AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Fuck.
Running my hand over her shin, I need her to know that I’m here how she needs me. She continues, “At first, I stayed to help my dad, but he said I was meant to fly. It was all set. I was going to move to New York with my sister, but Cole didn’t like that idea and always knew just the right way to terrorize me. He threatened to set fire to the fields, and then to me, to ruin me for all others.”
Guilt consumes me, and I drop my head into my hands. The pads of my palms dig into my eyes before standing and walking to the window. I hate these damn blinds. They’re useless, making me want to rip them from the frame. I don’t but yank the cord instead, the metal slats slamming together.
“Jason! What are you doing?”
I open the glass and climb out, my muscle memory driving me through from all the times I came and went through this window. Pacing the roof above the porch, I don’t know how to make this right. I don’t know how she can even allow me back into her life. When she needed me most, I didn’t protect her. I’ve proven I can’t.
How can she bear to look at me?
How can she act like she forgives me?
My feet stop, and I look back at the window as she climbs out. Standing there, she says, “Why are you upset?”
Sitting down near the corner where the trellis hangs, I look over the property, too ashamed to look at her. “I’ll never fucking forgive myself for letting him put his hands on you.”
“Is that what you think?” I glance at her when she comes closer and sits, keeping a foot or so between us. “You think you let any of that happen?”
“I didn’t stop it—”
“You couldn’t stop it.” She reaches over, stretching across the distance that seems wider than the visible space. “Don’t go blaming yourself for something you had nothing to do with and no control over.”
“I loved you.”
“And I loved you,” she replies easily. “But it wasn’t love keeping us apart. It wasn’t you transferring either. It wasn’t a lack of want on my part. I wanted you. Mostly, I needed you. You meant so much to me that I struggled to live life without you in it.”
“But you stayed with him. Why?”
“Like you, I didn’t feel I had much choice in the matter. I tried to leave once. He dragged me from the truck before I could stick the key in the ignition. It didn’t matter how hard I fought, his hands tightened around my neck, forcing me to the lake.” She stops talking. I’m so tempted to fill in the space. I want to take away her pain, to tell her it’s okay, but I can’t. I have to let her work through this now. “We stood on the dock. While I gasped for air, he looked into my eyes and told me he would drown me before he let me leave him. He would kill me before I embarrassed him in front of the whole town like that.”
I don’t think she realizes her hands are on her neck, rubbing lightly as if she’s soothing her throat.
“He knew,” I say.
“Knew what?”
“He knew I was going to ask you to marry me.”
A scoff-sob escapes her as she looks at her lap, her chest denting in momentarily. When she turns her eyes toward the sky, I can see how they shine, a layer of tears ready to fall. “Of course, he did. Cole had his eyes set on the prize long before that argument between us.”
“Why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you trust me enough to tell me?”
“I believed him.” She turns to me, her arms wrapped around her knees. “I believed him when he said you transferred because you didn’t have the nerve to break up with me. I believed him when he told me you had been bragging about how many girls you’d been with. I believed everything because he was my friend and your best friend, and surely, everything he was telling me was true.”
“Delilah, you have to believe me. None of that was true. I never, never slept with anyone else back then. You were my everything. I knew what I had; how special you were. Are. I’ve been so fucking angry with you. Through miles of travel and years apart, I never understood why you left me without another word, without giving me something I could hold on to enough to let you go. Or how you could be with him.”
And that’s the most honest we’ve been for some time. Now I know the truth. Now I know why. Even though it’s not until years later, knowing still allows so much of my anger to evaporate.
