My head dipped slowly as his story painted the missing side of Madison’s.
And it made my stomach lurch as it filled my head with images of them all over again.
“Even if there’d never been you,” he began softly, “I would’ve never done that to my brother. But you? Fuck, Savannah, I was dying after that. It ruined us.”
My stare snapped to his, confusion swirling through me as I pushed past the images clawing at my mind in an attempt to understand what he was saying. “What do you mean?”
“The months after. When you thought I didn’t want you, or something.”
My eyes widened with surprise and shock. “What?”
“The night of their graduation,” he explained, watching me like he was waiting for me to remember. “There was a party at my parents’ house. I was up in my room, and you came to find me. You said I’d been different. You thought you weren’t my world anymore—thought I didn’t want you. That I only wanted you to continue taking away my anger.”
I blinked slowly as I struggled to remember what he was talking about, a whisper of a memory coming to the surface. “I don’t . . .” My head shook. “I don’t remember that. I mean, I sort of do. I remember that conversation now that you say it, but at the same time, I don’t.”
Beau gave me a look like he couldn’t figure out how I didn’t remember. “I’d been crumpling under what happened that night with Madison, and you knew it even though you didn’t know why. I thought—Jesus, Savannah, I thought I was gonna lose you that night, and I just knew I couldn’t keep going on like that. I’d gone downstairs to get us something to eat, and Madison was right there. Alone. So, I pulled her into a room and told her that I was gonna tell you what happened.”
“And that’s when she said she’d leave,” I whispered in understanding.
“It’s one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” he said in agreement nearly a minute later, words soft and full of shame. “I knew it was a mistake when I got back up to the room and saw you.” His stare fell to the floor, his head shaking subtly. “When I woke up the next morning, I knew I needed to call her and stop her from leaving. And that’s when my mom came charging in.”
I sucked in a quick gasp and murmured, “Oh, I do remember that.”
“She didn’t leave my side the entire morning, making me clean up the house for having you in my room. I missed Madison coming and talking to Hunter, and when I got to my phone, she’d already disconnected that number. But, Savannah, I tried to get her back. For you, for Hunter . . . I tried.”
My eyes rolled. “Beau, she just came back, so I remember exactly how pissed off you were when she did. I remember how rude you were to her.”
“Because she came back now,” he said roughly. “Thirteen years later, when just her being here threatened us.” He gestured to the space between us as if to prove his fears had already become a reality. “But when she first left and reached out to you, I was the one who kept suggesting you should tell Hunter where she was. I was the one who helped him get out there when he ran out of money because I was sure he could bring her back. And when he didn’t, I had to go through the terrifying process of getting her new number out of your phone while you were asleep in my arms. But when I called the next day, she’d already disconnected that number too. I still called her every month for two years like she might suddenly answer one day. I tried to bring her back for you,” he ground out. “I tried to get all this shit off my chest for so goddamn long.”
Memories swirled and clashed with what he was telling me and what I’d learned these past weeks and months.
I didn’t remember Beau’s part in it, but I didn’t doubt it.
Beau had never left my side during that time. Beau had never left my side ever.
I watched as he struggled to rein it all in. As his body trembled and a half-dozen emotions ripped across his face.
Even though he seemed to be surrounded in his fear, his shoulders were more at ease than they’d been before. As if finally saying the words had lifted a thirteen-year-old weight.
“Why two years?” I asked, caught on those last few sentences. “Not that I knew you were calling her, but what made you stop after two years?”
“You,” he said immediately. “I was still destroying us, just slower than before, and I knew it was because there was so much I was keeping from you. Because I was the reason you’d been a shell of yourself for years.” One of his shoulders lifted. “The day you told me I had to stop fighting, I called her and got the same automated message. But I knew if I didn’t let go of it all, I was gonna keep dragging us down, so I texted her even though I knew she wouldn’t get it. Told her how I was ruining us and that I hated her for leaving and what her leaving did to me. That we should’ve told y’all back then because there was no way to tell you when years had already passed. That I hoped she never came back.” His stare found mine. “But then when I woke up that night in the back and found you asleep beside me, I did tell you. I told you everything because I needed to say it once, even if you didn’t hear it.”
Oh.
I wondered what would’ve happened if I’d woken to his confession that night. If we would be here now, married. Or if we’d be living different lives, separate and miserable.
And I realized at the thought that I believed him. Every word.
I’d always known since I was a little girl that Beau would give me the truth, no matter what. And even knowing the secrets and deception he’d kept for so long, I could hear the honesty in his painful admission.
“I’ve been wondering what else I didn’t know—what else you’ve hidden from me over the years.”
“Nothing.” The word was nothing less than a vow as it scraped up his throat.
“I’ve felt so stupid and naïve and wondered how I could’ve been so blind. Wondered if I knew you at all. But you’re explaining it in ways like I’d known without knowing what was happening.”
“You did,” he said, the two words sounding heavy. “Savannah, there were times I thought I was gonna lose you because of what I was doing to us. Like when you got wasted and kept saying everything about our wedding was wrong, and I spent the entire night in a holding cell, wondering if we were even getting married anymore.”
“When—oh,” I mumbled as everything started clicking into place. “Your last fight.” I pointed toward the open doorway. “Before the other week.”
“Right.”
I thought for a while, trying to figure out the best way to describe something I wasn’t sure I fully understood.
“I don’t remember those times,” I finally said. “But at the same time, I remember pieces now that you’re telling me. I think it might be in part to how emotionally heavy those nights and mornings were . . . Madison leaving and waiting for you to figure out if you could control your anger . . . but I also know that isn’t it. Or, not all of it anyway,” I added with a little shrug.
“Beau, if you told me I was wrong—that you did want me, that I was still your world—then I believed that. I took a day to process what had been happening and my worries, replaced them with the truths you’d told me, and I let it go,” I said, lifting one of my hands before letting it fall because it’d always been as simple as that with him. “I mean, I can hold on to things and keep grudges, you know that. Philip Rowe is a prime example. But not with you.