove it.
