The Reluctant Romantics Box Set (The Fall, The Mind, The Heart)

“I told you! I told you in New York! I told you I was losing

my mind and that I couldn’t handle being apart. I needed you! Why wasn’t I enough?”

“You were,” he said quickly.

“Bullshit, that’s not what you just said. The baby would have brought you home, not your love for me. I can’t live with that! I can’t! I hate you for saying it, feeling it, thinking it. Because I loved you so much, Dean. I lived for you. I breathed you. I couldn’t stop. When I lost the baby and then you, I couldn’t hang on! I didn’t. I fucked up, really bad and often.” I took an angry step forward and leaned over the counter. “Why wasn’t I enough? You fell in love with some woman, and I was here drowning, mourning the loss of our baby, thinking of nothing but you and you didn’t fucking care! You were gone and I did what I always do. I began a pattern after you left me a second time. I fucked up.” I poured two more shots of tequila and threw them back then poured out the contents of the bottle. I didn’t want the temptation or the horrible hangover, and I was already comfortably numb.

He took a step toward me.

“No, no!” I held my hand up stopping him and threw the bottle in the sink. “The thing is, and it might have taken me a long time to admit it, you didn’t do anything wrong. You went to college, Dean, and you broke up with the girlfriend holding you down back home. I predicted it, remember? I told you not to make promises you know we couldn’t keep. You didn’t do anything wrong. Our relationship clearly just meant more to me.” I laughed again dryly. “A lot more.”

I looked him right in the eye and told him what I had been holding inside for seven years.

“I believed you would come for me, even after New York. I believed you would keep your promise and you never came. Instead, you got engaged to someone else while I waited in vain.”

“I didn’t meet her until the end of the year,” he offered weakly.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It all matters!” he spit out. “You think you are the only one who suffered? I might not have been here but you weren’t there either. You didn’t see the hell I went through to try and forget you. You think I just started fucking around and forgot all about the woman I’d been in love with for years, and just moved on? You weren’t the only one in love. You weren’t the only one ripped apart. And our relationship meant everything to me. I proposed to you! I wanted to be your husband, and you never really took me seriously! You always held my past against me and never really gave me a fucking chance to be sincere, to prove my love when I left. You were too busy dismissing me because I slept with a few women while we weren’t together.”

“A few,” I scoffed.

“Yes, Dallas, I was never the playboy I was made out to be. I had my share and so did every other fucking teenage guy on the planet. You know goddamn well I was faithful to you. I loved you so much I was willing to give up Columbia, but goddamnit, you pushed me away. If I would have known my baby was inside you, I would have—” He glared at me before he began to visibly shake. “That was my baby! Mine! I deserved to know. I deserved to know!” He slammed his fist on the counter as his tears fell one by one. He did nothing to hide them. “That baby was a part of you and me. So yes, Dallas, I would have come running.” He scrubbed his face as his shoulders slumped forward.

“I never got over us, Dallas. I may have been silent, just as silent as you have been but I never got over that day in New York. I didn’t want you to give up your dreams for me any more than you allowed me to stop chasing mine, but this …” On his face, all I saw was pure devastation. “You had no right to keep any of it from me,” he bit out bitterly. “I watch couples go through hell to have a child every day. I see their pain when they lose the battle. You went through that alone…” He shook his head, as if he was still having a hard time believing the truth.

“I got depressed. It was severe. I got lost…and then I got over it. I moved on, Dean. I became a doctor and now that’s all I want to do. This thing between us almost cost me my career.”

“And what about us now?”

Wiping my matching tears off my face, I straightened my shoulders. “We tried.”

“No. Fuck no, Dallas,” he protested as he came toward me.

“I can’t be with you, not if you look at me like that. It was different when you didn’t know about…what happened.”

“And you think that our relationship would have worked with you keeping this from me?” he asked, incredulous.

“I don’t want guilt or pity. I don’t want to know how sorry you are. And I want you to stop fighting a lost cause.” The hole in my chest expanded and I squared my shoulders, ready to finally face what I’d done. “I’m sorry I made it so hard on you when you came back. I’m sorry I was so awful to you and hard to get along with. You thought what we had was beautiful. I did, too, except while you were gone, I made it ugly.” My voice cracked as I bit back the rest of my emotion. “You need to go, Dean. You need to stop fighting for what we had and realize the way you left it isn’t the way it remained. I’m not the woman you left.”

His eyes were red rimmed as his tears fell silently. He sat for several minutes, just looking at me. I kept his gaze as long as I could until I coward away, walking to my bedroom and shutting the door. Minutes later, I heard the front door shut and collapsed in a heap on my bed.

The next morning, I woke up to the smell of coffee. I opened my door in haste to find Dean sitting at the kitchen table, impeccably dressed, eating a bagel, and reading the paper.

“What the hell are you doing?” I demanded.

“Coffee is…Fuck” His words were harshly exhaled due to my clothing, or lack thereof. I realized I was standing in my camisole and underwear. Smoldering eyes prevented me from saying anything else as he appraised me from head to toe. I had forgotten to lock my door last night, and I damn sure wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

“Dean—”

“I’m not giving up, Dallas.” He leaned forward in an attempt to press his lips against mine. I pulled away before he could make contact.

“I don’t trust you.” There, take that.

“I want you back. I’ll win you back. You want to be dated, I’ll do it. You want to take things slow, I’ll be patient. I thought about it last night and I know I went about this all wrong. You were right. I expected too much.”

“It’s still too much. Too much water under the bridge,” I argued, feeling less and less confident as he towered over me. “The truth is, I’m afraid of me when I’m with you. When I love you, I’m toxic. I don’t want to go down that road again.”