“I’m sorry, if you can’t handle living with me. I was on my best behavior when I met you, and I can’t play that part for my entire life. Anyway, you like it well enough when I’m making you come.”
“Yeah. You’re good at that. We are good at that. That has never been our problem, Wolf. But the closer that I get to you, the more you want to use that to push me away. And I hate that. Because you know what, it’s not pushing me away. It’s like you’re trying to scare me, and I don’t get it.”
“I’m not trying to do anything. But you know what? I did think about it. And the thing is, I can’t play a part and wait to see what’s going to happen for the rest of my life. If I’m going to live with you, then you have to live with me. And you have to deal with me. Which no one’s ever had to do, Violet. My mother left. Breanna died. But not before adding to all of this. So congratulations. You can be the first person to successfully try to deal with me. But I don’t know that you’re gonna like it.”
“You are pushing me away.”
“I am not here to be psychoanalyzed. That is not my scene.”
“Tough. This isn’t your life anymore. It is our life. And I want it. I want that heavy happy, Wolf. I want it even if it costs. I am brave enough to push through this. Are you?”
“Push through what?”
“I asked Alison about this. About what to do with you. Because I knew that I loved you, but that you love someone else. Because I knew that I loved you but that it was going to be a fight to try and figure out how to make you okay with loving me.”
He just looked at her, his face blank.
“Do what you want, Violet. Call it whatever you want. But the fact of the matter is, it doesn’t mean anything. And that’s what you need to understand. We are attracted to each other. Great. That’s good. We can choose to build a life together. Great. We can be committed to our kid. But you telling me that you love me... It just doesn’t mean shit.”
“It does to me. I am in love with you. I don’t want to live in a marriage where you don’t love me back the way that I love you.”
“That’s your decision, then. I knew it wouldn’t last.”
Almost as if he was waiting for this. As if he was glad to be able to say he’d known it wouldn’t last.
“I said I don’t want to. I didn’t say that I wouldn’t. I’m committed to you. I’m committed to us. That’s why I decided to say yes to you before my second trimester. Because I can’t go back to living life like before I loved you. I can’t pretend that we were never us. You changed me. Loving you has changed me, and I am not interested in going back to before.”
“But that’s what happens,” he said. “That’s what happens. You love people, and they leave. You love them, they can’t love you back, and I already know it, so I gave up. I loved her so much. I told her every day. I was... She was my favorite person. She was the sun and the moon and all the stars and I told her so. My mom, the prettiest woman in the world. The nicest. She smelled like vanilla. She left. I wasn’t like you, Violet. I knew my mom was gone. I knew she was gone forever. I woke up in the morning and the house was empty. And I could feel it. And Sawyer said there’s no use crying. None at all. Because that is what people do. They leave you. But I was an idiot. I was an idiot who thought maybe that wasn’t true. I met Breanna and she was sweet and she was wonderful. And I thought that I could win. That’s what I thought. The power of love, right? Big enough to heal all these wounds. I loved her, too. But she didn’t love me back. And she died.”
“She didn’t die because she loved you.”
“No, she didn’t love me.” The words were hard and flat. “I said I loved her, and she said...let’s not get so intense. I said I loved her, and she... Hell, she basically ran away from me to her death, Violet.”
“Wolf...” Horror stole over her. “What are you talking about?”
“She wanted to leave. After I said I loved her. She jumped off the dock to swim away from me. Me. And my love. Because that’s how awful it is to be loved by me. Everyone runs from it eventually.”
“No, Wolf, that’s not...that’s not what happened.”
“It is what happened, Violet. If you can’t look at me knowing that, I don’t blame you.”
“She didn’t mean to die. I think you know she didn’t choose death over you.”
“I don’t know that,” he said.
“Wolf, of course she didn’t.”
“She still ran away...”
“She was a teenager. So were you. Would you have hurt her?”
“No,” he said, drawing back. “I never...”
“She wasn’t afraid of you. She was... She was just being a kid. And sometimes things happen. Accidents. And that’s all.”
“Maybe. But if I hadn’t have been so...so hell-bent on being with her all the time. On redeeming all that pain inside me at her expense... I sure as hell wouldn’t have taken her out to the lake in the middle of the damned night. I wouldn’t have...told her I loved her like I have a stake in it, Violet, and I can’t pretend that I don’t. I failed her. I damn well did. Trying to keep her with me. Trying to be enough. I’m not doing it again. I am not doing it again.”
“I love you,” she said.