Page 54 of Tell Me You Love Me

She tries again to pull away, grunting in the back of her throat and growling when I tug her back in.

“You don’t get to stand there with tears in your eyes and act like I’m the asshole!”

“Let her go.” Ollie stops on my right, surprising me with his calmness and the gentle hand he lays over mine. Then he peels my fingers back, revealing the marks I leave on her skin and the rush of blood that refills her digits now that circulation can restart. “Come on.” He gently pushes us apart, freeing her from my steely grip.

Alana stumbles back, whimpering and spinning on her heels, then she strides away without a backward glance. With every step she takes, my heart aches. For every foot she places between us, my soul trembles.

“You can’t do that, Tommy.” Ollie comes around and searches my eyes. Because he knows me better than I know myself, he sets his hand on my chest and pushes me back since we both know I’d sooner barrel right through him and chase her.

“Either you back up, maybe go hang with the girls we came here with, or you go the fuck home.” He shakes his head, the movement barely penetrating my consciousness. Because my eyes are on Alana as she shakily climbs onto a barstool, scooping her dress under her backside and using a napkin to wipe her nose.

“She thinksI’mthe bad guy.” I want to puke. Or smash something. Or scream, even. I’ll take any of the above. “She comes around, crying about how mean I am and how she’s scared of her own shadow. She thinks I’m the fucking problem!”

“She can feel scared and sad, even if she was the one who left. Hey?” He claps my cheek and commands my eyes back to his. “More than one thingcan be true at the same time. She left, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t hurting for it. Now walk.”

“Where’s Chris?” I back up until his hand falls from my face, then I consider knocking him on his ass and walking over his corpse if it means sitting at the bar beside Alana and continuing this conversation. But my life didn’t start with her. No matter how much it feels like it did, she wasn’t there from day one.

Chris was.

So I turn on my heels and stalk toward the slot machines out back. “He in the smoking area?”

ROUND SEVENTEEN

ALANA

“Here.” Caroline places a shot of tequila by my shaking hand, then a second, with a lifted brow and eyes that brook no argument. “You need to take a damn breath and calm down before your heart gives out.”

I don’t hesitate like I did with the others. I just grab one, toss it back, then the other, and repeat. “Thanks.”

“He’s a lot, huh?” She ignores other waiting customers, setting her elbows on the bar and hitting me with an expression of sympathy. Which almost feels worse than anger. “He always was a whole big bunch of muscle operating on emotion. That ain’t likely to change, no matter how old he gets.”

“I made a mistake coming here.” I push the glasses away and exhale a shuddering breath. “I should’ve known better.”

“Coming here to Darlene’s? Nah, that was just bad luck. I can count on one hand how many times he’s been here in the last year.” She grabs the bottle of tequila and pours me a refill. “The universe was just being especially mean, dropping you both here on the same night.”

“No.” I grab the first and drink again. “Coming here to Plainview. You wanna know a fun fact my kid told me? There are, like, nineteenthousandtowns, cities, and little villages all across this damn country. Some of them are big, like New York, and some of them are small, like Plainview. I figure I should just grab a map and pick literallyanyother place except this one. Tommy deserves to move on without seeing me everywhere he goes, and Iwould doanythingto not feel this… this…” I slam my shot glass down and press a hand to my stomach instead. “This! This hurt and anxiety and anger and sadness. I want to exist in a place where I’m not equally terrified and hopeful that I’ll run into him, wondering if maybe this is the time itwon’t turn to hell.”

“Youwantto see him?”

“I want to own him! Because he owns me. I want to have what I used to have, and feel how I used to feel, and be adored the way only he knew how to adore me. I want the life we planned forus, and I want Franky to be there, too. I wish I’d married Tommy, not Colin, and I wish he was the father of my child. I want to rock on a rocking chair and drink lemonade on the porch with Chris when the sun goes down. I want the planswemade. But they were stolen from me, too.”

I grab the next shot and tip it back, desperate for the burn of tequila in my throat rather than the ache of a broken heart in my chest.

“I didn’t give my permission for those things to happen.” I set the glass down with a bang. “But they did, and now I’m the monster in everyone’s stories. It’s not fair, Caroline! It’snotfair becauseIdidn’t do anything wrong. Not like they think I did.” A horrifying sob bursts from my throat, squeezing my lungs and humiliating, because I know people can hear me. The jukebox is loud but not loud enough to drown out the sound of my tears.

“He thinks I’m the worst person in the world. And I can’t even tell him different because…” Frustrated, I run my hands through my hair. “Because. He isn’t strong enough to carry this truth. He isn’t capable of processing it. Or accepting it. Or sitting with it. He would self-destruct, and I can’t be the reason he does that.”

“So, you hurt him… to help him?” She lowers to her elbows and studies me from under the curtain of my falling hair. “Are you protecting him, Alana?”

“Always.” I choke on the tears clogging my throat. “For the rest of my life.”

“What the hell happened?” She does to me what I do to Franklin, grabbing my hair and pulling me up to look into her eyes. “You can tell me, ya know? You can share the burden. I won’t tell anyone.”

“You’d tell Pete.” Alcohol swims in my veins, happily pushing pain aside and slowing my heart. There’s a reason people become alcoholics. Or drug addicts. There’s a reason these things are regulated and not given to children. Because when the world hurts too much, and life is intent oncrushing your soul, booze has the power to alleviate the torment. “I know you’re gonna say you won’t. But you’d be lying. ‘Cos people in love have no secrets, and even if I promised to keep yours, I’d have told Tommy back in the day.”

I look down at my empty shot glasses and lick my lips, and just like magic, despite Caroline’s unhappy face, they refill anyway.

So I grab them both, one in each hand, and shoot them back to back.

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