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He drops his head and shakes it. “Sometimes I wonder…sometimes I wonder if I gave up on you too easily. If I let go too fast. If I should have fought harder for us.”
“Fighting for us would have been pointless. Fighting harder wouldn’t have changed the outcome. Life was pulling us in opposite directions. Can’t you see that?”
“That makes no sense,” he argues weakly.
I go on. “You’re born to be great. A natural born leader. You’d be the best mayor Honey Hill has ever known…But you can’t do that with me as your wife.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I am who I am. My mess follows me everywhere I go. No matter what I do. No matter who I try to become. It’s just…in me. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize that.”
They say that behind every great man, there’s a great woman. Well, Davis is undoubtedly a great man. He needs a woman who’s an asset. Not a liability like me.
I mean, how many times did Davis break the rules for me? How many times did he look the other way on my family and their transgressions? Eventually, that shit was bound to catch up to him. Especially as an officer of the law, for crying out loud.
He tugs on his hair. “It’s insane to hear you talk about yourself like that. How can you not see it, Alana? The man I am today, I owe it to you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“When my parents divorced and my mom moved my siblings and me to Honey Hill, I was a lost and confused kid.Youkept me on track.Youencouraged me.Youpoured your love into me. Your faith in me built me up to be who I am today.”
“All your beautiful qualities were already inside of you,” I argue weakly. “They would have come out with or without me because it’s just who you are.”
“What about who you are?” he counters. “Alana, you’re a fucking doctor. You clawed your way into med school. On scholarships. Graduated early. Saved up to become part owner of the animal clinic in town. Overachiever as fuck. You fought for the life you have. Absolutely nothing was handed to you. Everything you do inspires me. Do you know how proud I am of you?!”
He’s…proud of me?
My lungs wobble and a lump forms in my throat. “Davis…you don’t have to say those things.”
“Seriously. I don’t care that you don’t want to hear it. I’ll say it any way—you are so fucking underrated, Princess. I’m your biggest fan. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”
“I have so much bullshit in my past…” I admit to Davis, my voice shaky and low. “Things I did to protect my siblings. Even my mom.”
He lifts my chin and looks into my eyes, making me fall headfirst into his glittering silver-gray pools of hurt. “But who was protecting you?”
I guess that’s the question, huh?
It’s not fair. I know. But that’s life.
Based on all the pop psychology books I’ve read over the years, I’m sure that any certified professional out there would be quick to slap a label—or two or three—on the strange dynamic of my relationship with my family. But fuck the labels. It may be majorly screwed up but this is the only family dynamic I’ve ever known.
“I really am sorry, Davis,” I begin. “You’re right. I wasn’t very good about explaining myself and making you understand that our divorce was never your fault. You were everything a woman could ever want in a husband. And one day, you’re going to make some lucky woman so happy—”
“Cut the patronizing bullshit, Alana!” he roars, drawing eyes from the crowd around us.
But I’m persistent. “You will never become the man you’re meant to be if you have me and my baggage weighing you down.”
“Well, how about you drop the fucking baggage?” He snaps. “How about that? Because fuck ‘the man I’m meant to be’. Without you by my side, I’m not a man at all. I’m this…this shell…this thing I don’t even recognize.”
Shit.
There it is. The unspoken ultimatum. The reminder that I don’t get to have my cake and eat it, too. No cake for me.
I’ve always known that he was thinking it in his head. But hearing him say it out loud, physically hurts.
Davis knows what my family went through the year before he met me. I’d never expect him to understand what it felt like, but he knows the cold hard facts.
He knows that my mother served jail time when I was fifteen. It wasn’t a long sentence, only a few months. For shoplifting and disorderly conduct. But they were the longest and most agonizing months of my life.
