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Because love is a weakness.
Love is a curse.
And I always lose the things I love.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ruthie
Conversation with Shane
Where are you?
Please don’t do this to her. She was counting on you to be back.
The only acceptable explanation is if your phone battery is dead, and you’re stuck in an elevator. Danny assures me that does happen.
The surgery starts in an hour, and we have to leave for the doctor’s office.
Shane’s not here.
I’m pissed, because I’m already worried about Izzy, and now I’m worried about him too. Was he in some kind of accident, or is he just making the wrong decision and doubling down on it like the all-or-nothing person he is? I have no way of knowing, but my gut tells me he’s still at that meeting. He’s there, and I’m here, waiting for him like a chump.
Maybe Tank was right all along.
This is a mistake, he’d said. He’s kept saying it too, like a song refrain no one wants to listen to.
I’m worried about you.
He’s going to take advantage of you.
He’s not trustworthy.
“Dad’s still not here,” Izzy says, peering out the front window. We’ve both been pacing the house like caged things, Flower tracking our footsteps with pacing of her own.
“What did you call him?” I ask, stopping in my tracks. After Shane told me about their conversation, I had a sit-down talk with her and told her it would be better to wait to call him that.
“I want to, Mom,” she tells me. “I’ve put a lot of thought into it. Shane treats me like a dad would.”
It’s what I’ve dared to hope for, but hearing her say that about him now, when he’s possibly choosing a job over us, might very well kill me.
I get down on my knees next to her. “Izz, he’s not your father or your uncle.”
She rolls her eyes like she’s suddenly morphed into a teenager. “I know that, Mom. That man with the crazy parents is my dad, but he doesn’t care about me. Shane does. I want him to be my dad.”
Tears press at my eyes, because goddammit. How dare Shane make her feel that way if he wasn’t sure…
“Okay, honey,” I tell her, because I won’t be the person to crush her, and especially not right now. “But we have to leave. We can’t be late.”
“But he said he’d be here,” she says, her gaze trained out the window. “He’s going to be here.”
I can feel her heart breaking. Or maybe it’s my own heart that’s breaking, because how many times have I let myself believe I’m more important to a man than I actually am? How many times have I peered out of a window, waiting for someone who will never come? Who never intended to come.
There was Rand of course, and Jarrod Travis. But they weren’t the first men to let me down. Maybe, in a fucked up way, Shane was the first. Because my parents never had enough of a hold on my heart to break it. But Shane did, asking Danny why his sister always had to hang around. Making me feel like I meant nothing to the boy who meant the world to me.
Why is my heart like this? Why does it only want what it can never have?
In my head, I can hear Shane telling my mother that he will destroy her if she so much as breathes wrong when it comes to Izzy and me. I can hear him calling me my wife. And I can see all those tidy little Amazon boxes lined up, filled with my wishes, and a jewelry box with a red ring…
