Page 60 of Forever After Fall

“Let’s hope there aren’t any more of those,” Marlowe pipes in, otherwise quiet this morning.

“Right.” I nod. “Speaking of situations, I really got myself into one with everything that came before this. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth about me and Anson. I couldn’t betray his trust, but I feel horrible for lying to you at the game. For keeping such a big secret from both of you. I wish I had come clean sooner. I hope you can forgive me someday.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” Marlowe shakes her head. “You’ve been through it this last year with Chris. Wanting something for yourself makes total sense. I shouldn’t have cornered you. I should have respected your privacy.”

“But I hurt Jasper in the process.”

“Jasper hurt himself. If he wanted something, he should have told you years ago. You didn’t mislead him; you told him you were seeing someone. You just didn’t tell him who. That was none of his business. You didn’t owe him that. How he didn’t realize that you and Anson were bound to end up together is a testament to how obtuse men can be.” Marlowe shakes her head. “I just worry about him, but it isn’t fair to blame you for it. I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

“Well, I plan to talk to him. To apologize for inadvertently hurting him if I did. I still want Jasper as a friend if he’ll have me.”

“I think he’ll forgive and forget with a little time. Especially when he realizes how oblivious he’s been about Anson.” Marlowe reassures me with a small smile and a pat on the back of my hand.

“I’m just happy that the two of you finally let yourselves just see where things could go.” Hazel eyes me over the rim of her morning coffee.

“I’m scared I made a huge mistake doing that.”

“What do you mean?” Hazel’s smirk fades to worry.

“I thought we could just have some fun. A friends-with-benefits situation, you know? Clear boundaries and all of that. If anyone could manage boundaries and rules, it should have been Anson and me. We’ve been doing it for years.”

“Anson doesn’t have boundaries where you’re concerned.” Hazel sets her coffee down, and her brows knit together. “You have to know that.”

“I’ve always counted on him for them. He’s the responsible one, you know? The one who always keeps me accountable and asks the hard questions I don’t want to hear but need to. I follow his lead. Now, everything is blurred, and we’ve crossed so many lines we weren’t supposed to. I feel like I’ve made a mess of things.” I leave out the part where I also know that Anson’s morality is a lot grayer than I imagined. That he’s not the infallible human being I put on a pedestal all these years, but the more I think about it, the more I’m not so sure it’s the dealbreaker I thought it would be.

After all, it’s not his fault I held him to those impossible standards, and while he might not have a spotless conscience, which of us really does? There was plenty I was willing to overlook in Chris’s past. So many people I’ve given a pass over the years. At least Anson was doing things for selfless reasons.

Just this short span of us not talking, even when I’m still in his house, feels like a void I’ll never fill with anyone else. He’s the one I text little jokes to on my phone and who I call when I need help making a decision about dinner. Anson’s the person I want to share all the inane things about my day with and then hear all about his. That’s before we get to the way he makes me feel an endless supply of the kind of love and patience I’ve never received from anyone else.

I love him and can’t picture life without him. All I can think is how grateful I am that I have the kind of person in my life that would move mountains and men to be there for me when I need him the most.

“Maybe he’s tired of leading and wants someone to be at his side. Help make those decisions,” Hazel offers up. “You’ve been someone he can count on all these years too. Being there for him and Ford when they needed it. Maybe he sees you as someone he can trust to take the lead when he can’t.”

“What if I shouldn’t be trusted? I mean, I got us into this mess. I put him at risk with everything going on with Chris. Can you imagine if Ford lost him too, trying to get me out of there? I would never have forgiven myself.” My throat feels tight just speaking those words into existence. I couldn’t do anything about Ford losing my sister, but I’d be damned if he lost his dad too.

“You couldn’t have known about Chris. We all knew he was a little rough around the edges, but none of us would have thought he was capable of something like this.” Marlowe shakes her head and points her fork at me. “Don’t blame yourself for that.”

“Seriously. Take it from me.” Hazel gives me a pointed look because her own fiancé betrayed her in unimaginable ways. The same fiancé who Anson put six feet under somewhere.

“I feel like I’m getting to know a whole new version of Anson I didn’t know existed. It makes me feel like everything up to this point has been… not a lie exactly, but not the whole truth.” I glance at Hazel. I don’t know how much Marlowe knows or doesn’t know. She and I need to have that talk alone. But I know she’ll know what I mean.

“A lie of omission?” Marlowe supplies helpfully.

“Yeah, I guess.” I shrug.

I don’t really want to accuse Anson of lying. He kept it quiet to protect the people he loved and me. The less I knew, the better. But now I know, and I have to decide what I’m going to do with that information, if it means accepting that truth and the man behind it.

“Do you think you would have been ready to know that other version of him before now?” Marlowe asks.

I consider the question for a long minute, wondering if I hadn’t seen all the ways he’d been vulnerable with me in these last couple of months if I would have felt the same as I do now. I don’t think I would have appreciated the sacrifices he’s made nearly as much.

“No, probably not.”

“Then you trusted him to lead, and he did. He didn’t give you more than you could handle until you were ready.” Marlowe’s advice always hits hard.

“You’re not the same person you were a year ago either,” Hazel adds.

“Well, that’s true.”