Page 67 of Unholy Confessions
When we pull into the driveway, I see her car already waiting, and my heart nearly stops. She's here. She's actually here. Sitting on the front steps with her head in her hands, and even from here I can see her shoulders shaking.
She's crying. Because of me. Again.
"Go," Mom says softly, turning to squeeze my knee. "We'll give y'all some time. We'll catch up with you tomorrow."
I know they want to see her too, want to know she's okay, but they understand that this conversation needs to happen first. That there are things Montgomery and I need to say to each other before we can pretend everything is normal.
I get out and walk toward her on unsteady legs, my whole body trembling with nerves and emotion. She looks up when she hears the car door slam, and the expression on her face nearly brings me to my knees.
Relief, love, fear, uncertainty, pain – it's all there, written across the face I've missed more than my next breath. She looks thinner than when I left, like she hasn't been eating enough. There are dark circles under her eyes that suggest she hasn't been sleeping well. She looks like she's been hurting as much as I have, and that knowledge cuts through me like a knife.
She stands when I get close, and for a moment we just stare at each other across the impossible distance of everything that's happened. Five weeks might as well be five years for how much has changed, how much we've both been through.
Then she breaks, tears streaming down her face as she runs to me and throws herself into my arms. I catch her, holding her tight against me, and I'm crying too, harder than I have since I was a kid.
"I thought I'd never see you again," she sobs against my chest, her fists clutching at my shirt like she's afraid I'll disappear.
"I thought you wouldn't want to," I whisper back, my voice completely destroyed. "I thought you'd realize you were better off without me."
We hold each other in my driveway, both of us crying, both of us shaking, both of us trying to bridge the gap that five weeks of silence has created between us. She feels so small in my arms, so fragile, and I hate that I'm the reason she feels that way.
Chapter 32
Montgomery
Montgomery
Being in his arms feels better than it ever has. God, I've missed him so much it physically hurt, like someone had carved out a piece of my chest and left me to bleed. "I love you," I whisper as I rub my cheek against his shoulder, breathing in the scent I've been dreaming about for weeks.
He smells different now. Clean, but different. Less like the stench of sweat that was permeating from him every time I used to see him. Instead he smells more like soap and fresh air and something I can't quite identify. Recovery, maybe. Hope.
"I love you, too. I've missed you so much I couldn't breathe sometimes." His voice is destroyed with emotion, rougher than I remember, like he's been crying or screaming or both. His arms tighten around me like he's afraid I'll disappear if he doesn't hold tight enough. "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again. I was so scared you'd realize you were better off without me."
The words hit me like a physical blow because there were moments – dark, desperate moments in the middle of the night when the missing him felt like dying – when I wondered the same thing. When Hayden's voice echoed in my head, asking why I was waiting for someone who might never come back.
Truth be told, there were moments I wondered that too, moments when the pain was so overwhelming I considered just letting go. But seeing him now, feeling him solid and real and alive in my arms, I know I could never have done it. I could never have just walked away from this, from us, from what we have.
"We have to talk," I say softly, even though it kills me to pull away from him. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to just hold him and pretend the past five weeks never happened, pretend we can just pick up where we left off. "The way things ended with us..."
"I know." His arm trails down my arm, fingers trailing fire across my skin even through my sleeve, before his fingers close around mine. The minute he feels it, his whole body goes still. "You're wearing one?"
The white straw paper ring, worn soft from me twisting it nervously, sits on my fourth finger of my left hand where a real ring should be. Where I used to fantasize his ring would be someday, back when the future felt certain and safe.
"Yeah," I whisper, fresh tears spilling over as I look down at the pathetic little thing. "I wanted you to know how much you were missed. I've made them since the night you left, when I couldn't stop crying and I needed something, anything, that connected me to you. I haven't taken them off since."
He makes a sound like he's been punched, wrapping me up in his arms again and palming the back of my head with his hand. "You were too, baby. God, you were missed every second of every day. I wrote you letters I'll never send, practiced conversations we'll never have. But I know we have a lot to deal with."
Letters. The thought of him sitting somewhere, pouring his heart out onto paper for me, makes my chest tight with longing and pain. What did he say in those letters? Did he tell me he loved me? Did he explain why he had to disappear? Did he promise to come back?
"We do..." He leads me over to the porch swing his mom bought last summer, the one where we used to sit and talk for hours about everything and nothing before all this happened. Now it feels like sacred ground, this place where we shared so many quiet moments before everything went to hell.
We sit next to each other, close enough that our knees touch, and I can already feel the words building in my chest, the ones that are going to destroy us both. What I'm about to do, I'm terrified I'm going to regret for the rest of my life, but judging by the devastation already growing in his dark eyes, he knows this is coming.
He looks different. Healthier, cleaner, more present than he's been in months. His eyes are clear, focused in a way they haven't been since before everything started falling apart. His hands aren't shaking. The constant tension in his shoulders is gone. He looks like the RJ I fell in love with, the one who existed before the addiction took hold.
And that makes what I have to say so much harder.
"Montgomery..."
