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“I—”
“Never—you’ve never mentioned anything other than those details to me regarding the people who raised you, yet my mother seems to have the entire Bexley Black story.”
I tipped my head back, our chests aligned, his heaving up and down as he waited for my explanation.
“I never meant to keep it from you…I just…” I tried to take a step back, to put some distance between us, but his hand shot out and latched onto my hip, keeping me in place.
“Stop leaving me,” he whispered harshly, so low that I thought I might have imagined it, but the burn on my hip told me I hadn’t.
“You always had a happy story to tell me about your family, and when I met them, I understood why. Hell, even I fell in love with them. Why would I talk about my life? You didn’t want to hear that my mother was the other woman, having an illicit affair with a married man.”
Ryan’s grip tightened.
“He paid her off to shut her up. We lived in a tiny trailer, with one bedroom we shared. Each of us took a wall, but when my dad came to visit her during his lunch breaks, I had to wait outside.”
I tried to step back again, this time pulling hard enough to gain release. I clenched the porch railing while I watched the calm lake.
“He only came on the days when he could easily convince his wife he had to travel for work. I learned all this over time. One night when I had waited hours for him to leave, I crept back inside and overheard him yelling at my mother, blaming her for all of it—for me. Said he’d been tricked, that she’d sworn she was unable to bear children. He made fun of her, asking if she honestly thought he’d choose her or the dumb kid attached to her…after he left that night, I found my mother crying, but the next week, he was back. She let him in, and we repeated the same process.”
“Bex…” Ryan’s throat bobbed.
“Two more years we lived in that tiny trailer on the outskirts of town. I made myself dinner most nights, and the only time my mother put on makeup or put any effort into herself was when he’d come over. I started to hate him, then her…until he finally stopped coming altogether and my mother became a walking corpse. She checked out, stopped living, for herself, for me…she may have been his second choice, but at least she was a choice. No one chose me.”
I stepped back, only to find him watching me with remorse heavy in his eyes. I didn’t want to be attached to him as those memories surfaced. I hated them. I hated feeling so forgotten, so easily overlooked.
His throat bobbed once more as he formed a response. “How come you never told me?”
I shrugged, casting my gaze out over the lake once more. “It was a long time ago, and it had nothing to do with us, or our relationship.”
He cautiously drew up beside me. “Yet you told my mother?”
I looked over at him, taking in his defined jaw and his delicious scent. “She specifically asked about them. She never accepted my bullshit answer, and for once I realized there was someone who genuinely cared about my response, my past…my words.”
Ryan scoffed, shaking his head back and forth. “Fuck that.” He straightened, those turquoise eyes glowering at me with unshed tears. “Fuck that, Bex.”
Guilt flared in my gut, splintering me like I was a piece of old, brittle wood.
“Ryan, that’s not what I…”
He stormed off before I could try to explain. It was a harsh truth, despite how much he likely didn’t want to hear it; back then, he hadn’t spared my backstory a second thought. He may have believed he was being a good boyfriend, but he never asked about my mother, never asked to meet her or go back home with me. He always took me with him to his family. I never assumed he was being malicious in his choices, but I did feel as though he had just written off a heavy topic he didn’t want to sort through.
It was easier, I’m sure. Where I was obsessed with every facet of Ryan’s life, he was satisfied with the version of Bexley he had in front of him. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to dig into the old me, the bedrock of my life. It was dirty, dusty, and a very ugly place, one not even I liked to visit.
Maybe it was good that Ryan knew there were more places than he was even aware of that he’d abandoned me in. Maybe he’d realize why I had to leave all those years ago and we could finally forgive one another and put it behind us.
