My heart bounded toward her, wanting nothing more than to alleviate her pain. I immediately wrapped her in my arms, setting my cheek on the top of her head, and exhaled a world of worry.
Rightness, certainty, relief rushed through me. I should’ve told her how I’d missed her too, but the only words on my tongue and racing through my mind were, I love you and stay with me.
I said nothing. This wasn’t about me. This was about us. And how we were going to move forward from this moment. If she didn’t love me back, then so be it. I would love her enough for both of us, I would be the more loving one.
Just as long as she stays with me, no matter where we go.
Shelly was quiet for a stretch, inhaling deeply, like she was breathing me in.
Seconds became minutes and she turned her head, pressing her ear to my cheek. “Meet me at my house?”
“Yes.”
She nodded softly, snuggling against my chest. “Promise?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I promise.”
I’d promise you anything.
* * *
Shelly left first.
My hands still necessitated a good scrubbing, so I left a few minutes after. The early November day was cool, just on the brink of being chilly. Even so, I had a day’s worth of dirt and sweat layering my skin. Under normal circumstances, I would’ve gone home for a shower.
But not today.
I didn’t have poetry to give her. But I didn’t think she required words of my devotion. I suspected what she needed most was action.
I parked adjacent to her car and walked to her door, not hesitating to let myself in. She was pacing back and forth in the small space of the living room. But she stopped when I entered, her gaze immediately coming to mine.
Laika and Ivan, who had been sitting on the floor watching Shelly, jumped up at my arrival and swirled about my legs, offering excited licks and tail wags.
Double skip of my heart and enthusiastic dogs notwithstanding, I rushed to her, pulled her into a tight embrace, and kissed her neck.
Shelly melted against me, her arms around my torso were tight. “I am going to cry. I don’t want to, but it’s going to happen. It’s not because I’m sad. I’m not sad. I am overwhelmed.” Her voice cracked on the last word and I felt her face crumple against my chest.
“You can cry all day if you need to.”
“It should only be ten minutes, tops. Maybe fifteen.” She was already crying.
Even so, I chuckled at her pragmatism. “Okay. Should I time you?”
She leaned away, giving me her red-rimmed eyes. I watched as fat tears rolled down her cheeks, falling to her collarbone. My stomach plummeted with them. Sliding my hands to her jaw, I sought to wipe the tracks from her beautiful cheeks.
“I’m defective—”
“No—”
“Yes, I am.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not saying this because I feel sorry for myself. I do not feel sorry for myself. The wiring in my brain is wrong, it is defective. Before I sought help from Dr. West, I had to accept that there was something wrong with me and stop making excuses for my behavior. A mental disorder is not like a physical one. My mind and I are not one and the same. I don’t trust myself all the time, but I am working on that. I’m working to rewire my brain.”
The urge to tell her how wrong she was, about being defective, nearly strangled me.
“I hate being afraid all the time. There is nothing of value about my fear. It’s irrational, it’s harmful—to me and the people I . . . the people in my life.” She sniffled, her fingers grabbing fistfuls of my shirt. “But you never looked at me like that, like I was defective. Nothing about me scared you. You never felt sorry for me. You took everything in your stride.”
I said nothing. Clearly, she had words prepared and needed to get them out.
“Last Friday you saw me at my worst,” she said, a note of accusation in her tone, her tears coming fast. “At my most vulnerable and exposed. I hate that you saw me like that. I also hate how the way you looked at me changed.”
“How did it change? How did I look at you?”
“Like I was broken.”
No. “You aren’t broken.”
She wasn’t broken, but her words made me want to break something. Her fear wasn’t beautiful. But her strength, her resolve, her brilliance and goodness were. She wouldn’t be who she was now without her struggles. Life had shaped her, her fear had formed her, and I wouldn’t have her any differently.
“Checking on me, hovering, treating me like I’m weak, it makes me feel broken. It is humiliating.”
“Shelly, I didn’t check on you because I thought of you as broken. I did it because I—I was concerned about you after you’d gone through a—an extremely difficult ordeal,” I rushed to explain, tripping over my words in my hurry, “Hell, I needed someone to check on me after your session last Friday.”
“Then why didn’t you say something? I leaned on you, I asked you to help me. Why not lean on me in return?”
My hands slid to her shoulders while hers were still fisted in my shirt. “Because I didn’t want . . .”
Damn.
She was right. Not about everything, but about Friday. She was right.
“You can’t say it, but you know I’m right.” Her breathing was uneven. “You saw me as someone who wasn’t whole. Like a refrigerator that needs fixing, a problem to solve.”
“Wait, wait. Last Friday, I did. You’re right. But you’re also wrong. I was trying to forget about my own troubles, about what happened with Christine St. Claire last Wednesday. I wanted to help, I wanted to take care of you, but I also used you to distract myself. I used what happened as a reason to ignore my own situation, and I am so very sorry.”
“You are so very forgiven,” she said, the words barely above a tearful whisper.
I needed to hold her, so I moved my hands to her arms, planning to bring her back to me. But she flattened her palms against my chest, preventing me from pulling her close.
“For that. You are forgiven for that.”
. . . There’s more.
I stared at her, waiting for her to continue. Her gaze sharpened as she took several breaths, like she was working to calm herself.
“Your biological mother,” she said, her voice no longer wobbly. “Her existence is something you need to work through. You need to ask me for help. You need to talk to me about it. I’m not going to be the project you use, the basket case you handle, so you can distract yourself from your own broken refrigerator. I’m working on my wiring issues. You need to work on yours, and you need to lean on me.”
I nodded, sliding my teeth to the side. She was right, but the spot she poked was still raw.
“I mean it, Beau. I can’t go through life focused solely on my own burdens. You leaning on me makes me stronger.”
My pulse ticked up and with it my hope. She was talking like things between us were forever, not just for now.
“Okay.” I wanted to ask, to push, to know—what does this mean for us? In the long term?
And I was still sorting out how to broach the subject when she demanded, “So?”
“So?”
Shelly pressed her lips together, wiping the back of her hand across her nose quickly, and held my gaze. “Start talking.”
I huffed a laugh.