“Okay, so then….”
“All I mean is, there’s a huge part of you that’s a secret to all the people you care about. And that means you can’t think about what the future will be like. You’re suspended in the present. Getting through each day without anyone finding out about you. Running hard enough that you feel okay. Drinking enough that you forget about the world long enough to fall asleep and wake up to a new day. Only it’s the same thing then, too.”
My life in his words makes me want to puke. Because he’s right: that’s how I feel most of the time. But… not when I’m with him.
“And I understand that. Truly.” He brushes his thumb over my lips. “It’s how I got clean. You need to focus only on the present moment so you can get through it. But… that’s not where I am anymore. I’ve already gotten through enough days. It’s all I did for so long. And now… I try to work toward things instead. Build things. With social justice work, with YA. It’s what I need to do. And it’s… it’s what I want for us.”
I pull away from him as anger shoots through me. Now he tells me these things? I feel like I just spent months building an entire car out of scraps and Rafe is now telling me that he wants me to build a truck instead.
It’s taken me a long fucking time to admit to myself that I want him. That I want him in my life, in my house, in my bed. And he’s saying, what? That those things don’t matter because I haven’t thought about going on vacation with him? What the fuck? I want to hit him.
“So, what? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to be working toward?”
“I don’t know, babe,” he says, his voice infuriatingly calm. “Only you can answer that.”
“What the hell, Rafe! Are you a fortune cookie or something? I—you—we—what the fuck do you want from me?” I’m yelling and he’s still, watching me impassively. “I’ve already—fuck!—I’ve already let you do everything to me. What else can I do?”
He’s up like a shot, fury I’ve never seen blazing in his expression. “Stop right there. I haven’t done anything that you didn’t want. I would never!” He looks offended. Outraged. Like he cares more about seeming beyond reproach than about what I’m actually saying.
It’s like the anxiety and anger and uncertainty that have been hanging over us boil over, and I’m utterly furious with him. The kind of furious that usually ends with me punching the shit out of someone.
“Oh yeah, I know,” I spit out. “Saint Rafe would never do anything wrong. You just want to make the world a better place.”
Rafe’s expression is ice, his fists clenched.
“I have done things wrong. Things I can’t ever take back. Things I wake up with every day and go to sleep with every night. Don’t you dare judge me for what I do to try and live with them.”
“And you feel so fucking guilty that you’d do anything to atone for it,” I snarl at him. “All your projects and your soup kitchens! You work so hard to make the world a better place for everyone else but you don’t even care about living in it. And now you’re too scared to ever break the rules, even when it would help Anders.”
Fuck, where did that come from? Rafe’s mouth falls open and still I don’t stop. I’m all twisted up inside and I just want to hurt him.
“You don’t think you deserve to just be happy and you want me to—I don’t know—be your next cause. Well, I’m not one of your fucking projects, okay? So, don’t treat this”—I gesture between us—“whatever it is—like we’re going to have committee meetings or whatever the hell you guys spend your time doing.”
I’m shaky with the same poison I felt every time I hurt Daniel. I’d try to hold back the tide, but then I’d see a glimmer of something vulnerable—hope or faith that this time I’d do the right thing. And in that instant of knowing for a fact how truly misplaced that hope was, how it made me responsible for him when I didn’t want to be, I’d strike the killing blow and the poison would flow through me. I’d hate myself for hurting him, but more, I’d hate him for letting me do it. For making me into a monster who hurts everyone I come in contact with.
I want Rafe to take a swing at me so I’ll stop. Or so I can hit him back. But he just stands there glowering and vibrating with a punch he doesn’t throw.
I can’t stop. I never can.
“But, hell, maybe that’s why you’re here in the first place, huh? Right? You took one look at me and thought, ‘Hey, there’s my cause of the month. I guess I should hook up with him and fuck him happy!’”