Everything You Want Me to Be(89)

“Our future.”

“We”—he emphasized the word as all the amusement drained from his expression—“don’t have a future, so what the hell is this?”

“Greyhound station, locker number twenty-four. Our tickets are inside.”

He made a strangled noise and spun away from me, balling the key into his fist. The barn floor shrieked as he paced too close to the water. I kept talking, careful to keep my voice neutral.

“We leave the week after graduation and I’ve reserved space in a hostel for a few weeks until we find a room to rent. With the rest of your money and my savings, we’ve got enough for a down payment and two months’ rent. I can transfer to three different CVS locations that have openings while you figure out your New York teaching license, but I think in the meantime you should work at one of the publishing houses.”

He swung back around, as angry as I’d ever seen him. “You’re delusional.”

“I prefer the term go-getter.”

“You lied to me. You said you wanted to return the money and say goodbye.”

“I do.” I stepped forward. “I want us to say goodbye together, to this barn, to this town, to this crappy situation. It doesn’t have to end this way, with both of us miserable and apart. We can escape. We can start our life together.”

“You want to start a life with a man who would abandon his wife and unborn child?”

“I want you, Peter. Just you. Not the labels you keep trying to put on us. I haven’t thought about anything except us in weeks. Here’s what I know.” I put my hand on his arm and, even though his muscles were tensed and rigid, he didn’t pull away.

“I know that when I met you I was untouchable. No one affected me. No one made me want to laugh or cry. I felt like I was above it all, but beneath it, too. Does that make sense? I was like a shell of a person. And you were this light that gave me the courage to see inside myself for the first time. But I didn’t know that you were broken, too. You made all the wrong choices, all the choices I might have made if I hadn’t ever found myself. You needed someone to save you just as much as I did. And now that we have, now that we’ve found each other, we can’t turn away from it. I can’t live the rest of my life knowing I had you and gave you up.”

I felt the tears running down my face and saw them in Peter’s eyes, too. He had trouble speaking, and swallowed.

“But Mary. How can I leave her like this?”

“How can you stay with her when you’re in love with me?”

“I’ll hate myself if I leave.” When he tried to pull his arm away, I grabbed his shirt with both hands.

“You’ll hate yourself more if you stay.” I backed him into a dry corner of the barn; our shadows got smaller and smaller. “And she’ll hate you, too, because she’ll know. Girls always know. She’ll know you see someone else every time you make love to her.”

“Hattie—”

“And your kid will hate you for making his mother unhappy.” I pushed him until his back hit the wall and he grabbed my wrists to try and force me off. But I just got louder and stronger.

“And the school will hate you because you don’t fit in there. Because you’re better and smarter than them and you know it. And this town will hate you because you’ll never be one of them. You’ll shrivel away into nothing here. You’ll be an old, bitter, useless—”

He lunged at me, stopping my mouth with his own, kissing me brutally, boxing my head in his hands. I gasped at the force and he spun me around and slammed me into the wall. I cried out, but he didn’t stop. Thank you, God.

“Peter.” I chanted his name as he wound my hair in his hands, wedged his knee between mine, and drove me up.

“Is this what you want?”

“Yes.” I found his belt and unfastened the buckle. “Yes, always.”

He moaned my name, like it was being ripped out of him, and then there was no more talking. We fell onto the floor, not even bothering to undress, desperate for each other. It was hard and fast and rough and when it was over he collapsed and pulled me to his side, holding me tight.

We lay quietly for a while, letting our breathing return to normal. Then I pushed myself up to an elbow and smiled at him.

“I should have insulted you a long time ago.”

“I’m amazed you ever found anything positive to say to me.”

“I’m very creative.”

He smiled, but it was like a shadow passing over his face. I laid my palm along his jaw, so gently, and stared down at him.

“Come to New York with me.”

He mirrored my move, reaching up and stroking my face. “I don’t think I can.”

Then he closed his eyes and dropped his hand to cover them. “But, God, I don’t think . . .”—my heart dropped—“I can leave you.”

“Wh-what?”

He sat up suddenly, pulling me with him as everything was confusion, then he took me by both arms and gazed at me, swallowing.

“I love you, Hattie Hoffman.”

“I love you, too.” My chest was pounding now, harder than it had all night. All my cards were on the table. There was nothing left to say, nothing left I could do. It was his decision.

“I don’t have much money,” he said.