The Lie(47)

With a gasp, she suddenly breaks away, and the bright, effervescent cord between us snaps, leaving me empty and stunned.

“I can’t do this,” she cries softly. Panic is etched clearly on her face.

She tries to pull away, but I’m grabbing her arms, holding her in place.

“Can’t do what?” I demand.

“This!” Her voice is choked, her eyes are growing wet and brimming with pain. “You kissing me, me being with you. Any of this.”

My chest grows cold. “Why not?” I manage to say, even though I know her answer. I know exactly why “why not?” because it comes from that same dark place where guilt buzzes like flies.

“Because we’re dishonoring the dead!” she sobs. “Don’t you feel that?”

I immediately let go of her, sucking in my breath.

She’s breathing hard and staring at me like she knows she’s done wrong.

I can barely speak. “They were my family, Natasha. Don’t think I’m not thinking about them every single day, that I won’t be thinking about them for the rest of my life.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, shaking her head, a tear falling to the floor. I’m barely aware that another theatre is emptying, people coming out of the doors. “Brigs, I’m sorry. I just look at you and…”

“You think I’m a mistake,” I offer flatly.

“Don’t you?” She looks around wildly then closes her eyes. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Frustration builds at the back of my throat. I want to be patient, I want to be understanding. But if she has more problems with us than I do, I’m not sure what I can do to change her mind. I’m not even sure if it’s right for me to feel this way.

But I do.

She bends down to pick up the spilled bucket of popcorn, but I reach it before she does, and walk over to the trash, tossing it in. The lobby is crowded now and people are walking between us. Any chance for a serious conversation is over.

But we can’t be over.

I walk back over to her. “Let’s get out of here. Let’s go somewhere and talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she says, practically pleading. “Thanks for the movie, Brigs.”

She turns and walks away. I stand there for a second, dumbfounded that she’s actually going to leave it like this. Then I jog after her, fighting through the crowd until I’m at her side, out on Baker Street.

“What happened? What changed?” I hiss in her ear as I hurry alongside her. “Monday night you were feeling fine, we were doing good, I was the happiest I’ve felt in years!”

Her brows shoot up. “What happened?! You just kissed me.”

“So what’s the difference?”

She stops, walking back a step to get out of the way of pedestrians. She blinks at me. “The difference is everything. Being friends is difficult enough, but anything more than that…”

I take a step toward her, bearing down on her. “You used to be in love with me. And I was in love with you.”

“And look what that love did! It ruined both of our lives.”

My pulse hammers against my throat, but I can’t look away from her. So much of me wants to agree, does agree, and yet that’s not the whole story. It’s brutal, but it’s not that simple.

“Natasha,” I say quietly, my eyes roaming her face, searching for something to latch on to. Her cheeks are flushed, her lip worrying between her teeth. “I’m not sure when I’ll stop feeling guilty. I’m not sure when you’ll stop feeling guilty. But the fact that both of us have come out a dark hole, to emerge here,” I throw my arms out, “where we are now, says we’re capable of letting go. Capable of moving on.”

“And how can we move on if we’re back to square one?”

“Because this isn’t square one,” I tell her, gently running my fingers under her chin. “This isn’t going backward. This is going forward. We get to start again. Now. From scratch.”

She closes her eyes briefly, taking in a deep breath. Then she shakes her head. “That’s easy for you to say, Brigs,” she says sadly, moving away from me, “when I’m feeling everything for you that I felt before.”

God, my f*cking heart.

She leaves.

“Please don’t walk away from me,” I call after her, some passerby turning their heads, hearing the hurt break my voice.

But she doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t listen. And I know this time that running after her again will be futile.

Maybe it was futile all along.

I sigh, running my hand through my hair. Then I turn and go back into the theatre to finish the rest of the film.

She was right about the movie.

I hate it.





CHAPTER TWELVE

Brigs

Edinburgh

Four Years Ago



I’ve gone mad. Bloody f*cking mad.

That’s what love does to you. Your heart becomes so f*cking needy that it siphons energy from everything, including your own brain cells. Your pulse beats to thoughts of her, your veins run hot with need and want. Everything about you becomes so singularly focused on one person that there’s no room for you anymore.

And you don’t care. Because as maddening as it is, love is the only time you really, deeply feel what it is to be alive. And for that, you’ll put up with anything.