Page 106 of Lighting the Lamp
Her mouth opens and closes as she lifts a hand like she’s about to press her palm to my chest and check if I’m still in there, but she stops halfway, dropping her arm and pressing her lips into a thin line. Her entire body goes tight with restraint, and then I see the fury rise. It burns through the panic on her face, devouring the confusion, until all that’s left is raw, hurt fire.
“What the hell,” she seethes. “You’ve been here this whole time?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve been here in your condo, and you didn’t call? Didn’t text? Didn’t tell me what was happening?”
“I—”
“No.” Her voice shakes, high and brittle and sharp with betrayal. “You don’t get to start with ‘I.’ You don’t get to stand there and act like you’re surprised I showed up when you dropped off the face of the fucking planet.”
She pushes past me into the apartment. The air shifts with her as if her presence has weight, and the room’s real again just because she walked into it.
“You disappeared, Beau,” she says, spinning around. “You vanished. And I tried to stay calm, I tried to be patient, but what the hell was I supposed to think? You ignored every check-in. You sent one-word replies as if I were a stranger who never mattered.”
“You did.” My voice catches. “You do. God, Alise, you do.”
“Then why did you shut me out?” She’s shaking now—hands, voice, everything. “Why the hell did I have to find out about Mercer being fired and Cooper taking over as head coach from Darius yelling at the TV like it was breaking news? Do you know what that felt like? Sitting there, hearing that, and realizing you already knew. There was no way you didn’t, and you still didn’t say a word.”
Her eyes fill with tears, but she blinks fast, refusing to let them fall. I take a step toward her, the need to comfort her and make all the pain go away overwhelming. She recoils as if I slapped her. That single step back from me, like I’ve become something she can’t trust, is the worst pain I’ve felt since the last flare ripped through my body like wildfire.
“I thought maybe you were hurt,” she says, her voice trembling with too much restraint. “Maybe you were mad because I said something wrong. Maybe you were sick of waiting for me to decide. I’ve replayed every moment we’ve spent together since that kiss like a fucking post-game review, trying to figure out where it all fell apart.”
“I didn’t want—” I try to explain, but she shatters before I can get the words out.
“I didn’t want to smother you!” she screams, the sound ricocheting off the walls. “I didn’t want to make it worse. So, I stayed back and waited. I trusted that if you needed me, you’d show up. And you didn’t.”
Her hands ball into fists at her sides, nails digging crescent moons into her palms. She’s trembling, not like she’s cold, but like something inside her is about to rupture. The silence that follows is unbearable. I don’t breathe. I can’t, because I’m the one who did this. I did the one thing she told me she was afraid of. I made her feel like she was too much when she’s always been the only thing keeping me from drowning.
I take a step toward her, but she flinches away again like her body’s still braced for impact, and I’m something to protect herself from now. That guts me, a quiet, internal tear like something rips loose in the center of my chest and keeps tearing, deeper and deeper, until I’m not sure there’s anything left.
I did this because I love her so much, I don’t know where I end and she begins. And now she’s standing here, broken because of me, staring like she doesn’t recognize the man in front of her anymore. And maybe she shouldn’t, because right now, I don’t either.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you?—”
“But you did!” she screams, her voice cracking like lightning through a brittle sky. “You’re hurting me right now.”
Her chest is rising too fast, shoulders tense, fingers flexing at her sides like she’s bracing to be hit, but the only thing striking her is the truth I’ve made her live with. She looks like she’s ready to bolt and leave me standing in the wreckage of everything I didn’t say. And the worst part is, I would deserve it.
I take a step forward, hands raised in surrender, but she stumbles back, eyes wide with disbelief. With pain.
“You don’t get to do that,” she spits, voice trembling. “You don’t get to vanish and then touch me like I’m yours.”
I flinch because she is right. I don’t deserve any of this. A chance to make amends. A second chance to prove to her I’m all in, but mostly, I know deep in my soul that I don’t deserve her.
“Every day, I waited for you to call.” Her voice breaks open on that word, breath hitching like a sob caught in her chest, but it refuses to come out. “I checked my phone like it was keeping me alive because one word from you could stop the ache.”
I can’t breathe. My lungs burn, my chest feels as if it’s caving in. She takes a shaky breath, and it sounds rough as it drags through her throat on the way out.
“I still wanted you, even when it felt like bleeding out.”
I can feel the pulse in my neck hammering. My jaw tightens, my hands twitch at my sides, and my skin feels too tight, like my body is rejecting the space between us.
“I didn’t know how to let you in,” I say, hoarse. “I didn’t want to drag you down with me.”
“You don’t get to make that choice for me.”
She says it with fire, but her voice trembles on the last word. And for the first time, she doesn’t move when I step toward her.
