“Need some help?” I offer, even though it means getting him closer to disappearing from my life.
Archer wanted to spend more time in California, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where he’s planning on ending up.
“I could use some help,” he says before picking up a roll of packing tape.
So that’s what we do. I spend hours at his house, helping him pack away his belongings. I felt pain each and every time the sound of that tape closing up another box echoed around us.
By the time the bottle caps were pulled from the boxes and packed safely away, I felt like a husk of my former self.
I laid everything out at his feet, and he told me he couldn’t trust me. He feels as if my confessions are lies, a way to manipulate him.
I want to scream and yell, clamp his jaw in my hands and demand that he tell me he loves me back, but I just can’t.
I can’t force the man to feel that for me, even though I’m certain he was going to say it first that morning on his back porch. Maybe it was a heat-of-the-moment thing, and he’s had time to think about it.
He uses people up and then throws them away. Fletcher had said something along those lines, and I flinch when I consider that maybe what he was going to say that day was a form of manipulation.
“No,” I snap, refusing to let my mind go back to the doubts that have kept me away for the last week and a half.
I can’t be the man who keeps falling back on old patterns.
He doesn’t have to love me back, and I wouldn’t want to force him in the first place.
I don’t want conditional love from him.
If I’m not what he needs, then I’ll eventually have to accept that.
I can’t help the sinking in my stomach as we keep working. I had such high hopes, thinking that the realization that hit me in the chest at the office was enough to get him back.
“Are you okay over there?” Archer asks.
“I’m good,” I lie, my head swimming with so many thoughts, so much pain.
I only have myself to blame. A person can only take so much before they close themselves off.
“You’re sure?”
I stand, grinding my teeth together when he points to the box I was trying to fold.
“Did the box say something you didn’t like?”
I tap my foot against the mangled cardboard, trying to smile, when all I want to do is beg him to forgive me. “It was being difficult.”
“Hmm.” That’s all I get before he moves on to taping up the next box.
Chapter 38
Archer
How is it I have everything I want in life mere feet from me, and I can’t seem to accept it?
Brooks knocking on my door tonight was the very last thing I expected. I wanted to jump into his arms the second my heart started working again because the damn thing stopped at the sight of him.
He wants me, needs me… loves me?
He’s afraid I’m going to walk away from him?
In what fucking world would I ever be that dumb?
He said all the right things, all the things I’ve dreamed of him saying. Literally. Dream me has worked through every scenario of him showing up and doing exactly what he did.
There have been a multitude of outcomes, and not one of them entailed him helping me pack my fucking house up.
But since yelling that I loved him too at the top of my lungs was my first instinct, I knew not to trust it.
I have to change my patterns. I keep responding on instinct and it has gotten me into some pretty fucked-up situations.
I do love him. I knew that long ago. I’ve never felt for a man what I feel for Brooks, and I’m not just being sappy to confess that I know I’ll never feel this way again. I know deep down inside of me that it’s him or no one.
I know it would seem like to most that it’s an easy decision but picking him rather than choosing to be alone is difficult for me. He has the power to hurt me, which has been proven by his recent actions. What if he loves me today but not tomorrow? What if he changes his mind, something he claimed he was worried about with me? What if his friends and family aren’t as receptive to the idea of us despite him thinking no one would be surprised? Do they have the ability to make him change his mind?
The roll of tape I’m holding falls out of my trembling hand, and I watch Brooks bend to pick it up. When he holds it back out to me, all I can see is the sadness in his eyes, the acceptance there that I can’t love him back.