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Still… “I wish I had never fallen in love with you. It would make my fear of doing so again so much less.”
His eyes crinkle at the corners, telling me that hurt him, but it’s true. It’s so very, very true. Love doesn’t make sense. If it did, we’d never continue to love people who hurt us or forgive them for it. There is a natural, physiological response to danger. A fight or flight response. A distress signal in your brain that activates a rush of adrenaline and sets you into motion.
You fight, or you flee.
Love doesn’t trigger the same response. Not even when it’s hurting us. Not even when it’s dangerous and we need to fight or flee for our very survival. It supersedes common sense by making us second-guess our baser gut reactions.
Love is a weapon. Whether it’s wielded by others or ourselves against us, it doesn’t matter. But when it cuts just right and makes you bleed just so, there is no sweeter weapon nor more exquisite pain than love, danger be damned.
Lenox’s eyes grow accusatory even as his knuckles gently graze up my cheek. “You still haven’t figured it out, have you?”
I gulp at his expression. “Figured what out?”
“You were everything to me, Georgia.” His voice floats over me like a whisper in the wind, but it slams into me with the force of a category-five hurricane. “I never wanted to love without you. I wanted you to love without me,” he rasps, his voice almost pleading. “You think I didn’t love you? I hurt with how I loved you. But I was already hurting too much. I had nothing to offer you. Two empty hands and a broken soul. I walked away because I had to. I let you go because I would have rather died than wrecked you along with me. And I’m tired of you not knowing it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’m not sure Georgia is breathing right now. I know I’m sure as hell not. But after the way this week started between us and having her subsequently shut me out again, I’m done. I’m just fucking done. There are moments in our lives when holding intricate pieces of ourselves back is wise, but this isn’t that time. I have spent the last six years rebuilding myself into a man who could one day go toe-to-toe with her and know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am fucking worthy of that footing.
I had to rebuild my mind, my life, my fucking karma, and my psyche. I had to not hate my reflection. I had to not blame myself for the death of my sister and the death of my father and the man he killed. Those aren’t overnight ventures. And bringing the woman who you consider to be your endgame—the love of your fucking life—along for that ride isn’t something you do. Love is letting go when you need to let go and hoping that their life turns out better without you in it.
That’s all I ever wanted for her.
And then she showed up at my house needing my help and now here we are, and I can’t do this anymore. I can’t pretend like it hasn’t always been her. I can’t pretend like every decision I’ve made since I left her six years ago hasn’t been made with her at the forefront of my mind.
“You told me?—”
“I know what I told you. I lied.”
“Why?”
I sigh plaintively. “I blamed myself for Suzie’s death. And then I didn’t do anything to stop my father’s downward spiral because I was too deep in my own. I watched as he killed a man and then killed himself, and I was disappointed that he hadn’t killed me instead. I walked around with that for two years. I couldn’t shake it. I didn’t even try to. I earned that misery, reveled in its suffering, but you… you were light and air, and you made me want.”
“Want what?” she whispers, her voice tremulous and unsure.
“Life. You made me want to live again, Georgia. When you told me you loved me, it was as if your words shocked me out of myself. You made me want more for the first time in two years. But I was too broken, too messed up for it, and I wasn’t ready. I had treated you so poorly, and I didn’t deserve your heart or your love. I had to earn it. I knew that, but I fucking wanted it so badly. So I came clean to Zax, and I left Boston. About a week later, I was in a diner in Maine, and I heard a man who owned a bunch of real estate talking with another man about how a small town was going into mass foreclosure and the townspeople didn’t know what to do. So I bought the town, and I fixed it up so that the people who lived here and owned businesses could still do that without worry. Then I built your dream home because you were my fucking dream too, and even though I knew I’d never have you again, I wanted to give you that. All I wanted was to be a man who could be worthy of you. But when I left you, I wasn’t him yet. Not even close, and I couldn’t do that to you.”
“Because you didn’t feel you deserved me?”
My eyes flash. “I didn’t.”
“So you’ve spent the last six years working to become that man. For me.”
“Yes,” I say simply because it’s true. I did it for me—all of it—because I wanted to be a better man, a better human, someone I could respect, but it was always with her in mind.
“And now?”
“Now I fucking deserve you.” I cup the back of her head and press our foreheads together. “I can’t breathe when I’m not near you. You have my heart, Georgia. I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. I will always be yours. You are my favorite everything, and I can’t live without you anymore. But more than that, you’re my wife, and I have no plans to ever let you change that.”
I hold up my left hand, at the band that’s there covering the rose tattoo.
“You are this rose. And you are forever.”
Her eyes pinch shut, and her body trembles against mine.
I press my lips to hers, holding her so close. “Don’t be afraid to fall in love with me. I swear, I’ll never hurt you again.” My hands glide up and down her face, touching her skin. “God, Georgia, I love you so fucking much. There is madness in how much I love you. You are all I think about, day and night. There is nothing in my life more important to me than you.”
I kiss her quivering lips and wrap her up in my arms.
