Page 19 of Decked By The Grumpy Golem
"Stop." The word comes out rough and the air around me shimmers with heat.
"No, I won't stop. You need to hear this." Ernesto steps closer, and I can see the fury burning in his dark eyes. "If you're going to hurt her again, if you're just here to mess with her head and then disappear like you did before, then stay the hell away. Leave her alone and let her move on with her life."
"You think I wanted to hurt her?" The question explodes out of me, and my control finally snaps. "You think leaving her was easy?"
For the first time in ten years, I say it out loud. All of it.
"I left because I loved her," I continue, my voice cracking with the weight of a decade's worth of buried truth. "Because I knew I could never give her what she deserved. Lucia had dreams. She wanted to leave for college, she wanted to travel and see the world. She wanted more than this small town could offer her."
I swallow, then say the part that hurts out loud. “And I couldn’t give this to her. I knew I could never leave Saltford Bay. Not with my father gone and my mother relying on me.”
The heat radiating from my skin makes the air shimmer like a mirage, and I can see sweat beading on Ernesto's forehead despite the cold.
"I knew that if I asked her to stay here with me and give up on her dreams, she would have," I say, my voice raw. "She would have given up everything for me, and I couldn't live with that. So I made the choice for both of us."
I close my eyes, remembering. Lucia in her midnight-blue dress, so beautiful it hurt to look at her. The way she smiled when I told her I loved her. The trust in her eyes when she said she loved me too. How right it felt to hold her, to be with her that way, like every piece of my life had finally clicked into place.
"Golems are made of stone," I whisper, heat and pain mixing in my blood, turning into a potent poison. "It’s not in our nature to change. We mate for life. One woman, one heart, forever. "
The confession hangs in the air between us, raw and devastating. Ernesto stares at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
"I knew Lucia was my mate the moment I saw her when we were just kids. I also knew that keeping her here for my sake would break her. She’s talented and independent and smart. She deserved to be free."
"So you decided for her," Ernesto says, and there's something like understanding in his voice now. "You made yourself the villain so she could be the victim."
"I made myself nothing so she could be everything." I drop onto the workbench, suddenly exhausted. "I don't deserve her. I never did. She deserves someone ten times better than me."
Ernesto leans toward me despite the heat radiating from my skin, then pats me on the knee.
"You're right," Ernesto says bluntly. "You don't deserve her."
The words should sting, but they don't. They're just the truth I've been carrying for too long.
"Just like I don't deserve Candy," he continues. "Your father didn't deserve your mother, either. My boy Mateo sure as hell doesn't deserve that beautiful troll wife of his. I’m sorry that your dad wasn’t there to tell you this, Gideon, but we never deserve women."
I look up at him, confused by the sudden shift in his tone.
"You know what the difference is between you and me?" Ernesto asks. "I wake up every morning and try to be the man my wife deserves, even though I know I'll never measure up. I work my ass off to give her reasons to keep loving me, even though I can't understand why she chose me in the first place."
He leans even closer, his voice growing gentler but no less intense.
"That's what men do, Gideon. Real men. We don't run away because we think we're not good enough. We stay and we fight and we do our damned best to become worthy of the love we've been given. Anything else is just being a coward."
The words hit me like more than any shouting or insult ever could, and I feel something crack open between my ribs. All these years, I've told myself I was being noble. Selfless. Protecting Lucia from a life she didn't want.
But maybe I was just protecting myself from the possibility of not being enough.
Ernesto gets up, then pats rock dust from his pants.
"She was the best thing that ever happened to you," Ernesto says, heading for the door. "And you let her go."
He pauses with his hand on the doorframe, throwing one last warning over his shoulder.
"But she’s here now. Don't make the same mistake twice."
The door closes behind him with a soft click, leaving me alone with the wreckage of my workshop and a truth I've been running from for longer than I care to consider.
I sink forward, burying my face in my hands, his words echoing in my ears.
