Page 103 of Falling Back to You

“Why are you doing this? You’re always finding an excuse to run, to push me away, to deny yourself happiness.”

“Shit just can’t be water under the bridge, not after suggesting my child would be better off without me.” God, the memory still burned. The way he’d handed our daughter to someone else because he didn’t trust me. But what he never understood was that I was terrified of myself too. I was abandoned at the exact moment I needed him the most, like he’d stepped back and let the world swallow me whole. Even now the resentment coiled tight in my chest, because he never saw the difference between my failing as a mother and my fighting an illness that was eating me alive.

“You left our daughter alone, Dial. She couldn’t take care of herself, and you left her.”

“I kept saying something isn’t right, but you wouldn’t listen to me. You, my mother, everyone wanted to wave away my depression.”

“Momma said it was the baby blues and that in time it would pass. I didn’t know.”

“Fuck you and your momma.”

Oz threw his arms in the air. “If you need for me to be the bad guy, I’ll accept the title.”

“What I needed was for you to be there for me.”

“I was right beside you, every fucking day. Do you have any idea what it felt like leaving for work each morning not knowing…”

Betrayal strangled my tone. “I would never hurt Maple. How could you think that?” I pushed away fresh tears.

“Sometimes I think you forget how bad it was.”

I hated that he saw pieces of it and thought it meant I didn’t love him enough to stay. My hands trembled because I wanted him to understand, really understand, that I wasn’t breaking away from him—I was breaking in two. I still wasn’t perfect, was still not steady every day, was still learning how to breathe through the dips.

Tears flowed down my cheeks. “I’m fully aware how fucked everything became. The way you looked at me like a stranger. And how you pushed me out of my baby’s life. Her first words, her first steps—I can’t get that shit back.”

“You slit your wrist, Dial.”

“That was an accident… It was an accident.”

My rib cage tightened and a quiver overtook my stomach. Fresh tears hit before the anger finished rising, blurring everything until I couldn’t tell if I was furious or just heartbreakingly tired. It all came back too fast, the hollow days, the restlessness and the belief that if I could just silence the world for a bit, I’d be able to right my footing. I wasn’t trying to die; I was trying to survive something I didn’t have the words for. But he’d seen me as a danger, and the hurt of that still stuck to my bones, impossible to forget.

“I tried, but you didn’t care, about Maple, about me, about our family. You destroyed it. You destroyed us.” Ozzie’s voice was tight, stretched thin like he was trying to hold back everything rumbling underneath. It was that fragile, broken-glass kinda strain, the sound of someone trying to stay composed while their chest was full of tears they hadn’t let fall yet. I’d asked for the truth, and here it was. He hated me, but not as much as I hated myself.

“You can’t… put that all on me.” It was all my fault, and I knew it. I just didn’t think he’d ever really admit it. That first year and everything that happened after still lived in me, like a bruise that had never faded.

Ozzie’s tone shifted. The edge was gone, replaced by empathy. “Dial—”

“No!” I fished my keys out of my pocket. “I don’t need anyone feeling sorry for me. I’ll have Edison drop Maple off tomorrow.”

I climbed into my Jeep while Ozzie shouted after me, “You just can’t run away every time shit gets hard.”

I wanted to slam on the brakes, hop out, and cuss him the fuck out. I’m not running away, you stupid son of a bitch—this is me retreating to protect myself. Because I can’t stomach the way you’re looking at me with a mixture of pity and regret. And I hate that it never once dawned on me that you were hurting too. That I couldn’t see past my own pain to recognize your own.

Instead, I just drove away. There was a reason we never talked about the past. A reason we’d split apart. Some wounds just never healed right. Some things could never be the same.

20

Ozzie

If failure were a person, it would be wearing my face. What happened last night was due to my shortcomings. Getting to the point and hashing things out was not my specialty. I didn’t like words going unsaid or biting my tongue, but I hated hurting the people I loved, preferring instead to conceal my emotions or deny myself comfort in an attempt to accommodate others. Yes, I was fine with being the undercover side piece. You want me to pick up stakes and move almost a thousand miles away? You bet.

After my morning chores, I left Maple with my mom and drove over to Dial’s. When she’d left she was in tears, and I was on the verge. I’d thought we could just wipe the slate clean and start fresh, but I was wrong. Every choice we made, every argument, was predicated on the past and my unwillingness to deal with it.

Last night she’d done a hard thing: she called me out. She said I wasn’t listening to her, that I never had. That stung because I saw it differently, had thought that I was paying attention, but maybe I’d just been waiting to interject. Over the years Dial had said some not-so-kind stuff about herself, and when she did I immediately shut her down by telling her she was being silly, reminding her she was amazing and that none of her negative sentiment was true.

I was good at letting shit roll off my back. The verbal abuse from my father, my waning friendship with Cyrus, and the devastation of losing Dial. She thought I wanted the fairytale, and parts of me did, believing if we could just get our acts together, everything else would fall into place. Even more surprising was the realization that I was holding on to shit, despite claims I’d moved on. I was mad at her and how quickly our relationship had changed. At the time, I didn’t understand why Maple and I weren’t enough. The birth of our daughter should’ve been the happiest time of our lives, but I looked back at that first year with so much anger. We’d left things unsaid, and I wasn’t going to allow the hurt and frustration to fester, which was why I was standing on her Did You Call First? doormat, because I was here to listen. Dial deserved the best of me, and I was willing to put in the work to deliver.

Taking the deepest of breaths, I rang the bell and readied myself for this difficult conversation. How did you apologize for years of hurt? How did you express that you were prepared to meet someone where they were and not where you hoped they’d be? She also needed to know about the decisions I’d made—the hospital and custody of Maple were me just trying to stop us from hemorrhaging.