Page 84 of Inevitable

My head was spinning and I tried desperately to block out his words that were starting to make sense to me. I wasn't ready to thaw and let my ice wall fall. I clung to it, encasing myself to keep out the grief that assailed me daily.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Dawson turned back to me, his hands in his pockets. “My teammates are throwing me a birthday party this weekend at the football house. You and Rhys are invited, and tell him he can bring a date too. I know you probably won't want to come, but it might be good for you. Bash will be there if you want to see him…I think if you read the letter you might be persuaded,” he coaxed in a knowing voice.

“Wait, do you know what it says?” I asked, somehow annoyed at the thought that Bash had shown someone else the letter intended for me. My worry was allayed when Dawson smirked and shook his head.

“Nah, man. I wouldn't invade like that. I do have some limits,” he chuckled lightly. “I just know Bash and I saw his face when he was writing it. Whatever he wrote you, he poured his heart out, that's for sure. So even as a favor to me, please read it?” He gave me a small smile and headed out. I stood staring at the door for a few minutes, slowlyprocessing everything.

“So are you going to? Read it, that is?” Rhys stepped out from his bedroom, obviously having overhead the conversation. I shrugged, my throat closed off and uncooperative in forming sentences.

He sat on the couch and motioned for me to join him. “I know you're scared, Micah. I absolutely get why you'd be hesitant and afraid to open yourself back up to him, but are you truly prepared to spend your life without him?” His violet eyes penetrated mine, willing me to be honest with him and myself.

“Rhys, I…how can I trust that he'll be honest from now on? Bash played me and made me feel so fucking stupid for believing him. I believed him blindly, never once doubting him, but I was wrong. It was like he was ashamed and freaked out about hooking up with me that he wanted to forget it ever happened. That's what being with me drove him to. He says he fell in love with me, but what if I was just the easy option? What if he convinced himself he loved me because I was his best friend and he mistook being comfortable with being in love?” I voiced all the insecurities that had plagued me since I discovered his betrayal.

“That's not true, and deep down you know that. You're letting the embarrassment distort your thoughts and tell you thatyouwere the problem. Bash knows it was all him and his own issues that made him lie, not you. He looked at you like you were the planet keeping him in orbit, like you were all he could see. I noticed it every single time. It was honestly a little nauseating, but that's what Pepto Bismol's for,” Rhys teased, and I felt the ghost of a smile creep onto my face, the muscles rigid from recent disuse.

My one biggest fear jumped to the forefront of my mind, tumbling out of my mouth in a moment of weakness. “What if I forgive him and it's all ripped away from me again?” I whispered, the sound nothing more than a wisp of wind leaving my lips. “What if I take him back only to lose him all over again? I don't think I'd survive it a second time.”

Rhys looked at me with aching compassion. He gripped my hand tightly in his, and gave it a squeeze to draw my attention back to his face. “I get it. I really do. That is the most terrifying thing about falling in love. You put yourself in a uniquely vulnerable position to be completely broken. Handing over your heart to someone else means also offering it up to be crushed if things go badly. The rules of survival say that you never put yourself in that situation because your job is to protect yourself, avoid pain, and stay alive. However, all the normal rules don't apply when it's the One. When you find your One, you do whatever is necessary because your life doesn't make sense without them. It's a pale imitation of what life should be unless they are in it.Without them, everything is empty. So ask yourself…is Bash your One?”

He didn't stick around for my answer. He just squeezed my hand again and grabbed his keys off the table, leaving seconds later. Part of me wondered if he had left to give me some space and privacy to read Bash's note and figure out what I was going to do. He was a great friend like that.

All the air in my lungs left my body in a whoosh, my eyes clamping shut as I weighed the pros and cons of reading the letter. With my decision made, I opened the envelope carefully.

