“How long are you planning to ignore her?”
Something pulls tight in my chest, a reflex I don't choose, my jaw clenching hard enough I feel it in my temples. I don't have an answer that doesn't sound like anexcuse, and I'm tired of the sound of my own excuses, so I just stand there and let the silence answer for me instead.
"You know what's funny," he says, conversational, like we're discussing the weather, "is that I've watched you walk into rooms full of armed men without blinking. Watched you take a bullet in the shoulder and keep moving like it was a paper cut. And the one thing—theonething—that's got you standing at a window like a fucking ghost is a woman who makes terrible cupcakes and cries when the bread doesn't rise."
"That's not what this is."
"No?" He tilts his head. "Then what is it?"
I don't say anything.
"Because from where I'm sitting," Ian continues, "it looks an awful lot like a man who survived something unsurvivable and decided the smartest move now is to make sure nobody who loves him has to actually look at it."
"I can barely fucking look at it. How can I expect her to?”
“You don’t have to expect anything. You just need to get out of your own goddamn head for a while and realize you've got a woman neck deep in this shit along with you, and I don't think she deserves getting doors slammed in her face."
I straighten. "I'm not trying to hurt her."
"I know that. She knows that, too, probably. But intent and impact are different animals, my friend. You can love someone with your whole rotten, busted heart and still leave them standing in a hallway feeling like garbage."
I finally turn from the window. Look at him. "What do you want me to do, Ian?"
"I want you to stop deciding for her." He sets his mugdown, all the humor gone now, just the two of us and the thing underneath it. "She's not asking for you to magically forget whatever the fuck happened down there. She’s not asking the whole truth wrapped in a pretty fucking pink bow. She's asking you to stop disappearing on her every time it gets hard. That's it. That's the whole ask."
"I don't trust myself around her."
"Then tell her that." He stands. "That's a sentence, Reth. Give her that one goddamn sentence. At least, maybe she’ll understand. But right now, all she’s got is you shutting her out, not knowing why, and I’m betting she’s looking at herself for answers, wondering if it’s her.”
“It’s not her,” I say, roughing a hand through my hair. “It’s never her. She’s the only thing—” the words get lodged in my throat, and I rub a hand across the back of my neck. “She’s the only thing that got me through it. Until…” I can’t even fucking say it out loud.
“Until what?”
Until I cut her open and watched her die.
The words sit behind my teeth and won't come out as anything more than a sound—broken, wordless, my hand pressing hard against my sternum like I can keep the rest of it locked in by force.
Ian doesn't move. Doesn't fill the silence the way he usually does. He just stands there and waits, and the waiting is somehow worse than if he'd pushed.
I inhale deep, forcing the image of her in that cell out of my head. If I let it sit too long, the craving spikes, like my fucking nervous system remembers it’s the only thing that can take it away.
“I don’t want to hurt her,” I manage to say, and it’s the realest fucking thing I’ve said since I got back.
“I know.” Ian leans back against the wall. “The problem is she wants to help you. You don’t want her to. And that helplessness is not working out great for her cooking skills.”
“I know her,” I start. “She has this…this deeply rooted need to fix things. And I can’t be fixed.”
"See, that's where you're wrong, idiot. She doesn't want to fix you. She just wants to help you keep the pieces together. That's it, man."
I glance down at the floor, to the side, at the goddamn ceiling. "She deserves better than my pieces."
"On that, we can agree." He nods, smug look on his face. "Unfortunately, she seems to like your pieces a lot, broken as they are. Don't ask me why. I've stopped trying to make sense of her taste in men."
"Helpful."
"I try." He pushes off from where he's been leaning, crosses toward the door, then stops himself, like there's one more thing he hasn't finished saying. “I’ve known you a long time, Reth. And the woman whose been fucking sleeping outside your door every night is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Fuck it up, and you and I’ll have a problem.”
“You care for her,” I say as he reaches for the doorknob.
