Page 114 of Ruin

Cliché as it is, it was after my senior prom that we had sex for the first time.

We’d been together for two years. We’d done pretty much everything but the act itself. I was ready. It was him that always held back.

He wanted to wait until I was eighteen. I was a few months shy of my eighteenth birthday. I didn’t want to wait. Most of my high school friends had lost their virginity at sixteen. I was dating the hottest guy in Coney Island…the world…and I was still a virgin.

Anyway, he took me to prom, and it was everything I could have hoped it would be. Then, after, Zeus surprised me with a room in a really nice hotel. He was making half-decent money from his fights by that point. It wasn’t long after that when he went to the Olympics and came back with gold, and his career took off.

The beginning of our end.

So, yeah, I had given him my body that night. He’d already had my heart.

I never did quite get it back the same.

I break eye contact and look out the passenger window of his car. He’s driving down a private road. A lake is on the right.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

He turns into a driveway, pulling to a stop outside a beautiful, big, old colonial-style house with a wraparound porch.

“We’re here,” he says, turning off the engine. He gets out of the car.

Confused, I follow him.

“Here, where?” I ask, shutting the car door.

He turns to face me. “Home.”

“This is yours?”

“Ours.”

“I’m sorry, what?” I step forward, closer, sure I must’ve heard him wrong.

“It’s ours. Yours, mine, and Gigi’s. I bought it.”

Then, he turns and walks up the porch steps. He unlocks the door.

My body kicks into action, and I follow him into the house. I step into a wide hallway. Staircase in front. Doors off to the sides.

I shut the door behind me and lean against it. “What do you mean, it’s mine, yours, and Gigi’s?”

“I bought it for us. I don’t really know how else to phrase it.”

I blankly stare at him. “You bought us a house.”

“You need to know I’m not going anywhere.” He spreads his arms out. “I’m not going anywhere, Dove. I bought this house because I want to be where you and Gigi are. And I’m hoping that, one day, you both will come to live here with me.”

I’m still staring at him. I think I’ve gone into shock. My heart is beating wildly. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“Believe it.”

“It’s too much.”

“No.” He steps close to me, wrapping his hands around my biceps. “It’s what needed to be done. This is me showing you that I’m not leaving. I tried telling you, and it didn’t work. So, all I’ve got left are actions. I’m here to stay. This house is ours. I want us to live here as a family. I want to put my daughter to bed every night and then climb into bed beside you.”

It sounds like everything I used to want. And that’s why I say, “I can’t move in with you.”

“Why not?”