In it was a neatly folded paper and two glossy tickets with the words “Brené Brown Live” printed across the top.Holy shit, he didn't…

Bash had known about my near obsessive love for Brené Brown for years, and he often teased that she was the only woman who could make me go straight. A fascination with her was practically written in the psychology major course guide. The tickets were dated for late June right there in Austin, so he must have had them for a while. They had a small scrap of paper attached to them with Bash's writing on it.

M, these tickets were meant to be a housewarming gift to celebrate us moving in together. Take someone with you and have fun. You deserve it.

I blinked back the stinging in my eyes and shook my head vigorously to clear it of all the emotions like a human Etch-A-Sketch. I set the tickets down, and wondered briefly if I had made a mistake in opening the envelope. I figured not knowing would have been worse, so I took several steadying breaths and opened his note up.

Micah,

I've tried to write this letter so many times I lost track because I haven't been able to find the right words. This will be the last time I bother you, so I want to make sure I leave nothing unsaid.

The truth is I haven't been the man you fell in love with or deserve for a while. I could blame a lot of things, but at the end of the day, I let my own fear and cowardice get to me and I selfishly put them before you. I can't put into words how deeply I regret lying to you our first night together because I meant what I told you. Beingwith you was a gift that showed me just how far gone for you I was. You had been in my heart for years, and I had failed to see it.

The biggest truth I can give you now is tell you why I was so afraid. It wasn't Ainsley, or my dad, or any of the excuses I hid behind. The only thing I fear more than anything in this world is being without you. You became so important to my life at such a young age, I couldn't stand to lose you if things between us failed. I was scared to love you because I thought it would give us an expiration date. As my best friend, you were a sure thing, a guarantee. If we had been more, the security of knowing you'd always be there would have been gone. I didn't want to love you just to lose you.

When you told me you loved me that night, it changed me, Micah. You unlocked something in me that was so powerful and incredible, but I wasn't ready to face it. So I panicked and lied. I didn't trust that we would make it through, and that was my first mistake. There is nothing in this world I trust more than us together. You're my other half, my soulmate. I should have trusted that you would catch me when I fell, and I fell so hard for you.

I let my fear drive almost every decision I made, except when it came to choosing you. Choosing you was the one time hope became stronger than my fear and it was the best decision of my life. I was a coward when I decided to keep hiding my lies from you. I didn't deserve you, and I never fully will because it would take a hundred lives to be worthy of everything you are. All I have is one lifetime to give and it's yours. Every second of it would be devoted to giving you what you deserve. It would be a lifetime well spent.

If I have truly lost you, then my wish is for you to find love again. Iwant you to have endless days of joy and laughter and love, even if it's not with me. I hope you find someone who will love your light as well as your dark, and treat you as precious as the air they breathe. I pray that you both fall so deeply that you are spared even a heartbeat of pain for the rest of your days. I hope you find a love that transcends this life. You are that love for me, Micah.

I will love you from afar until my days end. I will always love you for being my best friend, my person, my safe place, my heart, and my home. My heart was made to be yours, even if you don't want it. It will continue to beat for you even if you are living for someone else.

Thank you for the years we spent together and for loving me as long as you did. Your love will stay with me forever, and I will treasure every moment we had.

Be happy, M&M. Always.

All my love, Bash

I read the letter more times than I could feasibly count. I read it so many times that the words started to lose their meaning, and my tears stained the page. I read well into the night after I had gone to bed without eating.

His words brought down every defense, every wall, every insurmountable obstacle that I had put in place to protect myself. In the space of one page, Bash had thawed my heart and set it on fire. His wish that I find someone else struck me so hard that I found it hard to breathe. It caused nausea to roll through my stomach because it was the very last thing on Earth I wanted. I couldn't hide behind any more walls to deny it.

Bash had my heart, and I didn't want to live without it. I didn't want to live without him. We were paralyzed by the same fears. The only difference was he had allowed it to take hold, and I had fought against it. When it came down to it, I knew that I could forgive him because a life spent without him wasn't a life I was interested in. It wouldn't be a life at all.

---