Page 60 of Surviving the Break
She reached up and pushed my hair back from my forehead, much like Ash had a tendency to do. “Well, why on earth not, honey?”
“I need this mess with Hayden behind me first. Free of baggage when I pledge my love to him. He might not believe it if I told him now anyway.”
“I reckon he already knows. You walk around him with it plastered on your handsome face.” She cupped my jaw. “Why don’t you come let your momma make you some honey-tea? I’ll put a little milk in it like I did when you were a boy.”
What I really wanted to do was crawl back into bed, but she was too adorable to resist with her eyelashes batting and her hands clasped together at her chest. She also wanted to make up for favoring Ash over me last night. “Okay, Momma. Sure.” I stroked her brown, wavy hair. Streaks of gray were making appearances here and there, but she looked so childlike, with eyes much like my own.
She took my hand and led me to the kitchen. “And you can sit in your favorite chair today.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said, and all five feet, one hundred and ten pounds of her bustled around the kitchen, humming.
“You remember when you used to have all them broken hearts? One mug of this tea would set you straight.”
I huffed. “Those weren’t broken hearts. They were stands against humanity.”
“Yes, well, your ‘stands’ were always the result of someone’s broken heart. Someone you cared for. So, same thing.” She clucked her tongue. “Remember that time you swore off Christmas because Ryan asked Santa to save his mom but the cancer took her anyway? We had a dickens of a time getting you to change your mind. You wouldn’t leave your room on Christmas day. We removed the TV from in there and said you’d get it back if you came down—”
“And I grabbed a book to read. I remember. In the end, you told me it wouldn’t be right to let Granddad celebrate his first Christmas without Nona alone.” I pointed an accusing finger at her. “You manipulated me.”
“You were always such a willful boy.” She carefully walked the hot cup of tea over to me. “There you go.” She kissed me and patted my head. “Make sure you fight just as hard to keep that man in there, you hear? Even if it means having to fight yourself.” She straightened, aiming a finger at the steaming mug. “Now don’t forget to blow.”
24
MAX
We left my parents’ house around noon. I drove, holding Ash’s hand across the center console. Pluto fell asleep in the back, apparently still jet-lagged.
Having them there didn’t rid me of my anxiety, but it helped.
I planned to give Hayden a piece of my mind. To let out everything I hadn’t gotten out that day. A purge. To ask the questions I never got answers to, in an effort to find closure. Amazing the things you began to question about yourself when something of this magnitude happened to you at the hands of the person who promised you forever. I believed it wasn’t my fault, but still, I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a small part of me that wondered if I’d done something wrong. Or if I could’ve done more right. Maybe I should’ve given him more time to explore. I’d been solid in who I was, but Hayden had always been slightly adrift. Did I not pay attention to his happiness? Were there signs that he needed something else?
There I went making excuses.
I grunted. It would be so like Hayden to have moved on and never looked back, while my life played out in the rearview mirror, leaving me the only one suffering. Obviously, my bitterness hadn’t faded; with time, it hardened.
I’d been charging Hayden for my unhappiness, but self-infliction could be blamed for a portion of my pain. Tiny little cuts of untruths, I’d told myself.
I never want to fall in love again.
I can’t trust anyone with my heart.
I’m unlovable.
All. Lies.
A new shame unfurled within me like a quiet storm building.How could I allow him to turn me into this thing I’d become?Then I remembered my mother's words from earlier. She’d told me to practice being kind to myself. She’d said, “You can’t forgive others until you’ve first forgiven yourself. A year is not that long of a time to grieve a lost love and a stolen future. Your time has not been wasted.”
I thought back on all my one night stands in Chadwick and what they offered me aside from release. A loveless exchange. Safety. But you didn’t sell your soul for something safe. You peddled it for something worth the risk. Risk was the opposite of safe.
I kissed the back of Ash’s hand. Now this was a man I could love. A man Ididlove. He scorched my soul with an honesty so raw that it nailed me to the cross. Reborn.
Forgiving wasn’t an easy thing. Easy to say, sure. But how did one truly let go? Would it be a feeling that poured over me? Or a feeling that poured out of me? A weight lifted, maybe? Because right then, in that moment, even with the man I loved next to me, a love that erased my doubts, I had an unexplainable urge to make Hayden see that I’d survived. To prove that without his love, I went on to be okay. I wanted to put on my best jeans, the ones that touched my ass just right, and my favorite white Henley that made my shoulders look as wide as the ocean. And then I wanted to strut into his space with an aloofness that didn’t seem rehearsed. The thought gave me butterflies.
When my need to prove and impress morphed into a need to wish him well and want the best for him,that’swhen my life would truly begin. And I longed to be free.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Ash asked.
I turned my attention back to the road. “Like what?”
