“I know. You can’t trust me.”
“No, that’s not it.” He lets out a deep sigh.
It’s time to admit what I’ve been denying, even to myself. “Ax, I’m not mad. I’m not asking for anything from you, but I can’t keep doing this. I can’t pretend I’m not in love with you. It’s too hard.”
His hand goes lax on my wrist and the look of horror on his face at my admission scoops out whatever scrap of hope was living inside me.
“You can’t love me. You don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand. You get to decide what you want, Ax, but you don’t get to choose how I feel about you. No matter how this goes, I’m in love with you.”
“Fuck.” He gets to his feet and paces the room. “There are things you don’t know!”
Frustration clamps onto me. “Then tell me! I know it has to do with your nightmares, with someone’s death that you feel guilt over, with a door you don’t want opened.”
The lamp in the corner casts the room in shadows, outlining his form as he stands with his back to me. He stares out the floor to ceiling window and his face is reflected in the glass, giving me a look at his tortured expression when I walk up behind him.
He whispers, “I already opened it.”
His skin is warm under my arms when I wrap them around his middle from behind. “I know you’re afraid of loving and being loved, but it isn’t something you control. You can run from it like you tried to do with Caden those first few weeks, or you can avoid it and lock yourself away, but it won’t work.”
“Damn it, you don’t get it. Two women in my life have loved me. I loved one away and drove the other to death. One dead and one gone.”
Chapter Thirteen
Axton
She deserves to know the truth. After all the mixed signals I’ve thrown her, she needs to know why this can’t happen, no matter how I feel.
“You can’t love me, Naomi. I don’t want you to.”
My words make her flinch and I hate that I’m hurting her, that I’m not getting the words out right. But I’ve never told anyone this story and I don’t know how to start. She lets me take her hand and lead her back to the couch but puts a little space between us when we sit.
“Just tell me,” her soft voice cajoles. “I promise I won’t judge or think badly of you.”
My elbows rest on my knees, and I lay my head on my palm for a moment. “I’m trying to think how to start.”
“Who died that you feel guilt over?”
Straightening my back, I sigh and watch the snow fall as I talk. “My ex-girlfriend. Her name was Renee. We broke up, and she didn’t handle it well.”
I think back and remember how devastated she was when I ended things. “We were together for about a year. She wasn’t a bad person and it wasn’t some terrible relationship. We never fought or had any serious issues. I just…didn’t love her. By then I knew that how I felt wasn’t going to change and it wasn’t fair to drag it out.”
Naomi listens intently, scooting closer to me.
“She was in love with me. When I broke things off, she just fell apart. For months she tried to convince me to get back together, to try again. She made constant promises about what she could do better if I’d just give her another chance, but she hadn’t done anything wrong. I didn’t want to hurt her, but I finally had to tell her bluntly that I didn’t love her, and I never would. She needed to move on and let me do the same.
“I’ll never forget the look on her face, her expression just…went blank. Her voice was flat and monotone as she said the last two words that she would ever speak to me. ‘I understand.’ She got in her car and left—she’d moved out months before. A few days went by—the longest I’d gone without hearing from her—and I thought it was over. She’d accepted it. She’d be okay. I was so relieved.
“The guys and I were just starting to get our shit together and really take a run at being musicians for a living. I’d spent all day with them, putting together some songs, drinking, just hanging out and having fun like I hadn’t in too long. It was like I was suddenly free. Free of the person who loved me,” I scoff.
Naomi lays her hand on my leg. “Loving someone who doesn’t love you back is hell, but being imprisoned by someone’s love when you don’t feel the same is no better. You were both suffering. It wasn’t wrong for you to be relieved or happy.” The compassion in her voice is set to break me.
I need to get the rest of this out or I’ll never be able to.
“I got home late and from the second I stepped through my front door, something felt off. I don’t know if it was instinct or my subconscious picking up clues or what, but that feeling of foreboding, I’ve never forgotten it. I feel it again every time I relive the walk through my empty house in my nightmares. Every time I stand outside that door with light licking out from beneath it.
“I knew something was wrong. I knew someone had been in my house. I knew I didn’t want to open that door. It seemed like years went by while I convinced myself to turn the handle and pull it open.”
Naomi’s soft hand slips into mine. My skin breaks out in sweat, the way it always does when I’m confronted with this moment. Nausea washes over me, and I spit the rest of the story out before I can lose my nerve.
“There was so much blood. And the smell. I never knew blood could smell like that. Metallic but also sweet in a sickening way. Like copper and dead flowers. At first, my brain just couldn’t register what I was seeing.”
It flashes across my vision now, and I squeeze Naomi’s hand, grounding myself. I’m here, not back there. This isn’t a nightmare.
“She sliced her wrists in my bathtub. The sight and smell of the blood was horrible but her body, it was so pale I swear it looked fake. For one second I had this insane thought that it was a prank. A mannequin. A mannequin up to its neck in a tub of blood. But it was Renee.
“The next hour is fuzzy in my memory. I remember screaming, lifting her out onto the floor, how icy the water was, her cold skin. I know I called an ambulance, but she was way past needing one. The coroner said she’d been dead at least five hours when I found her. On the wall beside the faucet, she’d written ‘I love you’ in blood with her finger.”
“Fuck, Ax,” Naomi whispers, wrapping her arms around me. “I’m so sorry.”
The words that fall out next I never expected to share with anyone, but I need her to understand why she can’t love me. Why we can’t be together. “There’s something wrong with me. I love too much or not at all, and it destroys people. Drives them away, like my mother. Or kills them.”
Her arms tighten around me, and I loop my arms around her shoulders, resting my chin on her head. Breathing her in and reveling in the comfort she always brings me.
“I think we could use a drink,” she says. It’s not what I expect to hear, but I’m not going to disagree when she lets me go and adds, “I’ll be right back.”
To be inside her head right now would be my one wish. I feel lighter, better than I thought I would after telling my story, but her lack of reaction to it so far makes me worry. Which is stupid because I shouldn’t care. Her opinion shouldn’t matter so damn much to me. I’m not trying to win her over. I’m trying to explain why she can’t love me.