“Shit.” He rubbed a hand over his face. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say. I talked to her because I love you. Can’t you see that?”
“Yes.” And I did, but that didn’t make it okay. “I love you too. But I can’t go to that fundraiser.” That was Maddy’s night, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by showing up, or by showing up with her ex-husband on my arm.
“I didn’t ask her to invite us. She did that on her own.”
“That doesn’t change how I feel.”
I could tell he disagreed with me, but he wasn’t going to argue. “Then we won’t go. I’ll message and tell her.”
Ryder pulled out his phone, but I shook my head, and he stopped. “You had no right to tell her about Layla. Maybe you don’t understand why going there is mine, why they don’t know about Layla, but you know I wanted to keep it to myself, and you told her anyway.”
“I did. It wasn’t on purpose, but you’re right. Yes, I told her, and I shouldn’t have.”
I didn’t ever want extra attention for what I did at Children’s Hospital. For loving Layla and having her become family to me. It felt like…exploitation. Like I was doing it for points whether it was with strangers, my father, or Maddy. I didn’t want my sister to invite me to a party because I volunteered with kids who had cancer. That was mine. Sharing it had been taken away from me, even though I knew Ryder hadn’t done it to hurt me. Hell, I knew he hadn’t even done it on purpose. But that didn’t change the result.
“I need…I need some time,” I found myself telling him. The words were bitter, the taste lingering afterward.
“Bullshit,” he surprised me by saying.
“Excuse me?”
“I fucked up, Hutch. I get that. I’m not making excuses for what I did, but you’re sure as shit using it as an excuse to pull away. You can tell me all you want that this is because Mads doesn’t want you there, or because I told her about Layla, but it’s not. It’s because you’re scared. You’ve been pulling away for weeks because a part of you still thinks I’m going to walk away, that I’m going to hurt you, or that I can’t possibly love you, so if you put distance between us, or try to disconnect from me first—or hell, break it off with me—then you think you’re saving yourself the hurt, from me doing it to you.”
Every word he said stabbed through my heart, each one hitting the mark with perfect precision. That wasn’t what I was doing, was it? Ryder couldn’t be right. I knew he loved me. I definitely didn’t want to end this. “I’m not breaking up with you. It’s called a fight.” It was the only answer I could come up with. I was still processing the rest of what he said.
I turned away from him, went toward the sliding glass door, the whole time telling myself he was wrong, that I couldn’t be doing what he said.
“I love you, Hutch. You can’t push me away. I can promise you I’m not going anywhere on my own. You are so goddamned worth loving, even if you don’t see it.”
Am I? Am I really?
“You can be in denial, but I’m not. You can lie to yourself, block it out, try and cover it up with cockiness, or give me any excuse you want, but I know what this is. And while it’s honorable that you don’t want to feel like you’re exploiting Layla or what you do, it’s really just another way for you to keep people at arm’s length. Somehow, you think they’re going to let you down. You’re afraid if they know about Layla and the other kids, that they’ll see how good you really are, but you don’t acknowledge it yourself. You don’t want attention for it because as much as you try to pretend otherwise, you don’t want attention for anything because you don’t think you deserve it. I’ll go. I’ll give you your space, and while I don’t agree with you, I accept that you’re not going tomorrow night, but I’m not leaving you. I’m not walking away from you. I’ll be back, and I’ll keep coming back, because I love you and you’re worth it.”
I opened my mouth to reply but couldn’t find the words. I ached, my bones, my muscles, my heart. I’d ached my whole life. No matter how much I pretended I hadn’t, the truth was there.
But that didn’t mean what he said was right. Ryder was wrong. He had to be. That wasn’t what I was doing.
When I heard the soft click of the door closing behind me, I let out the breath I’d been holding since trying to speak.