“How long can we go on like this?” I ask him softly, borrowing Meemaw’s question. “You keeping me here like this? Trapped?”
His eyes flare with that crazed gleam I’ve gotten to know so well. “You trying to leave again? Head back to Delaware? To that life you think you wanted?”
“You destroyed that life,” I point out. “Burned it to the ground. I’m just trying to figure out what your endgame is here. I know the Ruthless Reapers don’t live by laws or anybody else’s rules. You’re free or whatever. But I’m not. And I don’t think that’s fair.”
“I don’t care about fair,” Waylon informs me with a sharp shake of his head. “Not when it comes to you.”
“Okay, then how about choices?” I ask. “You knew…you knew from the start you had to give me choices. Climb on your lap or don’t. Give you my virginity or don’t. Let you into the dream house you built for me or don’t. Hell, you even gave me a choice when it came to either coming with you or shooting Jonathan.”
“That wasn’t a real choice,” he grumbles. “I would’ve figured out how to get you here even if you did let me blow his face off—which, to be clear, you should have.”
I almost laugh. Almost.
But I can’t.
“What if I made you a promise not to run?” I ask him. “What if I promised to stay on and be Angel Pond’s nurse practitioner and keep on submitting to you, even if I have a car and a phone and ways to get in contact with the world outside of this dream you created for me? What if I promise you could trust me like you trust your gut?”
His expression becomes somber in a way that reminds me of the man who sat with me on the porch and told me his deepest darkest secret.
Then he tells me another one underneath the setting sun. “My mom lost me a couple of times, but not before that bad foster home placement. She left me alone in our apartment for a couple of weeks, and then there was an eviction notice on the door when she finally came back. She told me her life was too chaotic—that she had to give me up. But just for a little while….until she settled and found a place for us. She dropped me off in front of Children’s Services. Told me she’d be back, but, of course, that was a fucking lie. She never came back. Didn’t even visit.”
He’s thirty-four. That’s something else I know now. Not even a decade older than me. But he looks as weary as a man twice his age.
Oh, Waylon. I step forward and wrap my arms around him, my chest aching for him. I remember thinking that the kids who still believed—the ones who held on to the hope of being reunited with a less fucked-up version of the parents who lost them had it the worst. Their hearts didn’t just get broken. They were decimated.
I hug him. Hug the boy inside of him who was betrayed by the only person he had left on Earth. But I have to tell him, “I’m not your mom. Just like you’re not my dad.”
He hugs me back, burying his nose in my hair. “I know, and I want to believe you….
He draws back and says, “Fuck, angel. You see this house—this town. I want to give you everything and anything you want.”
He shakes his head. “But trust…I’m not built like that. I’m just not. And if you run again, there’s no guarantees I’ll be able to hunt you down this time. I’ll get you anything else—anything else but that. Whatever you want, just tell me.”
I look at him…I look at this crazy, broken man who somehow helped me heal my most embedded wounds, and my heart cracks with a new realization.
He’s helped me so much, but I can’t help him get over his trust issues. He won’t let me.
“That’s too bad,” I say, swallowing down a lump in my throat. “That’s too bad because the only thing I want is your trust. That’s the only thing on my list right now.”
And it doesn’t matter how bad I feel for him. I have to leave him there standing by the pond and walk back into the house. The dream prison he made for me.
When I get to the bedroom, I spot the backpack he took with him on his latest trip dropped on the floor. He must’ve dumped it there as soon as he saw I wasn’t in here. Maybe he spotted me standing at the pond through the bay window and came outside, looking for me.
I can imagine the way he would’ve carried me in here and thrown me on the bed to punish me for making him miss me so much—if not for the conversation by the pond.