When I Was Yours(82)

“Yeah, but…” I blow out a breath. “In a twisted way, I owe Ava, Dad. She saved Casey’s life.”

“She didn’t save Casey’s life. She gave us the opportunity to be able to. And it’s not like she did it out of the goodness of her heart. She took from you as much as she gave.”

He’s right. I know he is, but…

“How do I tell Adam? How do I even start?”

“You start at the beginning.”

“I just…” I drag a hand through my hair. “I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have.”

“You’re hurting him right now.”

“Dad…” I wince.

“No. I’m sorry, Evie, but you need to hear this. If Adam is the same kid I knew ten years ago, then you’re hurting him. That kid loved you. He loved you like I loved your mom. It’s that once-in-a-lifetime kind of love.”

“He doesn’t feel like that anymore.” I shake my head, my eyes starting to fill with tears.

“That kind of love doesn’t die because of time or distance, Evie. Believe me, I know.” There’s an ache in his voice, which makes me hurt more. “It’s always there, burning away. And Adam’s might be hidden and buried under a lot of anger and pain at the moment, but it is still there. He just needs to find his way back to it. But that can only happen with you being honest with him.”

“But what if—”

“There are no what-ifs, Evie. You should have told him at the time. I should have made you and stopped what was happening. Maybe we could have done things differently. Got Casey that treatment some other way. If I’d—”

“No. There was nothing you could have done. You had already done everything you could. Bending to what Ava wanted was all I could do. She held all the cards.”

“But it meant that you lost everything.”

“I didn’t lose everything. I still had you and Casey. That was the most important thing.”

“You had to make a sacrifice, one you shouldn’t have had to make. Not at your age. Not at any age.”

“I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I would never choose differently.” No matter how much it hurt. It would have hurt more to lose Casey.

At least I knew Adam was out there, living and breathing, even if it was without me.

Dad lets out a hard sigh because he knows I’m right. He would have made the same choice if he were in the same position. He’d have done it without a thought.

I might have made the choice, but I did think about it, just for a second. I paused because of how much I loved Adam.

“Just…tell him the truth, Evie. He has a right to know.” My dad picks his coffee mug up and gets up from the table. “I’m going to make some pancakes. Casey will be up soon, and she’ll be hungry. You want some?”

“No, I’m good. Dad?”

He stops by the kitchen door.

“What if I tell him, and he doesn’t understand why I did what I did? What if he doesn’t forgive me?”

“How could he not? You chose to save a life over having one with him. He would have done the same.”

“I know, but…I should have told him sooner.”

“Yeah, you should have. But we all make mistakes, Evie. Just stop looking for reasons not to tell him and start looking at all the reasons you should.”

I sit there, tracing patterns on the tablecloth. Left with Dad’s words in my ears, I think about Adam, think about what I should do.

Then, I think about what I saw at the beach house in his old bedroom.

Getting up, I go to my bedroom. I open my closet door and reach up, getting the shoebox I keep on the shelf.

I open it up, looking down at the mementos I kept. There are old ticket stubs from movies Adam and I saw together, the receipt from the meal he took me to on my birthday—that night was the first time we had sex—and the pencil I used to sketch that first picture I did of him, the one that hangs on his old bedroom wall with the others. Then, there’s our wedding photo. We got two copies—one for us and an extra for Dad to have.

I pick up my old diary, which I never did write in, and open it to the center page. A pressed rose is there, the one Adam bought me on our first date. I pick up the folded piece of paper in there, close the book, and open the paper up. It’s the last picture I ever drew of him, the one I started the night I left but never got the chance to finish. I could never bring myself to finish it.

I don’t even realize I’m crying until a tear hits the paper.

Carefully drying it away, I fold the paper up and put it back into the box.

I kept our memories for all these years because I never stopped loving him. Maybe he kept his memories for the same reason. Maybe Dad’s right. Maybe Adam’s love for me isn’t gone. Maybe it is just buried under all his anger and my lies.

His words from last night come back to me…

“Tell me the truth—tell me why you left, and I’ll see if it’s something I can get past, see if we can move forward together, so I can try to learn to trust you again.”

The only way I stand a chance of ever getting Adam back for real, of having a future with him, is if I tell him the truth.

I could tell him and still lose him, but it’s a chance I have to take.