Swear (Landry Family 4)

“I was nineteen, Ellie. I didn’t know what to do.”

“I was eighteen. I didn’t know what to do either,” I point out.

“You said you were pregnant, and all of a sudden, reality hit me.”

“Would it have been that bad, Ford?” I ask, the chip on my shoulder sitting pretty. “Would it have been so terrible to have been linked to me that once you realized you were free, you had to flee the state? Hell, you had to flee my life altogether?”

“That’s not what happened—”

“Oh, it is what happened,” I

snort. “Once we realized I’d jumped gun and it was stress, not pregnancy, that delayed my period, you were out of here.”

“Ellie,” he begins, “listen to me. That’s not what I was thinking.”

“Then how do you explain coming to me the week after and just breaking up with me, giving me some bullshit excuse that you had to ‘go find yourself’ or whatever it was.” I laugh angrily. “I knew what you were doing. You were getting away from me.”

He charges forward, and as I step back, my shirt sticking to the freshly painted wall. It’s a distant observation because his blazing eyes won’t let me look anywhere but at him.

He pins me in place, his body just inches from mine. His lips twitch as he considers his next words. “I was getting away from you,” he admits. “Because I was sure I was fucking you up. I’d been so careless with you, so cavalier. When you told me you thought you were pregnant, I realized I wasn’t that much different than my brothers, El. Here I was, the one that always prided himself on being the simple guy, the one that didn’t need the silver spoon, acting as entitled as the rest of them.”

There’s a wave of emotion pooling across his eyes. “Not that it’s an excuse, but I kind of broke. I had all this pressure to figure out which college to go to, which major to go after that would put me on a Landry-approved career path, and I just wanted to be me. Only I didn’t know what ‘me’ even meant. I just felt like a fuck-up, to be honest.”

“You were never a fuck-up,” I tell him. “There’s no way you believed that.”

“I did,” he says quietly. “And all I could think was that I was bringing you with me as I was spiraling down this hole. I wasn’t worried about me, Ellie. I was worried about you.”

“Really, Ford?”

“Yeah.” He reaches up tenderly and brushes a strand of hair off my face. “Then that fight when I told you . . .”

I gulp. “Not my best memory.”

“Mine either.”

We exchange a sad smile as we both sort through those memories. I can’t even look him in the face.

“We don’t need to talk about this,” I say, trying to go around him, a lump stuck in my throat. He steps in my way. “It doesn’t make a difference. We’re just wasting our breath.”

“Maybe it doesn’t make a difference,” he admits, “but I want you to know I’m sorry. If I had to do it all over again, I would’ve figured out how to stay with you. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The tough me is gone and in her place is an eighteen-year-old girl that’s wanted to hear those words all her adult life. I wish for a witty comeback, something to lighten the feeling between us, but there’s nothing.

“Do you love me, Ellie?”

“I don’t even know you,” I whisper. “How could I love you?”

“Did you used to love me?”

“Yes.”

His eyes flutter closed, and he holds them there for a long minute. When they open, there’s a fire there I haven’t seen before. He reaches for me, but I catch his hand mid-air. Something catches my attention.

In between his thumb and forefinger, there’s a tiny star tattooed into his skin. It settles in the bend of his hand. It seems like an odd choice and an even stranger location for a tattoo, especially for guy like him.

“What’s this all about?” I ask, running my thumb over it.

When I look at him, I see a gentleness in his face that nearly melts me.