Ugly Love

“Tate’s at the door,” I hear Ian say. I inspect every word, every syllable, searching for a clue wherever I can find one. I want to know if he rolled his eyes when he said that or if he said it hopefully. If anyone knows how Miles would feel about me standing in his doorway, it would be Ian. Unfortunately, Ian’s voice gives no indication of what Miles may feel about my presence.

I hear footsteps. I dissect the sound of the footsteps as they close in on the living room. Are they hurried footsteps? Are they hesitant? Are they angry?

When he reaches the door, my eyes fall to his feet first.

I get nothing from them. No clues that will help me find the confidence I so desperately need in this moment.

I can already tell my words will come out raspy and weak, but I force them up anyway. “I’m leaving,” I say, still staring down at his feet. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

There’s no immediate reaction from him, physically or verbally. My eyes finally make the brave journey up to his. When I see the stoic look on his face, I want to step back, but I’m afraid I’ll trip over my heart.

I don’t want him to watch me fall.

My regret over making the choice to knock consumes me with the brevity in his response.

“Goodbye, Tate.”

Chapter thirty-six

MILES

Present day

Her eyes finally find the courage to meet mine, but I try not to see her. When I really look at her, it’s too much. Every time I’m with her, her eyes and her mouth and her voice and her smile find every vulnerable spot on me to breach. To seize. To conquer. Every time I’m around her, I have to fight it, so I try not to see her with anything other than my eyes this time.

She says she’s here to say goodbye, but that’s not why she’s here, and she knows it. She’s here because she fell in love with me, even though I told her not to. She’s here because she still has hope that I can love her back.

I want to, Tate. I want to love you so much it fucking hurts.

I don’t even recognize my own voice when I tell her goodbye. The lack of emotion behind my words could be misconstrued as hateful. A far cry from the apathy I’m attempting to convey and an even farther cry from the urge I have to beg her not to go.

She immediately looks down at her feet. I can tell my response just killed her, but I’ve given her enough false hope. Every time I ever allowed her in, it hurts her that much more when I have to push her away.

But it’s hard to feel bad for her, because as much as she’s hurting, she doesn’t know pain. She doesn’t know it like I know it. I keep pain alive. I keep it in business. I keep it thriving with as much as I experience it.

She inhales and then looks back up at me with slightly redder, glossier eyes. “You deserve so much more than what you’re allowing yourself to have.” She stands on the tips of her toes and places her hands on my shoulders, then presses her lips to my cheek. “Goodbye, Miles.”

She turns and walks toward the elevator, just as Corbin steps out to meet her. I see her lift one of her hands to wipe away her tears.

I watch her walk away.

I shut my door, expecting to feel even the slightest ripple of relief over the fact that I was able to let her walk away. Instead, I’m met with the only familiar sensation my heart is capable of feeling: pain.

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” Ian says from behind me. I turn around, and he’s sitting on the arm of the couch, staring at me. “Why are you not going after her right now?”

Because, Ian, I hate this feeling. I hate every feeling she evokes in me, because it fills me with all the things I’ve spent the last six years avoiding.

“Why would I do that?” I ask as I head toward my room. I pause with the knock at my front door. I expel a frustrated breath before turning back to the door, not wanting to have to turn her away for a second time. I will, though. Even if I have to lay it out in terms that will hurt her even more, she needs to accept the fact that it’s over. I let it go too far. Hell, I never should have allowed it to even begin, with us knowing it would more than likely end this way.

I open the door but find Corbin in my line of sight rather than Tate. I want to feel relieved by the fact that it’s him standing here rather than her, but the fuming look on his face makes it impossible to feel relieved.

Before I can react, his fist connects with my mouth, and I stumble backward toward the couch. Ian breaks my fall, and I steady myself before turning to face the door again.

“What the hell, Corbin?” Ian yells. He’s holding me back, assuming I want retaliation.

I don’t. I deserved that.

Corbin trades looks between the two of us, finally settling on me. He pulls his fist up to his chest and rubs it with his other hand. “We all know I should have done that a long time ago.” He grips the doorknob and pulls the door shut, disappearing back out into the hallway.

I shrug out of Ian’s grasp and bring my hand up to my lip. I pull my fingers back, and they’re tinged with blood.

“How about now?” Ian says, hopeful. “You gonna go after her now?”

I glare at him before turning to stalk off to my bedroom.

Ian laughs loudly. It’s the kind of laugh that says, You’re a goddamn idiot. Only he already said that, so he’s kind of just repeating himself.

He follows me to my bedroom.

I’m really not in the mood for this conversation. Good thing I know how to look at people without actually seeing them.

I take a seat on my bed, and he walks into my room and leans against the door. “I’m tired of this, Miles. Six fucking years I’ve watched this zombie walk around in your place.”

“I’m not a zombie,” I say flatly. “Zombies can’t fly.”

Ian rolls his eyes, obviously not in the mood for jokes. Good thing, because I’m not really in the mood to make them.

He continues to glare at me, so I pick up my phone and lie back on the bed in order to pretend he isn’t here.

“She’s the first thing to breathe life back into you since the night you drowned in that fucking lake.”

I’ll hurt him. If he doesn’t leave right this second, I’ll fucking hurt him.

“Get out.”

“No.”

I look at him. I see him. “Get the hell out, Ian.”

