Page 63 of Wild Child
Did she feel the weight of what that encompassed? Could she know, in just two words, how deeply I meant what I said?
She blinked and studied me, then she said, "Don't be. You did the right thing, Dev. Your parents needed you."
Her exoneration didn't feel as good as I'd hoped.
"I should have told you about their debts."
"I wish you would have," she murmured. She looked away first, then kept walking as if she didn’t know what to say. The slow crunch of twigs and grind of rocks beneath her feet was the only sound for several heavy moments. I followed, lost in her footsteps and my thoughts.
"And you're happy now?" I asked.
The slightest hesitation came before she said, "Yes, of course."
"If I hadn't left Pineville and we went to college together according to our plan, would you have stayed in school?"
Her brow wrinkled. "I don't know. If you'd stayed, Dev, everything would have been different. We could have found a place together. Gone to classes together. I wouldn't have been in that apartment or—"
"Exactly."
"What do you mean?"
My heart beat firm against my chest now, as if I'd been running. For three years, I'd wanted to make this point. For three years, I'd wanted her to see my side of this whole dilemma. Now it was my chance, and I prayed she'd come far enough into adulthood to understand. Or to at least consider my angle.
"If I had been at the university with you, would you have taken self-defense classes?"
"No."
“Would you have ever been on your own?”
“Well . . .” She hesitated, then shook her head. “No.”
"You might still have finished college becauseIwas there. Even if you were miserable, you wouldn't have left, would you? Even if it wasn't right, you would have stayed because I stayed.”
Her mouth remained partially open for several seconds. Finally, she gave a reluctant nod. Her honesty filled me with hope.
"You would have stayed forme no matter how much you hated it. Never would have gone to the Outfitters and played in the mountains and learned all of this stuff about yourself. Right?"
Storms built in those beautiful emerald eyes and I let them build. Something charged the air between us, intense and hot and building like a thunderstorm. Ellie licked her lips.
“Maybe."
"I had to go, Ellie. We had to do something apart so we could come back together." My voice thickened with intensity. "We relied on each other too much. We would have resented it at some point. Somewhere in the future, we would have broken apart because of that resentment, but then it may never have been repaired.Wemay never have healed. I could see it. I wanted us to find ourselves first."
Her eyes had gone wide and a little distant, as if she reviewed things in her mind. Did memories and circumstances play through her mind the way they had with mine? Because they had haunted me at almost every step of my adult life.
Did she see it all so differently now?
"I'm sorry," I said again. "I should have told you my thoughts, my parents' troubles. If I had been transparent with all of this, those terrible years would have been easier on both of us. But I was weak, Ellie. I didn't have the strength and courage to do that. So I took the coward’s way out and I didn't say anything. I just . . . disappeared because I thought it would be easier."
My chest tightened with the power of finally letting that out. Now, she had to decide what to do with it, and I wouldn't blame her if she hated me a little.
"It wasn't an easy path,” she said.
"I know. Because seeing what happened to you as a result of my decisions totally sucks. Without knowing what you went through, I still hated it every moment of every day. But it felt right at the time.”
Ellie's wide eyes remained frozen in muted disbelief. Finally, she nodded. I could see the implications and layers of what I'd just said slowly settling in, and I didn't want this pleasant part of the mountains to stay in this odd tension. I started to walk again, and she followed at my side. Silence followed for several minutes before I couldn't stand it anymore.
"So," I let out a punctuated breath. "You came back to Pineville after college. Then what happened?”
