Will sat down, but he wouldn’t take the bottle. He hated alcohol.
“You won’t get drunk,” Sara told him. He still wouldn’t take it.
She stuck the bottle in his face. “Think of it as medicine. It’ll numb your throat.”
Will reluctantly took the whiskey. He opened the cap. Instead of drinking the alcohol, he sniffed it. He scowled at the smell. He looked at the label even though Sara knew he couldn’t read the cursive script.
“Will, drink the goddamn whiskey.”
Her tone was sharper than she intended, but it worked.
He managed to swallow a mouthful before he gagged.
“Christ!” He heaved a cough from deep inside his chest. His eyes watered. He shook his head like a dog.
Sara crossed her arms to stop herself from soothing him. She’d been too worn out last night to think beyond closing her eyes, but now it all came rushing back. Every ounce of concern she felt kept getting overwhelmed by anger.
Will coughed a few more times. He screwed the cap back on the bottle and threw it into the trashcan.
Sara asked, “Are we going to talk about what happened?”
He blinked to clear his eyes. “Amanda—”
“Sweetheart, if you say her name one more time, one of us is going to have to leave. And it won’t be me.”
His jaw set.
Sara wasn’t going to give in. “I mean it, Will. You come in here with your face all banged up. That cut should be stitched. You’ve got blood in your ear. You probably need an MRI. And I’m just supposed to pretend none of this exists, the same way I pretend you didn’t have a childhood and you don’t have scars all over your body and—” She couldn’t go on. The list was endless. “Talk to me, Will. I can handle the strong, but I can’t take the silent anymore.”
Predictably, he did the exact opposite. He crossed his ankle over his leg. She saw the bottom of his boot. The Cat’s Paw logo was on the heel.
Sara had to close her eyes for a moment so she didn’t lose control. She counted to ten, then twenty, before she could look at him again. “Will, your not talking to me about things is what got us into this mess in the first place.”
He swallowed. The alcohol had worked. He didn’t flinch this time. “I’m sorry.”
Sara felt like a schoolmarm, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Sorry for what?”
He picked at the stitching on his boot. “When I chased you. When I—” He stopped. “What I did when I caught you.”
Sara blushed at the memory.
He said, “I was out of control.”
She couldn’t let him take all the blame. “We were both out of control.”
“I hurt you.”
“I’m not Amish, Will. I’ve had rough sex before.”
His startled look told her he thought it was something else.
“I didn’t tell you to stop.” Sara couldn’t understand how he could be so wrong about something so obvious. “I was never afraid of you. I was furious. I wanted to hurt you. But I wasn’t afraid.”
His eyes glistened. She couldn’t tell if it was from the whiskey anymore.
“Will, I was mad at you—I’m still mad—because you lied to me. Not just once, but repeatedly. Obviously, something happened to you last night, too. We took it out on each other. It’s what adults do sometimes. But you need to know that you can’t just fuck me silly and make everything better.”
He was still upset. His voice was filled with self-recrimination. “I never wanted to be that way with you.”
“Baby—” The word came out of her mouth so naturally. Sara could see the effect it had on him, and she understood that as bad as things were for her last night, they’d gotten so much worse for Will after he left.
Sara sat down on the edge of the bed. “Please, just talk to me.”
He didn’t look at her. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. She could see his jaw clenching and unclenching. A dark red mark crisscrossed the side of his forehead. There was a waffle print to the pattern, as if someone had kicked him.
He said, “I came here for somebody else.”
“Who?”
Will gripped his hands together. He stared at the floor. When he finally spoke, his voice was so soft that she could barely hear him. “I feel like I’m disappearing.”
Of all the things he could’ve said, this was the least expected. Sara didn’t know how to respond.
Will obviously didn’t expect her to. His jaw worked again. She could tell every fiber of his being wanted to stop. Still, he said, “All my life, I’ve been invisible. At school. At the home. At work. I do my job. I go home. I get up the next morning and I do it all over again.” He gripped his hands tighter. Seconds passed before he managed to continue. “You changed that. You made me want to get up in the morning. You made me want to come home to you.” He finally met her gaze. “You’re the first person in my life who’s ever really seen me.”
Sara still couldn’t speak, but this time it was because she was too overwhelmed. The sound of his desolation broke her in two.
“I can’t go back to that.” His voice was gruff. “I can’t.”
Sara couldn’t let him. Her anger slipped away like sand through her fingers. She gently cradled her hand to his face. She knew this man. She knew his heart. Will hadn’t hurt her on purpose. He’d been stupid and stubborn, but not malicious. And Sara couldn’t be the woman Lena Adams thought she was. She couldn’t demand perfection. She couldn’t set her standards so high that no one could meet them.
She had already lost the first love of her life. She couldn’t lose the second one.
“Okay.” She rested her hand on the nape of his neck. “We’ll be okay.”
His eyes scanned her face, looking for any sign of equivocation. “Do you mean that?”
She nodded.
He nodded, too, as if he still needed to convince himself. “I’m sorry I hurt you. I was wrong.”
“Please, don’t do it again.” Sara closed the distance between them. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m your girlfriend. This isn’t just about keeping things from me. It’s about trusting me. I may not understand, or agree, but you have to trust me enough to tell me the truth.”
“You’re right.” He held her close to his chest. His fingers stroked through her hair. She felt his lips press against the top of her head. “I need you to promise me something.”
She pulled back so that she could see him. “Okay.”
“Promise me we’re never going to break up again.”
She started to laugh, but there was a sincerity to his tone that stopped her.
Will said, “Actually, I’ll promise. I’ll never leave you.” He sounded more certain than she had ever heard him. “You can tell me to go, but I won’t. I’ll sleep in my car outside your house. I’ll follow you to work. To the gym. If you go out to dinner, I’ll be at the next table. If you go to a movie, I’ll be in the row behind you.”
Sara felt her brow furrow. “You’re going to stalk me?”
He shrugged his shoulder, as if this was all a done deal. “I love you.”