Page 33 of If Only You Hurt

“I just didn’t know how to handle everything. It’s weighed on me this entire time, but I didn’t know how to tell you. Each time I opened my mouth to confess, I just felt like the happiness you were feeling at that moment would be tarnished. The longer I held off, the longer I was worried you’d be upset with me.”

He keeps looking at me, those vibrant aqua eyes dimmed slightly, taking in everything, but also looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me at all. He’s taking in my demeanor, the way I am fiddling with my hands, much like my sister Ellie does when she’s uncomfortable, yet he doesn’t say a word.

The discomfort is growing in me. I don’t know what Grant looks like when he’s disappointed in me. I’ve never been the one to hold that type of reaction from him.

He takes another long breath in, letting it out, the tension remaining in his shoulders.

“Let me get this straight. The day you wanted to tell me ended up being the most tragic day you’ve lived through? A day you lost your friend and our child. My child. A child I didn’t know about, let alone a child I never got to mourn.”

He’s speaking, not giving me any room to interject or confirm. At this point, they’re statements, as if he’s making a mental list of all these pivotal points in my life that intersect with his. Most of all, listing all the ways I have broken his heart with my confession today.

“Add to that, you’ve been around me for years, in reality, over a decade, not even uttering a word. You simply carried this with you and didn’t think I deserved to know?” He comes to some sort of realization, and then his face is stone.

“If I hadn’t pushed you right now, would you have ever told me? If I didn’t come begging to start a relationship with you, would you have wanted me to know? Did you not think I deserved to know?”

Each question feels like a dagger to the heart.

The problem is, I can’t answer that with complete honesty. I don’t know why. I was so used to this loss being a part of my past that I never thought sharing it mattered as time kept passing.

My silence is confirmation for him. Without words, he moves around me and starts walking in the direction of Ellie’s house.

I follow, not uttering a word. Once we reach my sister’s place, he takes the steps up two at a time, waiting at the top and using his own key to get into the brownstone.

He hurries upstairs, and I can’t help but follow him. We get to my room, and he immediately starts grabbing clothes and shoving them into his bag.

“Grant, what are you doing? Why are you leaving? We need to talk about this.”

“So now you want to talk?” His words echo off the walls. Grant has never directed this tone toward me before, but I can see he’s shaking with anger.

I can’t help the tears that are falling down my face again, watching someone I love hurt and knowing that I’m the cause of that.

“Laney, I have lived each and every second that I can remember for the two of us. Without knowing, I paved my life to include you. You’ve always been my center and my light, but right now, I feel like you’re my storm. Right now, you are throwing me into a hell I didn’t know I belonged in.

“I get it; my reaction feels foreign to you. But please take a moment and realize the weight you just dropped on me. You’ve gotten ten-plus years to live with this reality. I’ve had a few minutes. I need to wrap my head around this. I need to find some space for myself to think this through. I need to process what you’ve said. I need to understand the reality you just painted me.”

My shoulders fall. I feel defeated. I did what I thought was best for me without really caring about how this might impact him. I made a decision to keep that loss my own, not including him in something he made with me.

I know what he’s saying. I’ve hurt him, and I’ve never been the one to hold that title. I have always been his biggest cheerleader, and he is mine. But today, I was the bearer of bad news. I allowed my pain to simply be that—mine.

I didn’t allow this to be our pain, and I get that now. I chose so much of that pain to be seen as only something that affected me and not both of us. In many ways, the effects of the shooting were mine to harbor, but this could have been something we shared together. I could have let him in instead of pushing him out.

I nod, unable to form words. It’s at that moment I realize my life is nothing without Grant by my side. He wanted to start something more with me less than an hour ago, and what I did may have wrecked that in a way I can never mend. He wanted tomorrow, and I never gave him yesterday.

He pauses his packing and looks up at me. It’s hard to see the utter devastation in his face.

His shoulders sag and he starts to speak, “You’re my compass, Laney. You’re the direction I’m always running toward. Don’t you get that? In your little secret, not only do I realize that I was not a priority for you to tell, but I am someone you chose to keep in the dark. You should have wanted to share this with me. I would have held your pain with mine. I would have nurtured it. Instead, you kept it all to yourself.”

He returns to shove things into his duffle bag, and something about it feels so final.

“I love you.” That’s all I can get out before I feel a sob break free.

He looks up at me, once again pausing his packing.

“I love you too. I think you need to figure out if my love is enough for you. I know yours has always been enough for me. You’ve always been enough for me, even when you, yourself, didn’t feel whole.”

He waits an extra moment, then he moves past me and walks out of my room.

He needs to grieve. Not only that, he has to find a way to see me and know that I want to walk alongside him in this lifetime. He’s my everything, but with my actions, I have shown him the opposite.

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