Page 30 of An Unexpected Everything
And now here he was, flesh and blood.
“I don’t know either. Because none of this seems real. From the moment you saved me on that cliff, it seems as though we’ve been living in a damn dream that I can’t wake up from and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it.”
“What do you want to do about it?”
I scowled before I began to pace, needing the distance from him. “I’m so angry that you did what you did, even if I can understand it. But being near you? I don’t know what to do, Weston.”
In answer, he reached out and gripped my elbow, freezing me. My heart beat in my throat and I stared into those gray eyes. “I’ve thought about you every damn day for eight years.Even when I told myself it would be better to move on and try to figure out how to live without you. I couldn’t, Bella. Even when I told myself that you’d moved on with someone who could treat you right. It was all I could do to not rage against that imaginary person. And now there’s arealflesh and blood person after you and I want to rip them limb from limb. Bella, I…I want you. I know it’s fucking stupid and complicated and we’ll both probably end up broken in the end, but I can’t stop thinking about you.”
My breath came in pants as he spoke, and my hands shook. It was all I wanted him to say, and I needed him to take back the words. “I spent my life trying to be what everyone needs. And I let you become the one person I could lean on until you weren’t there.”
“And I’ll hate myself until the end of time for how I treated you.”
I wanted to believe him.
I wantedhim.
And I couldn’t trust myself.
“How can I trust you? Trust these feelings every time I see you.” And I didn’t even know what those feelings were. Because I wasn’t in a place to even want this…connection. But here we were, my heart racing while standing in front of the man who broke me but who I never feared. “You’ve always been the obstacle. The one I always compared everyone to. And yet in the end, I realize that you left. With a note. I called. Texted. And you never responded. All you did was leave me in the cold. And now I know it’s because you were breaking. So now, every feeling of heartache and fear and anger that I had for years twisted into this guilt. Because you were dying inside, and I couldn’t be there because you didn’t trust me to be there.”
His eyes darkened and he reached out, but I took a step back, needing space. The devastation on his face nearly broke me butI needed to say the words. Because everything was different now and I didn’t know how to move forward.
“Bella.”
“Please let me finish because I’m trying to figure things out, Weston. Okay? Your family needed you. I above all people know that.But I loved you. And I would’ve helped in any way I could.”
Weston moved then, not giving me time to step away. He cupped my face, and I let out a shaky breath, everything that had slammed into me in the past few days finally colliding. “And you didn’t deserve that. I had to drop everything. My entire future changed. I was suddenly a single dad. The responsibilities on my lap were insane. And I…I couldn’t think.”
My heart broke for him. For how he had to drop everything to raise Sam, Sydney, and Lance. All while grieving parents who loved him with every ounce of their souls. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have…I could have been there, Weston.”
“Because how was I supposed to tell a woman I loved that our entire future would change. Because you would have to give up everything right alongside me.”
“You don’t?—”
“I do. I know what you would have done because even in those short months, you wereeverything. And you did everything for your family. I stayed here to give these kids some form of normalcy. Consistency. And you would’ve had to give up everything. And I didn’t know how to love you and the future we could’ve had and tear myself into a thousand jagged pieces in order to be the man that my family needed.”
Tears blurred my eyes even as his words hit home. “You didn’t give me a choice. You couldn’t let me decide. And maybe that’s selfish, but you took my choice away.”
“I didn’t want you to have to make it in the first place.”
“Then what is this? What are you expecting now?”
“Bella, baby.”
“Maybe there aren’t any answers. We can’t turn back time. We can’t go to the moment where you could have said a single word. Even if you had to leave me. Even if we weren’t right for each other in that moment, you werebreaking. And you didn’t think I was strong enough to be by your side. And even beyond that, you had no one to lean on. And I hate that my friend, the man that I loved, had no one. That kills me. I can’t hate you anymore. I hate that. Because I understand it.”
He looked at me then, his eyes dark. He looked so much like the Weston I knew, but he was so different. Changed. Then again, I’d been irrevocably changed by every scar I held. “What if I still hate myself?”
This was the moment. The moment I could walk away and forget. Yet I knew I couldn’t. Not when the darkness lurked behind me. And Weston had never been that darkness. He’d only been the light—even through the pain. “Don’t. The shadow of the man that I loved, the people we used to be—they’re gone. I can’t compare you to anyone else because you aren’t anyone else. Everything is so monumentally complicated.”
He turned his head to kiss my palm, and I swallowed hard. “It always was.”
“But we’re older, and I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I want. But the girl that was your friend who turned into the woman before you wants to be friends with the man you’ve become.”
“Only friends?”
“I don’t know. I have scars too, Weston. Scars I can’t change.”
