Page 91 of Caught in the Axe
He huffed. “Why are you defending him?”
“Because someone has to. Don’t think for one moment he had it easy. Your lives have been vastly different, sure, but you and I both know that you got the better deal.” I hugged my knees tighter. “You have a loving mother and four brothers. Cole was the leftover no one wanted.”
“Bullshit. My mother wanted him. We all accepted him.” He fisted his hands on his thighs. “And it’s not myjob to heal his childhood wounds, anyway. He’s a grown man. He can get therapy like the rest of us.”
“You’re right.” I pressed my lips together and nodded. “That’s on him. And I hope that one day he’ll get there. I’m not asking you to forgive him, but I am asking you to show him some empathy.”
He grunted down at the floor in front of us, which I took as a signal to keep going.
“There was no cheating, there was no big fight, he didn’t hurt me. We just were not a good fit. We didn’t have the same values, and I never felt good enough.” I licked my lips and sighed. “He didn’t support my desire to finish my degree, and he was embarrassed that I worked as a waitress to pay my tuition.”
“There is nothing wrong with honest work, not that my entitled prick brother would know that.”
I glared at him. “Stop.” I waited for him to look at me before I continued. “You wanted the truth; I’m giving it to you. Stop bad-mouthing him. In the end, we wanted different things out of life. I should have seen it sooner, but for so long, I felt stuck and unable to leave.”
“Why?”
I picked at a piece of lint on the throw blanket and gave him a small smile. “Because I cared about him. And he needed me.”
“But your needs are just as important.”
“It’s easy to say that, but far harder to live it when you’ve spent your entire life doing what everyone else wants and believing your needs don’t matter.”
Owen bowed his head in silent understanding.
“We clung to one another. For eight difficult years. Wewere young, and we’d been tossed out into the world, doing our best to swim while also keeping one another from going under. He was pursuing his dream of playing pro hockey, and I was pursuing my dream of getting the hell out of this small town and making something of my life. So, for many years, we hunkered down and weathered the storm.”
I worried my bottom lip for a moment, wondering how vulnerable I should be. In the end, I chose to put it all out there. If I wanted to be with this man, then I needed him to see all of me.
“I blamed myself for our unhappiness. I thought if I made more of an effort, dressed up, made sure my makeup was perfect, hid behind the sweet façade I’d created long ago, and bent over backward, it would be enough. That he would love me the way I wanted to be loved and that our life would be perfect. It wasn’t, of course, and that’s not his fault. That’s my fault.”
I wasn’t honest about what I needed. What I wanted. For a long time, I blamed him for not being able to read my mind.
When, in reality, I had a lot of growing up to do. I needed to learn how to set boundaries and take the time to figure out what the hell I wanted out of life.
It had been my own fucked-up belief system that led me to feeling unseen and unloved.
So I worked like hell to deprogram all the toxic thought patterns.
“It’s taken a lot of work and reflection, but I learned to believe in myself and in my own abilities. I have to be my own hero, stand on my own two feet.”
He’d turned to face me now, his full focus intent on my face.
“I spent eight long years in a crappy relationship before I finally realized that Prince Charming wouldn’t show up and save me.”
He took my hand in his and brought it to his lips. “Lila,” he said, kissing my knuckles. “As the guy sitting here, watching you shine, it’s more than clear to me that this princess is going to save herself.”
Chapter 31
Owen
This was not the kind of relationship I’d hoped for with Lila, but I’d take whatever she was willing to give. For now.
Even if that meant keeping things quiet. No one despised the small-town rumor mill more than I did, but when it came to her, I couldn’t care less. Lila, on the other hand, was terrified of being discovered. She put up with a lot of shit as a kid and had watched her mom suffer from their judgment, so the last thing she wanted was to give the people of Lovewell a reason to criticize her.
But I was developing a complex. We had so little time together, and we were wasting it by hiding how we felt from the world.
She couldn’t be swayed, though, and I was too busy juggling my time with her with my day job and the sale of the company to argue.
