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“Do you hear me? You arenotMichael.”
“So everyone keeps saying, but what if I end up like him, Grandma? Addiction can be genetic. I almost fell down that hole in university until I recognised I was drinking too much and—”
“You recognised it,” Grandma said, staring at me firmly. “You recognised it, and you changed your behaviour to stop it. That’s commendable.”
“What if I do end up like him? I don’t…” I drew in a deep breath. “I don’t want to do anything that would hurt Ellie. Or me. Or you.”
She looked down at her lap for a moment, and her shoulders rose and fell with a deep breath that I heard. She raised her gaze once more and met mine. “You are not Michael,” she said again. “He couldn’t change. He didn’twantto change, darling. Not for your mother, not for you, not for me, and not for himself. He had every resource available to him, the best resources in the country, and he failed every time because hewantedto.”
I swallowed, trying to ignore the churning in my stomach. Nerves rolled through me, and I felt sick at her words. She’d lived through some horrible things, and my memory of my childhood years wasn’t as clear as hers would be.
“You? You have a beer once a week when you go to see Penny. You have a glass of champagne at a gala or a function or a dinner. You share a sherry with me at Christmas and a bottle of wine on one of our birthdays. Otherwise, you don’t drink. You drink far less than the average person, and I cannot remember a single time since you were twenty that I’ve seen you have more than two drinks in one night.”
That was true.
“You enjoy it because you rarely have it. It’s like cake. I enjoy a good chocolate cake a lot more if I haven’t had it for a month.”
“It’s hardly the same.”
“It is the same, Max. The principle is exactly the same.” Grandma held out her hands. “You’re able to recognise unwanted and toxic behaviour and adjust yourself accordingly. You know where your limit is and don’t ever push it. You have full control of yourself, and you don’t apologise for it, either.”
But I didn’t.
I didn’t have full control of myself.
“I don’t!” I pushed off the sofa and turned away from her, running my fingers through my hair. “I don’t have control of myself, Grandma. If I did, I would never have…”
Silence.
“Fallen in love with Ellie?” she offered gently, without an ounce of judgement.
“I’m not admitting to it.”Yes. Completely and utterly.
“You don’t have to,” she continued, her voice soft. “I can see it. The mistake you’ve made is assuming that you have any control over your heart, my darling. You can control your brain and distract it and divert it and all those other wonderful things one does when they’re desperately trying to avoid something, but you can’t do that with your heart. Your heart decided that Ellie is the part of you that you didn’t know you needed, and you’re going to have to deal with that.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “I can’t. I can’t risk hurting her.”
“And you think letting her go back to London without any acknowledgment of your feelings is not hurting her? The last time we spoke she wasn’t too far off the end of her book. She’s here for, what? Another week or so? Then she’s going to go back to London, and you’ll have lost your chance.”
“She’s better off if she doesn’t know the truth.”
“Is she? Have you askedherwhat she thinks about that? Or are you assuming it because you’re too fucking scared to tell her how you feel?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
MAX
Self-Care
Ijerked around to look at her.
She stood up, using her walking stick to steady her, and wiggled a finger at me. “Michael was a coward. He was a spineless, weak man who cared for nothing and nobody but himself and what he found in the bottom of a liquor bottle.”
“Grandma—”
“I love him, Max. He was my son. My baby.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Just as he was your father, but I hate him for what he’s done to you. I hate him for all the bad decisions he made that he left me to clean up. I hate him for making me have to tell you the truth about how your mum truly died. I hate him for killing her with some misguided thought process that killed him, too, because she didn’t deserve that, and neither did you.”
The lump in my throat was overwhelmingly uncomfortable, and it took everything in me not to let emotion overtake me.
