Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(69)

His face, his beautiful face was turned up to mine under the soft light of the moon.

“Theo, what are you doing?” I breathed, panicked.

“Asking you to marry me. Because all I’ll ever want is you.”

The ring blinked at me. I blinked at it.

Shock, cold and sharp, ripped through me. Everything I’d thought I knew, everything I’d thought we were, came to a halt, the brakes slamming with all their force. But the contents of the car kept moving, flying into the windshield, testing the limits of the seatbelts, leaving bruises and broken bones that I had the horrible realization would never heal.

The construct of my life and my future came crumbling and tumbling and rumbling to the ground of my heart.

I dug through my thoughts with frantic hands, trying to find something, anything to make sense of what he was asking. For months, he had challenged my beliefs until the boundaries were confused and the fences weak. But on the proposition on his lips, I realized with shattering certainty that I hadn’t abandoned them.

I’d built my life inside of them, and they wouldn’t be breached so easily, so quickly.

Of all the people in all the world, I’d thought he was the only one who understood me. All this time, I’d thought we were on the same page. But the ring in his hand and the look on his face told me we weren’t. I had been grossly misunderstood.

I had never considered marriage. I had never spoken the word love. I wanted him, wanted to be with him forever if he’d have me. But not like this.

Anything but this.

I couldn’t make snap decisions. I wasn’t capable. Especially when it came to something of this magnitude.

In that moment, without the comfort of warning, without the time to consider what he was asking, there was only one thing I could do.

Default to the relationship construct I’d stood upon my entire life.

“But…Theo, I…I don’t believe in marriage. I told you in the beginning.”

The flicker of fear on his face gutted me. “You were serious?”

“You’ve met my mother, and you know me better than I know myself. Whenever am I not serious? I…I don’t know how…I can’t…”

Panic, caustic and bitter, buckled my knees.

Before I knew I was falling, I was in his arms. He helped me to a concrete bench where I sat with tingling hands.

“Breathe, Kate.”

I drew a loud, deliberate breath through my nose and held it.

“Let it out,” he commanded.

So I did. “I…I’m sorry. I was unprepared for that question.”

A loud sigh of his own, the hurt in his voice clear as he said, “I should have known better than to surprise you. You hate surprises. I justified this to myself so far that I was convinced this was what you wanted. I love you, Kate.”

Love. The word knocked the wind out of me, tilted the horizon. I leaned into him so I wouldn’t fall.

“I thought we were on the same page,” I said half to myself, the words quiet and mournful. “I thought you understood.”

He shifted, moving to kneel before me again, taking my hands in his. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have caught you unaware. But from the second I met you, I have loved you. I didn’t understand how or why…at the time, I didn’t realize what it even was. And once I figured it out, there was only one thing to do. This.” He looked down at my hands, thumbing my left hand, third finger. “I’ve only ever wanted two things in this life—to be the father I never had and to be a husband to a woman I love. Then I met you. And now my dreams are all right here in front of me.” He shook his head, raised his gaze, met my eyes. “I can let go of marriage if you love me. I can do anything if you love me.”

A succession of words, letters strung together to make sounds. A paragraph. A question.

And everything changed.

He’d impressed his boundaries on me, and now that I knew, I had to respect them—I had no choice. He had always respected mine. Had I known his, I would have done the same.

With the truth, I would break his heart.

I would break my own heart.

“Theo…” I whispered his name, and he knew. I saw the tear of his soul in two syllables.

A pause, thick with a truth neither of us wanted to acknowledge. “You don’t love me.” Cold. Distant. Broken.

My throat closed, stinging and hot. “I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”

“But you don’t love me.” His face was stone. The words were miles away.

“I don’t believe in love,” I said, begging him to understand. “And I can’t promise you something I don’t believe in.”

He let go of my hands and stood, blocking the moon, casting me in his shadow. The moonlight threw a halo around him like an angel.

“If you don’t love me, there’s nothing left to say. If there’s no hope that we can be anything beyond a set of rules and a baby, then we’ve reached an impasse. If there’s nowhere to go but here, I won’t be satisfied. I love you, Kate. I’ve done all I can to prove that love. I’ve given you everything, and gladly, because I thought we were moving in the same direction. But you stopped, and I kept going.”

My hands found each other, twisting together like the twist in my chest. “I thought you knew. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The word choked off, my tears rolling down my cheeks, my chest split and burning. “I don’t want to be without you.”