Page 10 of Holding You
“Do you have to talk right now?”
“I do. It’s polite to chat when you’re on a walk with someone.”
“We are not on a walk. I am walking home, and you are following me.”
“Because I live next door.”
“Dang it,” I say and snap my fingers.
Declan chuckles but quickens his steps to move in front of me.
“Seriously though, Ruby, why don’t you like me? Tell me so that I can fix it.”
I pause to look up at him, and those ocean-blue eyes stare back at me, begging me to put him out of his misery and spill the truth that he’s asked me no less than fifty times over the last year.
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to just forget that everyone compared my success to his during school or that people still think he is the greatest gift to this town and commend his ability to be a basic responsible adult that holds a job and feeds his kid, and just become friends with him to appease the children and my family, who all like Declan.
But then I think about how I left this town at seventeen to have my son and raise him with a life that includes both his mother and father. I sold my soul to Max’s grandparents in exchange for graduating from high school on time, getting into a college that would help me start and run my own graphic design business, all so that I could one day be financially stable enough to bring us back here and give my son a life he could fall in love with. OneIcould fall in love with. I took lemons and made lemonade, but no one cares that I made a sacrifice to get where I am.
No, they just whisper to each other that I got pregnant by some rich kid and followed the money.
They don't know that I cried most nights, wishing my momwere still here to tell me what to do or missing my dad and brothers, and the only way I could push past the loneliness of my situation was by loving my son and working my ass off to change the situation I put us in.
So no, I’m not going to tell him so that he can fix it.
I haven’t needed anyone this far.
And I sure as hell don’t need anyone now.
I just … I wish that someone, I don’t know, saw me for me and not as the woman they think they know.
“Every time you ask me that, I’m going to add another year that I don't tell you,” I finally answer him.
“Why? I’ll be a hundred at this point or dead.”
“Exactly,” I say and walk around him to prepare for a dinner I’m only hosting to make my son happy.
Declan and Susiehave come to our house dozens of times for a meal, and yet, this one feels different. Unlike Sunday breakfast when my entire family is here, this meal includes only the four of us, and for a reason I can't explain, it makes me nervous.
I’ve just finished setting the table when the back door opens.
This is how Susie always comes over, but I half expected Declan to use the front door.
I knew I shouldn’t have let my father put a gate between our yards.
According to the kids, it’s like a secret passageway from house to house.
Anyway, Declan stepping through the back door makes me pause.
“Please, come on in like you own this house.”
He chuckles, steps back out, and knocks on the frame.
“Hey, Ruby, can I come in?”
“No.”
He chuckles louder and walks in.
