Page 88 of Ache for You (Slow Burn 3)
When it’s over and he asks what it was all for, I tell him the truth. Sort of.
“I need you to model for me.”
“Model? What, clothes?”
I deadpan, “No. Taxidermy animals. It’s my new hobby.”
He squints, confused. “Would I, like, hold them or something?”
“Dude. That was a joke. You’ve heard of those.”
“Oh right. Ha ha. Good one.”
He still looks confused. I stare at him, wondering how I never noticed his tendency to take everything literally.
It hits me in full force that I was so focused on the wedding I didn’t spend enough time considering what marriage to Brad would actually be like day to day. I wasted years daydreaming about one magical event without paying enough attention to who the man behind the handsome face really was.
Whoever coined the phrase “love is blind” was only half-right.
It’s deaf and stupid, too.
But could there be a silver lining to all the humiliation I suffered at his hands? Maybe instead of ruining my life, he actually did me a huge favor. Maybe he taught me the most important lesson of my life.
It isn’t the wedding that matters. Getting that piece of paper and saying “I do” can’t make right what’s fundamentally wrong.
Another revelation rocks me: Maybe I wasn’t in love with Brad himself . . . maybe I wa
s in love with an idea. Maybe I was in love with being in love, the worst possible foundation on which to build a marriage.
Maybe Brad wasn’t the one who screwed me over.
Oh God. I think I might have done that all by myself.
Watching me, Brad draws his blond brows together in worry and shifts his weight from foot to foot. “The way you’re looking at me is, um, kinda scary. Did I say something wrong?”
He’s a little kid. He’s just a big, goofy, self-centered kid who’s scared of his parents and can’t be alone.
I stare at him, struck by how obvious it all suddenly seems. Bradley Hamilton Wingate III isn’t a man. He’s a child in a grown-up’s body, playacting to get acceptance and love the only way he knows how, too insecure to stand on his own two feet.
Everything he’s ever done has been motivated by fear.
What a miserable way to go through life.
Aw, shit. And here I was determined to hate him forever.
Reeling from my epiphany, I say, “I’m still mad at you for being dishonest. But it’s not all your fault. I can’t hang all the blame on you, because I was busy being an idiot, too, just in different ways.” I take a deep breath. “So if you ever decide to come out to your parents, I’ll go with you. You won’t have to handle that conversation alone. Okay?”
His eyes round. His lower lip quivers. He stares at me in white-faced shock for what seems like a long time, then swallows. In a small voice, looking at his shoes, he says, “Okay.”
Then bursts into tears.
I’m not one of those people who can watch someone cry without giving them a hug. It’s an uncontrollable impulse. So, sighing, I put my arms around Brad and let him blubber on my shoulder until his tears have turned to sniffles and he’s red with embarrassment.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
“I’ve seen you cry more in the last week than I have in the entire time we were together.”
He whispers, “Tough guys aren’t supposed to cry.” He chews his lower lip and sniffles again, looking pathetic but also adorable.
