Page 68 of It Happened Back Then
My voice escalates in disbelief. “He said that to you? Those exact words?”
She nods. And I feelsick. “He got in your head,” I whisper. “And you believed him.”
“I was terrified, and you had everything ahead of you. Culinary school. A future. I didn’t want to be the reason you gave that up. So I told you to go. To date other people. I thought I was protecting you.”
I can’t speak. I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to go back in time and fix everything. But all I can do is whisper the truth that’s been choking me since I was eighteen. I knew leaving then was a mistake. We had it planned out; she was coming with me. I should have known there was more. I should have seen the signs.
Finally, I whisper, “I would’ve stayed.”
“I know,” she whispers back. “That’s why I didn’t tell you. Because Iknewyou would.”
And that? That shatters me more than anything else. Not because she was wrong to think it but because she wasright. I would have put everything on hold to be with her.
“You never gave me the chance to decide that for myself though, Blossom.”
“I know,” she says, voice shaking. “I’m so sorry. I really am. But you were settled on Seattle and then I lost the baby, and?—”
“I could’ve been there,” I snap, voice breaking. “It was my baby, too.”
Her tears spill, fast and hard. “I know what I took from you, and it wasn’t fair. And all these years, it sat in my mind. I needed you to go to school. I needed you to see what else was out there. I was already dealing with so many losses, and you didn’t deserve to clean up another.”
My throat aches, my chest burns. “It’s not about me cleaning it up; it’s about us walking through things together. It’s all I've ever wanted, Blossom. From the time we were ten, through your dad’s death, throughthis,I could have been there.”
Her voice drops to barely a whisper. “Please don’t hate me.”
I look at her and all I see is the girl I’ve loved my entire life. Scared, hurting, trying to do the right thing even when it broke her.
“I could never hate you.” I reach out, cupping her face in both hands. My thumbs catch her tears. “You don’t have to carry it alone anymore.”
She nods, and her tears don’t stop but this time, they don’t scare me. They break my heart in the best way. Because she’s not hiding anymore.
“I never stopped loving you,” I whisper.
“And I’ve loved you every day since I was ten,” she replies.
Then I kiss her. God, I kiss her like it’s the first time, like it’s the last time, like it’s every time I wanted to and couldn’t. I pour everything into her, every year we lost, every single piece of me.
We’re not two broken kids anymore. We’re a man and a woman with something real between us. We’re covering every loss and win over the last ten years, rewriting how we saw things and deciding how we’ll move forward together.
And this baby?
This baby is our new beginning.
~~
We satat the lake for I don’t know how long, and I had to go over everything she told me in my mind. So much started to make sense yet nothing did at the same time.
I remember thinking about things my dad said throughout the years. I wondered about him saying I needed to find a good girl and how it changed everything. Hearing her tell me how he spoke to her, though, that infuriates me.
The rain starts to fall so we run back to my truck. The ride back to my cabin is quiet, and I don’t even ask if she wants to come in. I skip her road completely. I need to have her in my space. Whether we live here together or not doesn’t matter. For tonight? She needs to be in my bed.
I take a breath and step inside.
She follows me and quietly says, “We came through the door this time.”
I chuckle. “We don’t have to sneak through windows anymore.” I shift slightly, arms wrapping around her, holdingher like she might disappear. Like she’s done to me so many times before. “I meant it, you know. Every word.”
“I know.”
