Thick & Thin (Thin Love, #3)(69)
“Do you know how ridiculous you sound, cheri?”
“What?” She opened her mouth, looking like an out of her bowl fish and I understood. She wanted solidarity. She wanted me telling her she wasn’t wrong at all keeping Kona from his home. But I wasn’t going to lie to her.
“Keira, do you know how long I waited for Ransom to chase after me?” She closed her mouth, leaning back against the chair like I was revealing state secrets. “Do you know how many nights I prayed that he’d just turn up at my condo and tell me he wanted me and nothing else? No team, no Miami, no chance of hurting himself again and again, no anything but me and him in the city we loved.”
“Sweetie, it’s different. Kona and Ransom…”
“Of course it’s different. I left. I walked away and you practically pushed Kona out of the door.” When she moved to the edge of her chair, looking jumpy and eager to argue, I shook my head, mimicking her by moving forward in my seat. “I know why you did it. I know that all of this secrecy, him keeping everything to himself, is completely different from the man you love. The ex, the supposed other kids he fathered, the way your lives have gotten…”
“Busy.”
Shoulders falling, I tilted my head watching Keira close, realizing to her, her struggles were real. But they weren’t hers alone. “Souple, that’s life. You know. Hell, you taught me that. Work and kids and trying to juggle all the hats you wear, me zanmi, Keira, you’ve been preaching that to me for thirteen years. It was bound to get monotonous and complicated because that’s what life does. But you still need each other.”
“He didn’t tell me. He didn’t trust me enough to…” A small whip of wind moved against her, moving the hair from her forehead and Keira stopped her complaint in favor of blinking, trying it seemed, to keep herself in check.
“He wanted to protect you. I know that.” I held out my hand and she took it, rubbing her thumb over the obnoxious ring Ethan had given me. “I think you know that too and I understand, shoushou, that it still hurts. You feel like he didn’t think you could handle it.”
“That’s it exactly,” she said, giving my fingers a squeeze.
“But you haven’t exactly given him a chance to ask for forgiveness, have you?” She didn’t answer, kept her eyes on that diamond, finally closing her eyes like she couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. I could relate. “Something else I’ve learned from you over the years, from Kona too: you want to live a happy life, you fight for it.”
Blinking again, Keira looked at me as though she wasn’t sure what she should say to me. There was less loss in her expression, less insult at being fed a meal of truth she clearly wasn’t interested in. But beyond that was confusion—that came in the soft lines denting across her forehead and how she pressed her lips together. “But you didn’t fight. You left.”
It wasn’t an accusation and I didn’t take it as one. For four years Keira had not asked what had really happened between us. She’d never asked more than how I liked my condo or if I minded Ransom being with her when she visited. They hadn’t known, none of them, that Ransom came to me after the break up. I didn’t want him mentioning it. I didn’t think giving his family some small hope that things had changed was fair. Keira had kept her friendship with me despite the distance between her son and I. Despite the fact that she knew my leaving had hurt him.
“I fought, cheri, for as long as I could. He just wouldn't listen, had too many other things pulling at him, and I was rarely at the top of the list—unless he had a night off. I yelled, he apologized, then went back and did the same thing again. He made promises, then broke them. I finally put down an ultimatum and he stepped over it like it wasn't even there. I loved him, I really did, still do, but, well...” I looked out across the lake. “Despite what the poets say, love can only go so far.”
The wind and the chill and the choppy water, the sight of Keira wrapped up in that old blanket, the feel of her heartache, the idea of words not spoken, of secrets withheld, all these churned in the pit of my stomach. This woman had shared with me her worst fears. Wasn’t it time I shared mine with her? “But it wasn't just that. Honestly, I can’t lay this all at Ransom’s feet. Something happened.... there’s something that.... I....” I didn’t know how to go on. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“Aly…” Keira’s voice was soft, cautious, but she didn’t keep quiet. “What really happened? Why did you really leave?”
Looking at her—that sweet, open expression, the concern I knew she felt despite her own worry, despite how desperately scared she was that her marriage was unraveling, Keira still wanted me to talk to her. She’d seen me struggle. She’d seen me trying to fight against my instinct to cling closer to the past. She’d claimed to understand when Ethan first asked me on a date. I’d kept all of this to myself for so long that the ache of it was familiar—like a knot in the center of your chest, something that pains you but you’re sure will eventually disappear. The truth, the reality of feeling like a failure, the disappointment that I couldn’t give Ransom what I knew he wanted, it had all taken root inside me. It had sat there, a burning ache that I’d learned to disregard. Now Keira was giving me the chance to chip away at that ache.