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I swallow the lump in my throat. “Yes.”
“Don’t be worried, baby. It’s going to be okay,” Knox says with a self-assurance that I can’t help but find comforting.
We sit on the couch side-by-side. Our bodies touch, goosebumps breaking out over my body for a different reason. My body knows he’s close and I can’t help but react to him. Trying to focus on why were here, I scoot a little bit away and grin.
“What did you want to talk about?”
Knox takes my hands in his and lifts one to put a kiss on my knuckle. “Thank you for telling me everything today. I think I understand more of what happened back then. I wish that everything had happened differently, but wishing to change the past isn’t going to do anything. I want to focus on the future. I want to focus on you and me.”
“I do, too,” smiling, I answer back. I’m cautious, but the more he reassures me that everything is okay the better I feel about the future.
“I know that I’ll have to make sure you understand just how important you are to me and how necessary you are to my happiness. If I had done that when we were young, maybe things would’ve turned out differently.”
There’s a red flag going off in my head. There’s something about him feeling like he could have done things differently back then feels wrong. When I look back, objectively, nothing could have changed how we ended. I don’t need him to prove anything to me. I don’t know how to make him understand that and I still don’t understand how we can go from then to now myself.
Instead of figuring this out, I do what I always do. Run away from the hard part. “Can we go to dinner now?” I ask.
Knox’s eyes widen and he fumbles over his words as he agrees to leaving for dinner. There’s tension in the air as we leave my house and I can feel that he wants to say something more, but he doesn’t.
It’s an understatement to say that dinner is uncomfortable. Our conversation is stilted, and we leave as soon as the check is brought. Neither of us enjoyed ourselves. Someone watching could have mistaken us for a couple on a blind date that was not going well instead of two people with insane chemistry that want a relationship with each other with their whole hearts.
How does this keep going so very wrong?
As we stand at the door, Knox asks to come inside and talk more. It’s the very last thing I want to do. Tonight started out with such promise and now everything is just wrong. He keeps insisting everything in the past was his fault and that I need to forgive him. This rewriting of history doesn’t make sense and I can’t help but wonder why he’s pushing this narrative so hard.
Does it make what happened more palatable to him? Is this the way he moves past it? I’ve tried not to rock the boat all night, my guilt keeping me quiet, but I’m done.
“Knox, this is ridiculous. Unless you are willing to take a real look at what happened in the past and let me accept responsibility for my actions this isn’t going to work. It wasn’t something you did. I was immature. I was insecure, jealous, stubborn. It was my fault.”
“I know,” he says softly.
“You know?”
“Yes, I know. I was trying to take responsibly, because when I look back we are both to blame. But I went too far.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I don’t know why this keeps going wrong between us.”
I open my front door and walk in. Knox follows me, his steps slow, and sits in the arm chair across from the couch. Maybe this will be a true conversation between us.
“I was hurt, Scarlett. I’m still hurt.” His eyes cut to mine and I nod for him to continue. “I was depressed after you left. My parents were worried about me, wanted me to see a doctor, and I almost lost my scholarship. I didn’t want to keep going without you.”
I wouldn’t let my parent’s give me news from town. I never heard how Knox took my leaving. My heart hurts for the boy that he was and pride swells at how he’s become the man I’m getting to know. These conflicting emotions are just another rise and fall on this emotional rollercoaster that I don’t think I can last on much longer. My hands shake and my whole body wavers unsteady when flooded with thoughts of those first days without Knox.
“I’m so sorry, Knox.”
“I know, Scarlett. I don’t fault you for leaving.” Knox stands and begins pacing back and forth across my living room floor. “After you left, and I broke down it took a while for me to get my shit together. I had to realize that I was hurting the people around me, people that I love, and I had to find out why I was doing that. My reaction showed that our relationship probably wasn’t the healthiest. That’s why I’ve been trying to take the blame. Underneath the reasons you’ve explained so far, I wonder if you left because you realized that it wasn’t healthy to be obsessed at the level I was.”
This is the part of the past that I never wanted to talk about and the part I’m the most frightened will be what destroys us again. After I started working for Archer, I went through therapy to address these things and tried to move on. I naively thought that if I addressed all my feelings about Knox, I could find someone else to love.
“It was something that was pointed out by more than one person to me. Never in a negative way, but our relationship started to feel a little constrictive. You were planning our whole life, and I was just along for the ride. I loved you so much, but I didn’t want to live my life that way. When I thought there was a baby, is when I made up my mind.”
“I’m not that man anymore. After you left I started going to therapy because of my depression, but it helped me in a lot of different ways. I still go even now. With the stress of my job and my tendency to hyperfocus it helps to have someone to talk to that is a neutral party.” Knox stops his pacing and sits on the edge of the coffee table in front of me, he leans forward with his elbows on his knees. His legs bounce, giving away his nervousness.
“Do you think you can forgive me for my part in this?”
Standing, I lean into his body, a shiver running down my spine. He pulls me close and I wrap my arms around his neck as his arms wrap around my waist. Being in his arms feels like home. The one place I’m meant to be more than any other place in the world. I wish I could feel like this all the time.
“Do you think you can forgive me for leaving?”
An adorable smile spreads across his face, reflecting love and joy, “Baby, I already do.”
