Page 37 of Tell Me You Love Me

Unlike you.Those are the words he doesn’t speak, but the implication remains loud and clear.

“Once I got myself situated and a couple of wins under my belt, confident the rug wouldn’t be pulled out from underneath me and my brother, I made damn sure every kid in this town, and the next few, would always have a meal in their belly. I won’t solve world hunger,” he drawls. “But it solves Plainview’s hunger. And a few other counties, too.”

“Oh… well…”It’s okay, Alana. Admit you’re a piece of shit who never looked outside your own echo chamber of self-pity.

Doing better starts with self-awareness.

“Why’d you leave, Alana?”

I swallow and firm my lips into straight lines. I give him silence because there’s nothing else I can offer that won’t make everything worse.

“Somethinghappened.” Snarling, he leans closer. “Someone said something, or someone did something. Or maybe I hurt your feelings. Or Chris and me, as a package deal, became too much. Or maybe your mother said some shit. Or you and that dude found each other on a fucking chat site, and things got out of hand. What, Alana?” He whips his hand forward so fast, the muscle memory I once possessed, now pathetically out of practice, can’t save me from the way he wraps his hand around the side of my neck and controls my face with his thumb beneath my jaw.

He forces me to meet his eyes, refusing me any other choice. “Whathappened that led you to dip out of my life so fucking violently, it’s like you died?”

My knees tremble. My pulse sprints. My entire body, heart and soul, spins out of control as tears slide onto my cheeks and, horrifyingly, my hand comes up.

Not to shove him away. But to wrap around his tense wrist.

“Why, Alana?” His voice shakes with desperation. “Why did you do that to us?”

“Please leave me alone.” My chest and shoulders bounce with a silent sob. My vision turns blurry, tears blinding me to everything but the hulking shape of a man begging for something he is, in a fair world, entitled to. But this isn’t a fair world, despite the signage he had installed above his gym. “Please just go, Tommy.”

“You could save us both by sharing the things you know.” He shakes me. “You ruined both of our lives, Alana. By making choices that, for whatever reason, suited only you, you changed everything.” His eyes glitter with pain. With unshed tears. “You destroyed us, and you don’t even have the guts to own up to it. Jesus, why is my request so fucking outlandish that you won’t say what was going through your head back then?”

“Because it’smyburden to carry!” Finally, I find a pocket of strength and take a step back, pushing his hand away when he’d rather follow and grab me again. “You’re entitled to your feelings, Tommy. You want to hate me for ruining a teenage romance? Then do it. Hate me. That’s fine. Because I’ve spent my whole life hating me, too.”

“A teenage romance?” he growls. “You call that a fucking teenage romance?”

“We were teens.” I broaden my shoulders and take another step back. “You romanticize memories held within a child’s mind.”

“You’re a fuckin’ liar!” He charges forward, pointing a dangerous finger in my face. “You look right into my eyes and spout that shit off like you think I haven’t been calling you out on bullshit since the moment we met. We werenotstupid kids, Alana, and I’m not a stupid man. We wereneverchildren, and what we had was not some fleeting bullshit. You ruined the greatest thing either of us will ever know. And maybe you have to lie to yourself to remain sane. Maybe that’s how you get through. But I remember what we were. We had that once-in-a-lifetime love, the kind most never even find. I was poor and hungry and dirty, but I was rich withus.”

“You’re wrong.” On this one point, at least, I don’t waver. I won’t. Even if the price I paid was cruel. “Wewere not the best thing that everhappened to me, Tommy. No matter how many times you scream it in my face, and no matter how good it felt back then, no matter how much it hurts now.Wewere not where everything starts and ends. My son is. He always will be. And there isn’t a damn thing you can say that’ll make me question that. I’m sorry I hurt your feelings when I left, but the past is the past, and there’s nothing we can do about it now.” The music cuts out once more, and my phone trills with an incoming call. So I stride to the counter and grab it, both thankful for the interruption and dreading the idea that something may be wrong at home.

Instead, I find Colin’s name on my screen, another brutal twist of the universe’s blade.

It’s not enough that we hurt. That cold bitch, destiny, wants us to suffer, too.

Taking a long, shuddering breath and dropping my head back, I stare up at the ceiling and accept the call before I lose my nerve. I force a plastic-y, inauthentic cheeriness to my tone. “Hi, Colin.”

Tommy’s rage burns hotter. His pain, like palpable waves pulsing in the air.

“I was planning to call you in a little while,” I rasp, knuckling a tear from my cheek. “It’s like you read my mind.”

“Fuck this.” Tommy stalks toward the shop door and tears it open, the bell above screaming and the hinges on the side protesting their abuse. Then he barges through without a backward glance, slamming it again in his wake.

Small mercies, I suppose.

At least I get to be alone.

“You okay?” Colin’s concern rolls through the line just as warmly as the hug he gave me the day we married. The way he cares, like nothing else I’d ever known in my life. God, he’s entirely too decent to be mixed up in my messy life. “Was that Tommy?”

I lower my gaze and swallow the tears balling in my throat, and circling the desk, I yank a few more tissues from the box beneath. “Yeah. That was him.”

“He sounded pissed. Did you tell him?”

“No.” I blow my nose, knowing the sound must be awful from Colin’s side of the line. But he’s seen me at my worst. He’s watched over me when I could do nothing more than lie on the bathroom floor and cry myself to sleep. “He’s always pissed. That’s notsomething new.”

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