He walks to my desk, pulls out the chair, and sits in it. “Fuck you, Miles,” he says. “I’m not finished.”

“Get out!”

“No!”

I stop fighting him. I get up and walk out myself.

He follows me. “Let me ask you one question,” he says, trailing me into the living room.

“And then you’ll get out?”

He nods. “And then I’ll get out.”

“Fine.”

He regards me silently for a few moments.

I patiently wait for his question so he can leave before I hurt him.

“What if someone told you they could erase that entire night from your memory, but in doing so, they also have to erase every single good thing. All the moments with Rachel. Every word, every kiss, every I love you. Every moment you had with your son, no matter how brief. The first moment you saw Rachel holding him. The first moment you held him. The first time you heard him cry or watched him sleep. All of it. Gone. Forever. If someone told you they could get rid of the ugly stuff, but you’d lose all the other stuff, too … would you do it?”

He thinks he’s asking me something I’ve never asked myself before. Does he think I don’t sit and wonder about this stuff every fucking day of my life?

“You didn’t say I had to answer your question. You just asked if you could ask it. You can leave now.”

I’m the worst kind of person.

“You can’t answer it,” he says. “You can’t say yes.”

“I also can’t say no,” I tell him. “Congratulations, Ian. You stumped me. Goodbye.”

I begin to walk back to my room, but he says my name again. I stop and put my hands on my hips and drop my head. Why won’t he stop with it, already? It’s been six damn years. He should know that night made me who I am now. He should know I’m not changing.

“If I would have asked you that a few months ago, you would have said yes before the question even left my mouth,” he says. “Your answer has always been yes. You would have given up anything to not have to relive that night.”

I turn around, and he’s heading toward the door. He opens it, then pauses and faces me again. “If being with Tate for a few short months can make that pain bearable enough for you to answer with maybe, imagine what a lifetime with her could do for you.”

He closes the door.

I close my eyes.

Something happens. Something inside me. It’s as if his words have created an avalanche out of the glacier surrounding my heart. I feel chunks of hardened ice break off and fall next to all the other pieces that have detached since the moment I met Tate.

I step off the elevator and walk over to the empty chair next to Cap. He doesn’t even acknowledge my presence with eye contact. He’s staring across the lobby toward the exit.

“You just let her go,” he says, not even attempting to hide the disappointment in his voice.

I don’t respond.

He pushes on the arms of his chair with his hands, repositioning himself. “Some people … they grow wiser as they grow older. Unfortunately, most people just grow older.” He turns to face me. “You’re one of the ones just been growing older, because you are as stupid as you were the day you were born.”

Cap knows me well enough to know this is what had to happen. He’s known me all my life; having worked maintenance on my father’s apartment buildings since before I was born. Before that, he worked for my grandfather doing the same thing. This pretty much guarantees he knows more about me and my family than even I do. “It had to happen, Cap,” I say, excusing the fact that I let the only girl who has been able to reach me in more than six years just walk away.

“Had to happen, huh?” he grumbles.

As long as I’ve known him and as many nights as I’ve spent down here talking to him, he’s never once given me an opinion about the decisions I’ve made for myself. He knows the life I chose after Rachel. He spouts off tidbits of wisdom here and there but never his opinion. He’s listened to me vent about the situation with Tate for months, and he always sits quietly, patiently hearing me out, never giving me advice. That’s what I like about him.

I feel that’s all about to change.

“Before you give me a lecture, Cap,” I say, interrupting him before he has the chance to continue. “You know she’s better off.” I turn and face him. “You know she is.”

Cap chuckles, nodding his head. “That’s for damn sure.”

I look at him disbelievingly. Did he just agree with me?

“Are you saying I made the right choice?”

He’s quiet for a second before blowing out a quick breath. His expression contorts as if his thoughts aren’t something he necessarily wants to share. He relaxes into his chair and folds his arms loosely over his chest. “I told myself to never get involved in your problems, boy, because in order for a man to give advice, he’d better know what the hell he’s talkin’ about. And Lord knows in all my eighty years, I ain’t never been through nothing like what you went through. I don’t know the first thing about what that was like or what that did to you. Just thinking ’bout that night makes my gut hurt, so I know you feel it in your gut, too. And your heart. And your bones. And your soul.”

I close my eyes, wishing I could close my ears instead. I don’t want to hear this.

“None of the people in your life knows what it feels like to be you. Not me. Not your father. Not those friends of yours. Not even Tate. There’s only one person who feels what you feel. Only one person who hurts like you hurt. Only one other parent to that baby boy who misses him the same way you do.”

My eyes are closed tightly now, and I’m doing all I can to respect his end of the conversation, but it’s taking all I have not to get up and walk away. He has no right bringing Rachel into this conversation.

“Miles,” he says quietly. There’s determination in his voice, like he needs me to take him seriously. I always do. “You believe you took away that girl’s chance at happiness, and until you confront that past, you won’t ever move forward. You’re gonna be reliving that day every single day until the day you die, unless you go see for your own eyes that she’s okay. Then maybe you’ll see that it’s okay for you to be happy, too.”

I lean forward and run my hands over my face, then rest my elbows on my knees and look down. I watch as a single tear falls from my eye and drops to the floor beneath my feet. “And what happens if she’s not okay?” I whisper.