Still Not Over You(37)
He also looks like every heartbreak I’ve ever known.
And I can’t have him here while I’m still breaking over watching Milah crawl on him this morning, after he found those words I’d never wanted him to read, every wayward thought I’ve refused to acknowledge since I was a teenager committed to incriminating paper.
He drops down lithely from the top of the fence, then just stands there, breathing heavily, his hands curling and uncurling at his sides. There’s something dangerous about him right now, something volatile, this vibrant dynamite that could go off anytime if I just light the match – yet he’s different, too.
The dark shadow, that haunted and cruel air that’s hovered over him for years, isn’t there when I look into his eyes.
We hold for long, breathless moments. My chest tightens. The silence hurts. Beyond painful.
“I...” I, nothing. I swallow, licking my lips. “There are doors, you know?” I offer weakly, my voice nearly drowned in the soundless thing building between us.
“Didn’t want to deal with Steve. Didn't need him knowing.” Low. Growling. Steady. Whatever he’s here for, he’s certain of it. He steps closer to me on prowling movements. “I came for you, Reb.”
My heart does a suicide run against my rib cage and smashes into it hard, nearly compressing itself flat. “I...what? But you –”
“Don’t want you around? Can’t stand you? Won’t ever forgive you?” Every word is a bullet fired from the cruel gun of his mouth.
Every one is punctuated by another step closer, while those penetrating eyes hold me in place until I can’t even run from the pain. “Except you’re wrong. I’ve been running away, and I won’t do it anymore. And I won’t let you, either.”
I shake my head. My pulse going so fast I’m almost dizzy, and I curl a hand against my throat as if I can force it to calm. “I don’t understand. I’m not running.”
“Bull. You ran from me today.” He’s so quiet, so calm, but that charged energy is everywhere, latent and bursting. “You’ve been running from confronting this thing between us.”
“I’ve been running because you chased me away!” I flare hotly, then tense, bracing for the blowback of his temper.
Instead he only sits down on the bench next to me, leans forward, and rests his elbows on his knees, a heavy sigh drifting off him.
He’s not quite close enough to touch, but he smells like sea salt and male musk and I don’t think it’s just my pulse making me dizzy. He laces his hands together – so coarse, the ridges between his knuckles rivet me, my brain everywhere, bouncing around trying to find something stable to latch on to.
But I’m left free-floating, and completely unprepared for this conversation that’s been five years in the making.
“I did chase you,” he admits quietly. “Because you saw me for what I really am, and I couldn’t stand disappointing you.”
My mouth works incoherently. How? I want to ask. That word, and so many more. Questions like, What are you saying? That I mattered that much to you...that you cared that much what I thought of you?
And Jesus, if you cared so much, how could you be so cruel?
“Landon...”
He exhales heavily, lowering his eyes, his jaw tightening as he stares at his hands. “I know. I’m not starting this the right way. I’m coming at it sideways. But if you’ll just let me talk, let me get my thoughts out...then I’ll answer anything you want to know.”
I nod feebly. That, I can do. Maybe by the time he’s done talking I can figure out my thoughts and feelings and form words more coherent than “Okay.”
Still, he says nothing for what feels like forever.
I just see him gathering himself, and part of me wants to reach out to touch him, to say it’s okay, but I can’t. I’m afraid if I touch him I’ll break whatever this fragile moment is, this bubble in time when suddenly we’re teenagers again, sitting out under these stringy bright glitter-bulb stars, and he doesn’t hate me.
And he’ll actually talk to me. And look at me. And instead of forcing me away with the pure vibrant force of his anger, we'll find an understanding.
Finally, with a deep exhale that lifts his shoulders heavily, he says, “You shouldn’t have read my journal. But I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did, either. That day years ago, Reb...” His brows draw into a thunderhead. He lifts his clasped hands to press his thumbs against the insides of his eye sockets. “It was too fucking much. I’d just found out what my father was really up to with Crown. Bad shit. Dirty, underhanded black market deals. I don’t know if he was actually involved in the drugs and trafficking, or if he just looked the other way, but it was bad. It cost him everything in the end. His family. His life. His honor.”
My blood chills. I remember Micah Strauss. He’d always had an easy smile on his big square shoulders. He was always kind to me, Steve, and my parents. Never someone I’d label evil.
My jaw hangs open. “Mr. Strauss? Dirty? You're sure?”
Stupid question, but it still falls out. Of course I already know if there was any doubt, Landon wouldn't be the tortured man he's become.
“Yeah. And I was so fucking angry. Angry with him for betraying us. Pissed with myself for not seeing it sooner, and finding some way to save him. There’s part of me that wants to believe he was just a good man who fell in with the wrong people so he'd keep making money for his family. Another part of me curses his fucking name for ever being so vile. I don’t know if I love him or hate him, I just know he’s not here for me to figure it out, and I’m still fucking livid over it – and pissed at myself for not finding out who pulled the trigger.” He lifts haunted, haggard eyes to me.