One Reckless Decision

“It never crossed my mind to do anything but my duty,” he continued in that same rough, almost angry tone. “And then there you were. You were nothing like the woman I was expected to choose. You were too warm, too alive, and you expected the same from me. You saw me as a man. Just a man. And I loved you when I had never known I could love at all.”

“And look what we have done with it,” she said, her voice so rough she hardly recognized it. She used her fists to dash the tears away from her eyes and could not even hate herself for showing that weakness. “Look what we’ve become.”

“Bethany,” he said, his voice harsh; she could see to her amazement that he was pleading. This man, who only issued orders. This man, who did not know how to bend at all.

But she had already bent too much. She had bent and twisted and tied herself into knots, and she trusted neither one of them anymore. How could she? He had lied to her and, worse, she had lied to herself. She could not handle herself around this man. She never could. How many times must she prove this same failing to herself, in ever more catastrophic ways?

Three years ago she had dissolved into incoherent rages and tantrums, trying desperately to reach him. This time, she had simply dissolved into him as if she had no other existence of her own, as if her return to this place completely deleted all that had gone before.

She loved him, but he was no good for her, and she was never going to become the person whom he should have married. Hadn’t they learned all of this long ago? Why were they still here, still fighting, over the same futile ground?

“I do not want a lake,” she said again, not sure why she could not let go of it.

She imagined the pretty stretch of grass where she’d found herself so enchanted that she’d lost her head and surrendered herself to him once more. It was the bait, perhaps, to the pretty little trap this life could be, but she did not have to accept that particular cage.

Who would she be if she stayed here? Leo’s mother, whose name was never mentioned as if she had never existed outside of her prescribed roles? A woman who had merited a show of respect in the form of that lake, but no true respect at all? And no love.

Certainly no love. The woman’s only son spoke of it as if it was an alien notion, profoundly foreign to him. How could she live with that?

“I am not willing to relive your parents’ marriage,” she told him then, aware that he was watching her with that terrible look on his beautiful face, as if she was killing him. As if she was doing it with her own hands. It made her ache, but she could not let herself stop. “I’m not willing to simply accept unhappiness.”

“Why are you so certain that we will be unhappy?” he demanded, his voice still so raw. “Have you been unhappy since you came here?”

“It’s like that lake …” she began.

“I will dredge it and pave it over with concrete, if that will make you happy,” he gritted out, temper crackling in his voice. “If that will keep you from mentioning it again—as if I built it myself!”

“It doesn’t matter how happy we are, or think we are, because there is always something rotten underneath,” she managed to say. “There is always another game, another lie. We cannot do this. It has been five excruciating years and we have proven repeatedly that we cannot do it, Leo. We simply cannot.”

It was as if the pain was another entity, a vast sea, an agony both acute and dull ringing in her ears and cramping her belly. It seemed to fill the room, shining from Leo’s drawn, ragged features and the very salt in the tears that she could not seem to stop, the tears that slipped down her cheeks unheeded.

“Then what do you want?” he asked starkly.

Bethany did not mistake the question for another shot in their long battle. It was a deeply serious question. He looked at her as if he could see into her, as if he knew the things she still kept hidden. As if he wanted to see everything.

She thought for a brief moment that she could do it—that she could say she loved him too and let that sit there between them. That she could let herself be that vulnerable, that honest, that open. That she could risk it—risk everything.

But all those empty years … All the times she had said she loved him and he had merely smiled and then used her desperation to make her do his bidding. All the nights she had tossed and turned, alone and ravaged with this terrible grief, tortured by the love she would have cut out of her own flesh if she’d been able to.

How could she trust this man with her heart when she could not trust herself with it? How could she possibly admit to that much vulnerability when she was already so shaky?