Page 65 of For Her Own Good

“Aye, well, mine is… There was a reason I left all those years ago. And it was you.”

* * *

Starla

This is what it must feel like to get slapped in the face with a freshly caught fish. Mortified, hurt, shocked, and slimy all over. That’s what I’m experiencing in the instant Lowry makes one of my worst nightmares a reality.

I’d always feared I was the reason he left, always believed it was my fault. I’ve used all of the skills I’ve picked up in twenty or so years of therapy to be rational about it, but it’s stuck around like cigarette smoke or cat pee in carpets: no matter how much you try to scrub it away or cover it up, it’s always fuckingthere.

Now he’s confirmed it—my fault. I was the reason. He didn’t beat around the bush or try to couch it in kinder terms. Oh, no, for once, his psychobabble bullshit has abandoned him, and at the worst possible time.Really could’ve used some coddling right about now, but thanks. This heart-shredding shame will work too.God, I want to crawl under my coffee table and curl up there until…forever. For-fucking-ever because life is getting too big for me and I can’t handle it.

My brain and my body are having a hard time processing this shock to my system, and all I can do is laugh and look at my hands. “You know, I’d kinda hoped that wasn’t true?”

Turns out, it was. I asked for too much, practically begged for things I couldn’t have, and it’s no wonder Lowry ran away. Who wants that kind of responsibility? Who can handle those kinds of soul-sucking demands? Who wants to be a party to this big of a disaster? Not even the most patient, well-intentioned, and steadiest man alive.

I wish I’d known this before. I wish I’d made him show me his first. Because there’s no way I would’ve given all of myself to him like that if I’d known he couldn’t handle far less than that. Why did he even come back? Why did he even start this? Why, why, why? The little inside me is throwing a fit, stomping and throwing shit because this all seems so wildly unfair. But I’m not going to let him see that part of me again because apparently he can’t take it when I’m desperately needy. Fine, that’s fine.

“Starla, I—”

“No. I don’t want to hear anything else. I do wish you’d go. Because if you couldn’t handle what I needed then, you sure as hell won’t be able to handle what I need now.”

I haven’t even told him about Tad and my father’s company and these looming decisions I’m supposed to be making, this business I’m supposed to be running but instead am finding myself paralyzed—because who wants to be a failure? Who wants to ruin lives because they made a bad decision? Not this girl, but I’m also not capable of managing a multibillion-dollar corporation because as much as I’d like to deny it, on any given day, my mental health is like a house of cards. Could be blown over by a stiff breeze at any moment. Goddammit. God-fucking-dammit.

I won’t, will not, let Lowry see me cry again. I will swallow down all the tears, bite them back until my lip is bloody if I have to, but I will not cry in front of this man again. Now I’m mad about everything. I’m mad that he brought me my favorite Chinese takeout. I’m mad that he traded me when it became apparent I preferred his food. I’m angry that he tucked me into bed, and I’m absolutely furious he let me call himdaddyand play a skittish virgin when we fucked.

“Sure, let me bare my soul and all of my secrets, intimate yourself into the core of my body, and then tell me it’s my own fucking fault you abandoned me.”

Okay, so I’m not going to cry, but apparently I’m going to yell.

He’s a blur of green and grey and ginger hair because the tears in my eyes have rendered him out of focus, so I scrub my fists over them, and apparently I’m standing now.

“How dare you. How fucking dare you. You were supposed to protect me and care for me and you left without a goddamn word and now you’re going to tell me it was my fault? No, thank you.”

“I don’t think you understand.”

Wow, does he look miserable. But I’m too angry to care. What did he think was going to happen when he told me? That I’d laugh, we’d clink champagne glasses on a yacht or some shit and then we’d fuck? Does he not know me better than that?

“You’re right. I don’t understand. Aren’t you supposed to be Saint Lowry or some shit? You’re the worst. The absolute worst and I hate you. I hate you.”

There she is. Little Starla is so mad she can’t even access her grown-up vocabulary anymore. She is—I am—hurt. All the way down. I wish I had a door to slam, but I live in a studio and my bathroom has a pocket door and my closet doors slide. It’s enough to make my frustration and fury boil over, and I want to hit something, but there’s nothing to hit and I’m fuming and mortified and tired, and I can’t anymore.

He’ll leave when he leaves, and short of calling the police or my doorman, there’s not much to do about it. I don’t feel like causing more of a scene than I already have, and Lowry doesn’t actually make me fear for my physical safety, so I’ll sit on my couch and tuck my knees up to rest my head on, wrap my arms around my shins, and make it clear that we’re done here. I’ll be a little Starla egg until he leaves. Again.

Except he doesn’t leave. He sits next to me. Doesn’t touch me, perhaps sensing I might punch him if he did, but still quite close.

“Starla. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to understand it that way. Because that’s not what I meant, at all. I left because of you, but it wasn’t your fault. There’s a distinction, and I should’ve made it. I apologize for making you feel like…”

He makes a frustrated noise.

“You might hate me as much for this, maybe more, and I’d deserve it. I do deserve it, because it was never okay and it still isn’t, and I oughtn’t have started something with you under false pretenses but… For fuck’s sake, Star.”

Anguish, that is what’s coloring his voice, and I maybe turn my head a tiny bit so I can sneak a glance at him from over my knee. He looks desolate, racked with suffering, raking his hands through his hair. I’m not ready to offer him anything yet—no succor, no acceptance—but I am curious. And the way he can’t even spit it out… I’ve never seen him such a mess.

“So, why don’t you tell me why you really left, if it wasn’t my fault? I thought I broke you. Asked too much of you and you couldn’t stand it, so you left for Chicago. Stopped even working with kids and adolescents altogether. Why’d you do that? If it wasn’t my fault, what did you do it for?”

* * *

Lowry

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