Craft (The Gibson Boys 2)

“I see.”

No, you don’t see!

Panic gathers in my core, melting everything in its path as it spreads through me like a virus. I pivot on my heel and look at my girl.

There’s a steeliness there. It’s cold and guarded and not at all the way she should look. I hate that I put it there. Me. I put that look of distrust on the woman I just want to protect and love and shower with kisses day and night.

I imagine the war that would be waged in those beautiful baby blues when she had to pick between the experience of a lifetime, of carrying a child, and of loving a man who is, by all accounts, unworthy of that love. The truth is, I know she loves me. Maybe even as much as I love her and the fact I’ve let this happen is heartbreaking.

She deserves so much more than me, a broken version of a teenage boy who’s gone to bed after eating everyone’s cookies.

“You know I don’t expect anything from you, right?” she asks.

“Mariah, wait …”

She gets to her feet, pushing in her chair. “Lance, it’s fine. I—”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” My chest rises and falls like I’ve ran a marathon, the air rushing out of my body in sharp, painful bursts. “It’s not you, Mariah.”

She smiles, but not at me. It’s directed inwardly, I think, like she predicted this.

I can predict too. I know she’d choose me over children. And my fear is too fucking deep that one day she’d turn forty and realize she’d given up something she could never get back just because I wrecked a car at eighteen and fucked up my life.

It’s unfair for someone’s tragedies to bleed onto another. I won’t do that to her, even if this kills me.

“Look,” I say, fighting the blaze in my ribs, “this isn’t about you.”

“It never is.” She shakes her head, turning away from me. “You’ve been kind and—”

“Mariah, stop it,” I say, barely able to utter the words past the lump in my throat.

“You don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me an excuse.”

“It’s not an excuse.”

She pulls her hair to the top of her head, letting a tendril fall to her right temple. I want to tuck it behind her ear, kiss her just below the lobe, and feel her lean against me. But I can’t. Ever again.

“I think, um …” I say, clearing my throat. “I think things were getting too complicated.”

The stinging in my eyes appears for the first time since my parents funeral as I realize the death of my dreams. I’ve fought so hard never to find her, although I didn’t know she was the one I was trying to run from.

I’ve used dating apps, blown off calls, purposefully ended communication with women, done everything I could to never get to this point in a relationship. And here she sits, at the very apex without me ever having seen it coming. I was head over heels for this crazy girl before I even realized what love felt like. Now I have to break my own heart so that I won’t ever have to break hers.

God, I love you, I want to tell her. I’m so sorry it has to be this way.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice raw. “Complicated. That’s true.”

The air around us twists and turns, seeping through the entangled lies we’re both telling. She steps to the left. I step to the right. She looks at me. I look away. I look at her and she turns to the sink and becomes fascinated with a dishrag.

“I have some things to do …” Her voice trails off and she doesn’t even try to finish the sentence.

Still, I can’t go. “Mariah …”

“Lance.” She clears her throat and turns back around. Her shoulders are back. Her eyes clouded with tears. Her face more beautiful than I’ve ever seen it. “Please go.”

My voice shouts inside me, tries to be heard outside my head. My mouth moves, but I don’t know what I say, only that she nods and looks down as she walks around me.

I find myself following her to the front door and stepping through it as she opens it. I’m on the porch, the cool night air whipping at my skin when I get myself together enough to realize … this is it.

“If you need anything—” I start, but she cuts me off.

“I know where to find you. Goodnight, Lance.”

And the door shuts.

Twenty-Nine

Mariah

“Thank you, Joe,” I say. The maintenance man puts the few tools he needed for this task back in his little metal container. “I’m sure installing a lock on my door at six in the morning wasn’t your idea of an emergency, but I really do appreciate it.”

“It was this or go clean out a toilet in the boys’ bathroom,” he chuckles.