And you wanted me.
“But you did exactly what they did, Dean.” The tears spill over, unchecked, my spine stiffening. “Exactly what you said you didn’t want to do anymore. You buried a secret and refused to talk about it. Even with me, after all we went through. It’s the same damn pattern!”
He just stares at me. He knows I’m right.
“I understood why you did it before.” I pace a few steps, struggling to keep my breathing under control. “I got it, all right? I knew because I’d done the exact same thing, hid a secret so it wouldn’t shatter the illusion of who I was supposed to be. But now? Why in the love of God would you do this now? And to me?”
“I want to fix whatever the hell is going wrong with us, Liv.” He crumples the water bottle between his hands. “The whole mess with Helen… I couldn’t imagine having kids after that, so when you told me you didn’t want any, I… I just wanted to forget the whole damn thing.”
“You can’t forget something so horrible, Dean.” A knot fills my throat, prickles of ice erupting on my skin. “You can only use it to make you stronger.”
He stares at the ground, his fingers tight around the crushed bottle. “It was really fucking ugly, Liv. I don’t want that to happen to us.”
“Why would you think that? I’m not Helen!”
“I know!” He looks up at me. “I feel things for you that I never felt for her, which is why I can’t stand the thought of you going through what she did.”
“Telling me about it isn’t the same as me going through it.”
His jaw tenses. “You’d have been hurt anyway.”
“I’m hurt now! I’m more hurt and upset that you didn’t tell me than I’d have been if you had! God, Dean, I’m not a fragile wallflower who can’t handle anything. Don’t you know that by now? This is exactly what we went through when you tried to keep me from your family.”
“Right,” he snaps. “And look what happened to us then.”
I stare at him, my heart cracking at the bitter memory. My breath saws through the air. My pulse races.
“Liv.” Dean drops the water bottle and stands. The tension dissipates from his features and concern floods in. He grasps my shoulders. “Breathe, Liv.”
“I’m not…”
“Breathe!”
“I’m not panicking!” I shove away from him and stalk toward a grove of trees.
I pull air into my lungs and exhale slowly, aware of Dean hovering behind me, always there, always ready to anchor me to the ground.
Except this time, he’s the one who pulled it out from underneath me.
I press my hands to my eyes and struggle for control.
“Liv, please.” He sounds desperate. “It was… everything changed, you know? All for the worse. I don’t want us to change.”
Neither do I.
But I can’t bring myself to say it because beneath that wish is the hot, jagged knowledge that we already have changed.
I turn to grab my backpack. Dean closes his hand on my arm. I shake my head. He releases me and turns to pick up the water bottle and his backpack.
I head back down the trail, my chest tight with anger and hurt. He falls into step beside me.
“Liv, I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want you to… you know…”
I glance at him. “What?”
He’s looking off to the side, down toward the lake. A faint color crests his cheekbones. “I didn’t want you to think less of me.”
I stop in my tracks and turn to face him. “You thought I’d think less of you because you had a bad marriage? Because you… your wife lost three pregnancies?”
“No. Not because you’re the type of person who’d think like that but because you’re not.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re good, Liv.” He grips my hands, holding them both tight. “You’ve always been good. You’ve never made shitty decisions that hurt the people you love, that veer your entire life off course, that you’ll regret forever. You’ve never disappointed anyone, never failed.”
“Dean, that’s not true!” My vision blurs, all the old emotions swamping me. “I left my mother when I was thirteen, I refused to go with her again when she came back, I never told anyone about what happened to me, for months I wanted to hide from everything and everyone—”
Anger clenches his jaw. “But you didn’t. You never needed to prove yourself to anyone except yourself. You did all those things to survive.”
His hands tighten on mine, his voice intense. “You’re so damn strong, Liv, and you don’t even realize it. I’m the one who’s always had to show people I’m successful, an achiever, the best at everything I did. I’m the one who’s always been a goddamn egotist. A groveler. And you… you’re the first person who’s ever… Christ, Liv, sometimes the way you look at me makes me feel like I can hang the fucking moon.”
“Because I’ve always believed you can.”
“I know! I’ve never had to prove myself to you. And if I’d told you about the shit-storm of my marriage… ah, hell, Liv. I couldn’t stand the thought that you’d look at me any differently.”