Page 61 of Tell Me You Love Me

“Reset the board for us.” I bend and kiss the top of his head. “I’ll play you just as soon as I get back. Come on.” I step around them both and move through the door and onto the porch, and though I might wonder ifTommy will leave me waiting, he follows on fast feet, snatching my hand and crushing it in his steely grip.

He drags me down the steps and around the side of my house.

“Tommy!” I try to pull free, hissing when I step on rocks in bare feet and yelping when I almost stumble. But he yanks me around and slams my back to the side of the house exactly how he used to when we were younger.

In fact, rightwherehe used to do it.

“You need to stop!”

“I wanted to make sure you woke up okay.” He pins me to the wall, his legs pressed to mine and his eyes searching my face. My lips. My flushing cheeks. “You drank a lot last night.”

“We can’t do this.” I won’t participate in the game he’s set on playing. I refuse to re-ignite the relationship I ran from a decade ago. “I’m not doing it.”

“Doing what?”

“This! Us.” I set my hands on his infuriatingly firm chest and push back… or at least, I try. “No.”

“You did it last night.” He tilts his head and peels a lock of loose hair off my shoulder. “Worked out fine.”

“It didn’t work out fine! We were drunk and angry. We were toxic and mean. You can dress it up however you want and call it whatever you think sounds nice, but it doesn’t change the facts. We are no longer who we used to be, and we cannot recapture what we used to have.”

“We could.” So gently, so sweetly, he traces his thumb over my bottom lip. “We still want each other, Lana. We’re stillitfor each other. Sure, we have some shit to overcome, but that’s what couple’s therapy is for. We’re not done for as long as that spark is still between us.”

“You’re fooling yourself,” I groan. “And you’d rather destroy yourself to prove a point, than admit we no longer exist.”

“Wedoexist.” He licks his lips, stealing my focus as my eyes drop to the movement. “We’re standing right here, Lana. You’re still love, and I’m still war. And even though it feels like you’re trying to flip that, like you think it’s a badge of honor and a way to break us, I’m still saying it’ll work out. You be war if you need to. I’ll be love. The pieces are still there. They still fit.”

“Tommy—”

“Was it a lie?” His eyes flicker between mine, searching and sorrowful. His hands slide down to caress my hips. “I know what I said. I know what I asked for. But was it a lie, Alana, or do you still love me?”

I still love you! I never stopped loving you.

New York Alana never existed, because one cannot live without their heart inside their own body.

But those are words for me. They’re selfish and mean, and they serve no purpose except to extend the time a man is expected to suffer.

Tommy deserves to heal. To move on. He deserves to find love with someone better.

So I look straight into his eyes and tell the worst lie I’ve ever muttered. “I don’t love you.”God, it hurts. It hurts so bad. And when his eyes shutter with pain, I almost lose my nerve. My willpower. My resolve. “Not the way you mean, and not the way you deserve.”

“Alana—”

“I have love for you. For the boy who saved a girl. For the friend you were, and the safe haven you created when I needed it. Those kids existed, and they needed each other more than they needed anything else in the world.”

“Stop—”

“I sincerely think we saved each other in a time we might not have survived if things had been different. And we’re so blessed, Tommy.” I loathe the tears that sit on my lashes. The ache in my throat. “Because those kids still live within us. Memories of what was once really, really beautiful. Those are our gifts, and no one can take those away.”

“Kids?” His jaw clicks with tempered rage. His hands squeeze my hips, perhaps tighter than he even realizes. “Memories. That’s it?”

“I have love for you. And Chris. And Oliver. And even Eliza, though she wants to kill me.”

“But you don’t love me anymore?” He barrels straight past my attempt at a joke and searches my eyes with a devastating intensity instead. His heart pounds visibly in my peripherals, and his Adam’s apple bobs with the nerves in his throat. “You’ll stand right there, my hands on your body, and yours on mine… You’ll look into my eyes and tell me, without so much as a fuckin’ stutter, that you’re notin lovewith me?”

“No.” I swallow the tears that desperately try to drown me. “I don’t love you. Not the way you mean. Not the way you deserve.”

He drops his hands, their absence as devastating as if he’d just slapped me. He places them on his own hips and stares down at the ground, his nostrils flaring as he takes a single step back. Then a second. He nods in the silence, then looks up again.

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