Page 120 of All Our Secrets

“You really are an idiot.” She hiccupped through her crying as she gripped my shirt. “You could have walked up to me at any point, admitted to me who you were… At any party Theodore took me to, anywhere you were, even the day of my fucking wedding—if you had reached out even once, I would have jumped and run with you. Iwaitedfor you to tell me until I no longer wished you were King. Don’t you get it? I prayed you were Silas. I needed you to be just Silas so I could atone for my sins after he died. But you abandoned me when you got scared.” She shoved my chest. “You’re a coward.”

Her words were a physical blow, and I staggered back a step. She blurred in my vision. It was everything I could have hoped for, more than I dreamed to believe, that she held such feelings for me. But God, it fucking hurt. To know I caused her the same pain I’d gifted myself for years. Her guilt, her desire to run from me after the vacation, I got it. I understood. Because of me, my Peyton—

By the time I wiped my eyes, she was bolting out of the room and rushing down the stairs. I followed on her heels. My knees nearly buckled going down the steps.

Because of me, Peyton and I had played a game with our lives. Because of me, she had been drowning in guilt.

I wiped my eyes again because she kept blurring. How could I do this? Seeing her hurtdestroyedme.

“God, I’m so fucking sorry, baby.”

She never turned or said anything, and that cut more than words could.

“I have loved you all these years. To me, you’ve always been mine. That loud chick burping in my ear every night. The chick who laughed like a hyena. She made me so terrified in my own skin that I lied to her to save myself from her rejection.” She kept going down the stairs, as if nothing I said reached her. “It was wrong of me to do that to us. To doubt you. But that woman who married my best friend, the one I so obviously gave the cold shoulder, she was mine too. I couldn’t look at you without seeing you as anything else. I had every intention of telling you the truth before Theo—”

She spun around. I had to stop abruptly to keep from colliding with her. “You expect me to believe you? After you went this long without coming clean? Now that I think about it, I’m a bigger fool than you. You never gave me anything. You held all the cards. You knew who I was, what I looked like, but never let me see you. Never gave me the chance to know you.”

“You don’t know what you do to me. You could put me in front of thousands of people, and I wouldn’t give a fuck what they thought. But you,” I wiped my face and sighed, “you prove to me over and over how many times you can bring me to my knees. I had a plan, you know, baby? Got this romantic notion. A thought I couldn’t ever get rid of. One day, if I ever grew a pair and met you, let you meet the real me, learn my identity, andseeme, it would have been the start of our forever.”

“But I did see you that day,” she whispered. “And you pretended not to know me, then lied when I asked. Hid your identity.”

I stepped closer. “I’ve regretted it every day. Losing you, our friendship, I couldn’t take it any longer.”

Her bottom lip trembled. “You never would have told me, would you?”

“I had every intention. Even before Theodore… When he died, it stopped me, but I planned on telling you—”

“I wish you weren’t King.” Without another look, she slipped out my front door.

I stood in silence by the car while she buckled her son in. The second she raised and shut the door, I stepped in front of the driver’s side door. She had to go. I had to give her this. But I’d learned the hard way that leaving Peyton was the worst mistake I could have ever made. I’d never give up out of fear again. I was prepared to wait however long it took.

“You can’t keep me here.”

“I made the mistake of hiding from you once. Now, no matter how many times you turn me away, I’ll never give up. You love me too. You don’t wait for someone you care nothing about.”

She closed her eyes. “Stop.”

I tried to reach out and wipe the tears from her face, but she batted my hand away. My chest tightened. “I won’t give up. Watching you with someone else was an agony I’ll never go through again. You’re mine. I’m yours, right? Despite the pain, that’s still true. I made a mistake and let it go too long. I’ll take your anger, but you’re not getting away from me. We’re not over.”

“We are.”

“No, we aren’t,” I repeated. “You’ll see.”

“Move.”

I stepped aside and watched her leave. It fucking hurt. I imagined what she must have felt like seeing me walk out of the bar that day, knowing with her soul that it was me, and everything blurred.

Everything fucking wouldn’t stop blurring. I couldn’t stop the tears.

_____

I rubbed my temple until Peyton’s voice mail beeped. “Answer my call, baby. I’m sorry. Please stop ignoring me.”

It’d been a week since she had run out of my house. A week of nothing more than seeing the outside of her house at night.

I dropped the phone on my desk and ran my fingers through my hair. There was nothing I could do or say to justify myself. I should have told her. How could I have been so stupid? The self-loathing never ended. All the what-ifs, all the things I should have done, drove me fucking crazy. To think Peyton would have been by my side all these years if I had grabbed her by the waist and told her who I was. Theodore might still be alive. He wouldn’t have had a reason to storm off on his bike in anger if I hadn’t let my feelings fester for so long.

I didn’t deserve Peyton. Nothing changed the past or my mistakes, but giving her up was impossible.

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