Here to Stay by Suanne Laqueur Page B

me. I didn’t want to know, didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to see. It was changed forever and nothing would get it back the way it was.”
    He had paced away during the rant but abruptly turned back now. “Is this really what you want?” he asked. “Me yelling at you? You want me to get in your face, call you a whore, shove you around?”
    “No,” she said. “No, not now. But back then I would’ve taken anything but the silence.”
    “Well this is now and I’m not that guy.”
    “I know.”
    “But I was,” he said. Their eyes caught and locked. Inside his damp clothes, his legs were quivering. “I did trust you with my dark side. Up in your room at Jay Street, all those nights we were high and insane. I was more than a little rough with you. I made you cry. I made you bleed. I tied your hands, scratched and bruised you, fucking pulled your hair out. We got off on making each other hurt in bed. You’ve seen me at my worst, but not once while I was beating up David did it occur to me to turn around and belt you one.”
    She was shaking her head, staring at the tiled floor. “This conversation isn’t going where I wanted it to.”
    “Take it somewhere else then,” he said. “I feel like we’re not telling each other anything we don’t already know.”
    “What would you have done if I came to your room that night?”
    “I can only answer that in hindsight. It’s easy to say now I would’ve let you in and talked to you. Would I though? I honestly don’t know. I might have locked you out and ignored you. I might have let you in and sat there like a stone. I might have thrown you up against the wall and fucked you and then made you go. I might have just cried. I don’t know.”
    She nodded, hugging herself, one of her palms moving up and down her bicep.
    Erik’s arms were crossed as well. “This is old pain.”
    “But it matters. Don’t tell me it doesn’t, otherwise why did you need to get out of here so fast?”
    “The letter brought it all back,” he said. “I didn’t want it to but it did. Wondering why you did it. Wondering how you could do it. What did he have that I didn’t.” The words fell in a tired vomit on the floor. No commitment was in them, but they were squatting illegally in his heart and he evicted them. Turned them out on the street, yanked them loose like rotten teeth and let the bitter taste flow through his mouth.
    “I didn’t know how to get past it. I didn’t want to get past it. I was too tired. I had no fight in me left anymore. David took the last of it. He took you and he took my will to keep going. I felt used and useless. I told Will I couldn’t pretend it never happened. I couldn’t get back with you and act like we weren’t changed. No matter what I did or said or forgave or forgot, from that day on you and I were different. And I hated it. I didn’t want us to be different. If it couldn’t be us, it was no use to me. So I left. You know this, Dais. We’ve talked about this. What can I tell you you don’t already know?”
    With an exhaled sigh of frustration he sat down on one of the kitchen stools, leaned on an elbow and ran his hand through his hair. His other hand reached to take hers and they held still a long while. No sound but the tick of the clock and the low murmur of bubbling soup.
    The tension eased up in his gut, unwound like a severed vine and fell away. His love for her stirred in his heart. An easing in his crowded mind, knowing this was part of the fight. And the fight was good.
    He drew her closer to him, bringing her between his knees. He slid his arm around her waist and laid his head against her. Her heart was kicking hard against the wall of her chest, but the hand caressing his hair was calm.
    She was wearing her oldest, sloppiest jeans. The ones that hung loose on her hips. His fingertips ran along the waistband, pushing it down a little, until the red-lettered fish emerged. He touched it. Ran the ball of his thumb over it.