Page 69 of Only Temporary

But I didn’t expect him to show up tonight, just to take me to a meeting—trying to fix me when the only way I’m going to feel better is if I have him back in my life. I’m so far gone for him, but I don’t know how to make him see it.

“Can you come back to my place for a bit? I want to talk to you.”

I try not to let hope bloom that maybe he wants to talk about us. Maybe he realizes he overreacted to Cason finding out. Yeah, Cason told Rae about us, but I still have no doubt he won’t tell anyone else. He needed to vent, and Raegan is the person he trusts the most. They’re united in their hatred for me at the moment.

I agree, and he drives us to his place. But it’s strange to walk through the door of his apartment and not be able to pull him into me. To not be able to kiss him and hold him the way I have every other time I’ve been here.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks, walking further into the apartment. I shake my head, and he motions for me to join him on the couch.

We sit on opposite sides, and I sit quietly, just waiting for him to speak. Silently begging him to work on this with me. I know we can work this out, but with how stubbornly firm he was, I know it’s going to have to be him who takes the first step.

“His name was Pete. Peter. But he hated being called that name. His mom named him after his grandfather, so he insisted on being called Pete.”

I have no idea where this is going at all—not what I thought, for sure. “Who?”

“My last boyfriend,” he says stoically, his body almost eerily still as he speaks. “I met him volunteering on Thanksgiving at a shelter. I thought we had so much in common from the start, but turns out, he was actually only there because it was court-ordered community service.”

I frown but let him go on without asking him anything. It seems he needs to get this off his chest, for whatever reason.

“We were dating for three months before I got a call from him, telling me he was in jail and needed me to come pick him up. It was his second DUI.”

I wince, hearing that. Okay, so his ex was an addict. I’m starting to see the direction he’s going, and it doesn’t really bode well for me.

“He got probation. No jail time. More community service, and things were good again between us. He went to meetings. He was sober and happy. I thought...” He wipes at a tear that’s fallen, and it nearly breaks me. I can feel the weight of what he’s telling me before he even opens his mouth to speak. “I thought our love had fixed him.”

I close my eyes briefly, letting his words wash over me. A pit in my stomach forming because he’s comparing me with Pete, whether he wants to or not. It’s part of him. “What happened?”

He sniffs. “What usually does. I knew he was drinking again a few months later. I could smell it on him. He was moody and high-strung. We started this dance of him checking in and out of rehab and going to meetings. He would cry and beg me not to leave him. He told me I could fix him, only me, and I thought I could.”

Damn it.I want to hold him and tell him that whatever happened wasn’t his fault, but that’s not something you believe just because someone tells you. Believe me, I know better than anyone.

“When he would get really drunk, he became mean. Really mean.” I stiffen at that, and I can see Phillip is shaking. So not giving a shit about the consequences, I move over to him and wrap my arm around him. He leans in without hesitation, and I hold onto his trembling body. “He got abusive. It’s not like on television though, not like what I’ve seen anyway. He didn’t beat me to a pulp and put me in the hospital—though I guess that could have happened eventually.” He chokes on a sob. “But he would punch or slap me, just out of nowhere. Not all the time, and it surprised me every single time.”

Pain tears through me as memories of my mom boil up to the surface, and I can’t push them away. “My mom used to hit too when she was really drunk or high.” He sniffs again, wiping a tear from his face and paying attention to me. “I felt so dumb. When I was younger, and she was still bigger than me, it hurt more physically. But then I got so much bigger than she was that it barely left a mark.”

“Except here,” he says, covering my heart with his hand.

“And here,” I say pointing to my head. “I’d get so mad at her and so confused about why she couldn’t just love me. Why she needed to hurt me and I wanted to hurt her back.” He doesn’t look frightened at all when I say that. “But I couldn’t. She was my mom. All I could do was shield the kids from it, and when it became too much, I just became her.”

“That’s not true,” he says firmly.

“It is. I gave up because it all hurt too much. I just repeated the pattern. I know my grandfather was an abusive bastard. Only met him once, but it stuck with me. She barely talked about him, but what she told me confirmed it.”

“You’re breaking the pattern now, Kellan.”

“I saw the way you looked at me when I told you that I stopped regularly going to meetings.”

He shakes his head, and I reach up to wipe his cheek, my hand coming away wet with his tears. “You’re not Pete. I trust you to make your decisions, and you do have it under control. You’re always under control, Kellan. I see it. You’re not anything like him.”

“What happened with him?” I push my hand through his hair and look into his eyes. “Tell me.”

“He came home drunk, really drunk. Not trying to hide it. Stumbling down. And I had just had it. I called him out for drinking again, and he hit me really hard. My eye swelled up instantly, and I thought for sure he had broken something. I was so mad at him. I was so tired.” My fingers flex in his hair, but I’m careful not to hurt him. “I told him to leave and never come back. That we were through. And he just left. Which was not at all what I was expecting, but I was relieved.” His eyes close, and more tears fall. He’s stunningly beautiful, even in his agony, and I can’t stop looking at his face. “I went to the bathroom to look at my eye and see if I needed to get medical attention. I cleaned it up a little, and I didn’t think I did. But when I came back out, I noticed my keys were gone. He must have grabbed them on the way out, but I didn’t notice.”

“What did he do?”

He sobs. “He crashed my car, not even a full block away from my apartment. Drove right into a building. Luckily, it was abandoned, and no one else was hurt. But he was pronounced dead at the scene.”

I hold onto him and let him have a moment to cry, to really feel it and hopefully to let it go. He’s been holding onto this guilt for too long, and it wasn’t his fault.

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