And that was it. That was everything.
“When he looked at me, he saw her. He couldn’t stand to be around me.” He laced his fingers behind his neck, gaze fixed between his feet in the growing darkness. “But he couldn’t stand the thought of my moving away either.”
She let out a long breath. “Maybe he didn’t want to lose you too. Even in the very limited way he had you in his life.”
Yeah. After all, Peter was his father’s strongest connection to Patty that still existed in the world, outside that enameled urn.
“He wanted me orbiting him at a safe distance, where he could still check on me regularly and ensure I made the right choices,” Peter said flatly.
This discussion couldn’t last much longer. It was fucking cold by the water now that the last sunset colors had faded and allowed a few hardy stars to battle the local light pollution.
His throat ached from all thistalking, and his fucking head ached from all the memories, all the effort of finding the right words so Maria could understand him in a way even he himself hadn’t for so long. Not until he hauled his ass to therapy afterGates’ first season of filming, his bank account finally healthy enough for him to get the help he’d needed decades before.
Maria’s lips brushed his cheek, and suddenly the evening’s chill receded again.
“He’d only release my college funds if I stayed here.” Admittedly, UW-Madison was a world-class university, but Peter had wantedto leave Madison. Leave Wisconsin. Go anywhere he could escape the boy he’d been and the family that had fractured around him. “And he didn’t agree to let me live in a dorm until I threatened to skip college entirely.”
It had been Peter’s first real victory. His first taste of independence. The first time in years he’d lived somewhere not haunted by ghosts that remained unacknowledged and undiscussed.
It was fuckingamazing.
Maria sighed. “When you told him you were moving to LA after graduation, I’m certain he told you other professions would offer you steadier employment, and you should stay with him while you trained for a more reasonable career path.”
He had to laugh. “Are you sure you didn’t read a transcript of our conversation?”
From the start, his father couldn’t fathom why he wanted to pursue acting as his profession. And when he’d heard Peter was leaving for Hollywood, possibly for good...
Well, Dad had made eye contact then. Panicked, uncomprehending eye contact as he listed all the very logical reasons Peter was ruining his own life and sacrificing his future.
His departure had devastated his father. Or whatever word was stronger than that, because Peter would never forget that look on his face.
“You’d have thought I kicked him in the stomach.” Finally, he unlaced his fingers and lowered his hands to his lap, but only after he’d captured both of hers. “But I couldn’t stay, Maria. I wanted to act more than I wanted anything else in my life, and I couldn’t do that in Madison. Not as my career.”
And he’d wanted out. Finally, definitivelyoutfrom under the shadow of his father’s grief and the knee-buckling weight of his own memories.
“When I got on the bus for California, I kept remembering the day Mom left Dad. I kept wondering how it felt to drive away from our house, from him, with nothing but our suitcases in the trunk, and I thought maybe I was feeling the same way right then.” He swallowed. “I dropped my bags by the side of that Greyhound, walked up the steps, and took my seat, and it was like she was walking beside me. Sitting beside me. I hadn’t felt that close to her in years.”
Ducking down, he leaned his forehead against the backs of those strong, familiar hands. The same hands that carefully cradled sea urchins in the shallows of an Irish shore. The same hands that bled hauling stone and gleamed with nail polish at conventions. The same hands that had cupped his face last night as she gazed at him with suchfondness, such knowing affection, like she understood him inside and out but cared about him anyway.
The same hands that now contained the entirety of his troubled, stubborn, adoring heart.
It was time to finish this story, so he could start another. This one, he hoped, had a happy ending, although he hadn’t allowed himself to believe in those. Not ever.
“Like Mom, I was striking out for the unknown. Like Mom, I had something to prove to him and to myself and to the world.” He kissed her knuckles. Each fingertip. Her palms, once they opened like a flower under the gentle stroke of his thumb. “But unlike Mom, I had enough time on this earth to find the partner I needed. Someone who’s not just my lover but my friend too. Someone who can understand me, as well as...”
It was too soon. Despite all their years together, it was too soon, and he wouldn’t presume to tell her the contents of her own heart. Even if he hoped he knew what they were.
But she didn’t hesitate.
Because she was Maria, and she waseverything, she didn’t hesitate for even a moment.
“Love you,” she said, her voice steady and sure. “Someone who can understand youandlove you.”
When she met his eyes, he couldn’t look away.
She smiled, and the sun might as well have reappeared on the horizon. “Someone like me.”
20