“She meant something to me,” she whispers softly.
“Damn it, Mika! I was trying to get you out of my head by any means necessary. We were fucking kids planning a future we were never going to have. Even if I’d saved up every dime I had working as a busboy in that stupid diner, I would have only had a total of five thousand dollars at most. It wouldn’t have even been a down payment, for fuck’s sake.”
She stares, but remains silent as I go on.
“What then, Mika? Let you move out here with me and live in that shithole house I grew up in while helping me keep my mother from choking on her own vomit or overdosing? Maybe help me drive her to the doctor a few times a year to see what new VD she’d contracted? Possibly help me clean her up when she pissed or shit herself? Pray like I did that one day it would all just be over… that there was nothing you could have done differently on the day she finally died so you weren’t wracked with guilt? Does that sound like a fairytale ending for you? Does that sound anything close to what you fucking deserved?”
My chest is heaving by the time I finish yelling, and the knot in my throat has doubled in size. Tears are in her eyes, her lips are quivering, and my pulse is beating faster with every breath.
I should shut up. I shouldn’t be telling her any of this. It’s just going to complicate shit even more.
“You were it for me,” I tell her quietly. “All there was, Mika. You were the only good thing in my entire fucking life. And I gave you up because I didn’t want you to live through the same shit that made my life so dark. I gave you up because it was the right thing to do. It killed me.” I point to my chest as my voice grows strained. “Killed me,” I repeat, barely keeping myself from losing it. “But I did what I had to. I let you go because I’d never be the same light for you that you were for me, and it wasn’t fair.”
I sag down to a chair behind me, and I put my head in my hands while touching my elbows to my knees. It feels good to get it all out there, but at the same time, it fucking hurts to feel anything at all.
My breaths are choppy and heavy, and my chest feels like a weight is pressed against it. I startle when something touches my head, and my head snaps up as Mika steps closer, keeping her fingers in my hair as she moves in between my legs.
Her left hand joins her right one, slowly stroking my hair, and I wrap my arms around her waist while touching my forehead against her stomach, resting it there. I hug her closer, seeking that light she always gave me, feeling that comfort rise just from the simple action of her touching me and letting me touch her.
“You were always my light too,” she whispers softly. “More so than you realize, Chase.”
I close my eyes, keeping her against me, and we stay like that for several long minutes… possibly hours.
“I came to the ranch to find you,” I admit softly. She tenses and her hands still in my hair. “They told me you and Aidan had moved to New York. I just wanted you to know that I did come for you, even though I realized I couldn’t ever offer you anything.”
“That’s all they told you?” she asks, focusing on that part and that part alone.
“Yeah. Why?” I ask, still clinging to her.
She relaxes against me, and her hands go back to their ministrations.
“You were enough, Chase. You were more than enough.” Her voice is quiet and sad, and I keep my eyes closed, just letting her touch me and absorbing the way it all feels.
“Let’s get something to eat,” she finally says after a long break of silence. “Otherwise, my stomach is going to start talking to you, and it won’t sound pretty.”
When I smile against her, I remember exactly why she was everything good in my life.
She was the only one who ever made me smile when there was nothing to smile about.
Chapter 23
MIKA
Chase walks through the restaurant, garnering attention from everyone in there as he waits for me to sit down first. I expect him to slide in the seat across from me, but he sits down right beside me instead.
Seeing him so broken today… He loved me enough to want more for me than his life would offer. I loved him enough to endure his hell and I would have found a way to enjoy it. However, life doesn’t give you what you want. It gives you lemons and hides the sugar so that you can’t make lemonade.
Romeo and Juliette didn’t have shit on us as far as painful, tragic love goes. They made death beautiful, while we made life ugly.
Sadly, Chase doesn’t even know the half of it. If he did, he’d understand what a better option his life was for me than the life I had instead.