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“Alaina... You don’t have to say that.”
“It’s true. I do. I’ve fallen in love with you over these last weeks. And I wish... I wish I could say that I always did. I always cared for you. My mom said something to me... I talked to my mom. She said something to me about the fact that we had a special connection. And I think that is true. I wanted to believe that I always felt something. But I didn’t. I had to change. I had to grow up. I had to figure out what was really important.”
It was uncomfortable, this. To put herself out there, to admit all of these things. All of these feelings. But if she didn’t admit it, then what? And what was the point of it? The point of any of it, or the lesson there? If she didn’t grow, if they didn’t change...why were they doing this? That was what she kept coming back to.
He just sat there, staring straight ahead, his jaw set like granite, his eyes unreadable.
And for a minute, she thought this might be it. She thought she might’ve pushed him away completely. Because wasn’t that how it kept on going? Advance, retreat. She moved forward and he moved back, and that was the way it had been.
“You love me?”
The question was asked softly, but intensely.
“Yes,” she said. “And before you ask, I didn’t fancy myself in love with Travis, not even a little bit.”
“I wasn’t going to ask,” he said.
“Well, I just want to make it clear.”
“It isn’t a thing for me. That guy. I don’t think about him. I don’t care about him. He doesn’t matter.”
That made her feel good. It was hardly a declaration, but it was something. And she would take that. Yeah, she would damn well take it.
“Do you want to know what it means to me? That I love you.”
He leaned back in his chair, his palms flat on the table. And she could see that he desperately did want to hear it. But that he was also guarding himself against it.
It was the strangest thing, to be able to feel the wall that he put up between them. Like a physical thing, even though he was sitting there. She just had to hope her love made it over the wall.
“It means I’m committed to this. To us. And means I want to sleep in your room every night. It means that you make my heart flutter when I look at you. And even just when I think about you. It means that I can’t imagine another man touching me. And I can’t imagine a different future. Not now. I ache with it. With what I feel for you. With my regret over all the things I didn’t know before. About myself, about you. About the world.
“I had this idea that there was no space for me, and... I didn’t even know what kind of space I wanted. How can you know what you want when you don’t know yourself?”
“That sounds like some kind of new age stuff.”
“It’s not. If you sit down in the quiet and you listen to your heart, you know what it tells you. But I never wanted to sit down in the quiet. Because I was afraid of it. And I just don’t feel as afraid now.”
“Alaina, I... I’m going to tell you something, and you’re going to think it makes me a bastard. And it does. But there’s not a whole lot I can do about it, and I’m going to give it to you honestly. Ilikethat you love me. But I can’t give it back.”
His words were like a sword being driven straight through her chest. And she knew that he wasn’t going to explain, not in the depth that she wanted him to. She loved him. He had changed her. Fundamentally. What she thought about herself, what she wanted. What she wanted for her life. And he wanted to keep that wall up. She was welcome to continue to lob her love over to the other side, but he wasn’t going to open the gates.
But she wanted him. She wanted this life. She wanted to have this baby with him. And it would be okay. Because he was Gus. It would be okay because he had always been there, and he would continue to be.
She could handle this.
At least he was being honest. At least he wasn’t pretending. Hadn’t her dad pretended with her mom for years? Hadn’t he pretended to be faithful, to be a husband who was invested in her and in the kids, only to just flake out one day?
“Okay,” she said.
“That’s it?”
“Gus, when are you going to get it into your head that you’re not going to drive me away? I’m not afraid of you, and you can stop growling every five seconds and trying to make it so that I will be. I’m not weak. I love you. So... I can handle that. I can handle you.”
And it felt a little bit sad. To say those words to him.I can handle you.When what she wanted was so much more.Maybe it will change...
That was dangerous. But she would rather have dangerous with him than be safe without him, and whatever that said about her... It didn’t matter.
“I want to be a husband and wife. Not this... We married each other for convenience and are sleeping together sometimes, and they’re two separate things. You and me. The same bed. The same room. And you can hold my hand when we go to family things, and maybe I’ll sit on your lap the way that Nelly sits on Tag’s lap.”
