Ro scooted up the bed until she was leaning against the headboard. “Of course I don’t know what you want. You grunt more than you use actual words, and when you do say something, it’s so fucked up, I can’t even figure out how to respond. This,” she gestured between them, “is a total disaster.”
“How hard is it to understand that it gutted me to wake up to an empty spot where you were supposed to be? How hard is it to understand that you were supposed to pick me—us—and when you didn’t, it stirred up some bad shit for me?” Graham’s jaw clenched and the lines bracketing his eyes deepened.
“What are you even talking about?” Ro buried her hands in her hair and dug her nails into her scalp. “You’ve got to decode this shit for me, Conan, because I don’t read minds. I might be multi-talented, but mindreading is beyond me.”
Graham’s laugh came out as choked huff. He rubbed his face roughly. “Could you just shut up for a minute? Another talent you haven’t quite conquered is recognizing when a guy is trying to lay it on the line.”
Ro shut her mouth so quickly her teeth clacked together. Graham was silent for more than a minute. Ro knew this for a fact because she counted, waiting for him to speak.
“I don’t … do well with … desertion,” he said, the words sounding as if they’d been dragged from his throat with rusty pliers. His gaze pinned her, daring her to comment on his raw statement. Ro stayed quiet. After Zach’s revelations earlier, she wasn’t sure she could handle whatever it was that Graham had to say. He stalked across the room to shove open the blackout curtain and peer into the dark night. He rested a forearm on the high windowsill, head dropping forward. “Fuck, I can’t do this.”
He spun and started for the doorway when Zach stepped into the room. “Come on, man. Just tell her.” Ro jumped, surprised once again by Zach’s stealthy entry.
Graham attempted to shove Zach out of the way, but Zach continued to block the doorway. “What the fuck does it matter anyway?”
Ro decided it was time to bare a piece of her soul. “I left because I’ve put my family last in every decision I’ve made for the past ten years. This was my chance to finally put them first, and I was doing it, without regret, until I met you.” She paused and took a deep breath. “I wasn’t deserting you. I was choosing them. For once. But you had to go and make me fall in love with you. Both of you. I couldn’t let that matter, even if it ripped me apart. Don’t you see? How do you not choose your family?”
Graham swung around, his movements almost violent. “My mother managed it when she left me in a shithole motel room when I was seven years old. It was three days before housekeeping caught me trying to steal Cheetos out of the fucking vending machine because I was starving. They found her a week later, floating in the Ohio River. The kicker—she’d been dead for less than twenty-four hours.”
“Oh my God, Graham …” Ro said, mouth hanging open in disbelief. Apparently her childhood, even with a mother dying of cancer, had been all rainbows and unicorns compared to both of theirs.
“I don’t want your pity. Social services got in touch with my uncle, and I moved up here. It was probably the best thing that’d ever happened to me up to that point. This place is the only real home I’ve ever had. It’s easy to take for granted … but when you’ve never had one ...” He cleared his throat. “My uncle put me in school—first grade, even though I’d never seen the inside of a classroom in my life. My mom had been too busy moving us from fleabag motel to fleabag motel to put me in school. She’d disappear for hours every night. It didn’t occur to me until I was older that she was a junkie, turning tricks to feed her habit.”
“I … I don’t know what to say,” was all Ro could get out.
“You don’t need to say anything. You just need to know that when I woke up to find you gone, I thought I’d never see you alive again. All I could picture was you, dead in the woods somewhere. And all because you were too damn stubborn to let us protect you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You almost weren’t,” Zach said.
“So what we do now?” Ro asked.
Graham felt hollowed out. Drained. Like he’d just confessed his sins and wasn’t certain whether he’d be granted absolution.
“I guess that depends on you,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Ro asked.
“You’re the one driving this train, sweetheart,” Zach said. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve both laid our hearts at your feet. What you do with them is your choice.”
“Way to put the hard decision on me,” she said, her tone a weak attempt at humor.
“You’re the only one who can make it,” Zach replied. Graham stayed silent, studying her features for any indication of her decision.