CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Chad

As much as I hated facing life at the moment, I crawled out of bed, managed a shower, and threw on some shorts. Just because I'd uncharacteristically acted like an out-of-control idiot, there was no excuse to hide away. Time to face the music.

Mom smiled when I entered the kitchen, my need for coffee at emergency levels. "Good afternoon, honey."

"I hope so," I replied. "Is he still here?" I asked, referring to Clint.

Mom motioned to the guest house, so I walked to the slider to verify. Clint was below the main floor deck of the house, on the pool deck, sitting in a chair facing the ocean, his back to me.

"How long?" I asked.

"All morning," she confirmed. "He wouldn't come inside when I offered him lunch," she added.

I stared at the back of Clint's head, sorrow enveloping my heart when I thought of my behavior at the food truck. I could only imagine what my peers at the food truck park were thinking about me after that bizarre shit show.

"I feel so bad, Mom. What a mess I've made."

"I'm sure you feel awful, son, but Clint created the opportunity by showing up announced. Dad and I never should have told him where you were. I'm sorry for that."

I sat on the couch, elbows on my knees, chin resting in my hands, staring at the floor. I'd had the night to dwell on my response to his visit, and the results of that study only fortified how off the handle I'd been. It is true. I was angry. Very angry. He'd said he couldn't live life with a man at his side. He couldn't live as a couple. He couldn't stay with me. All the news written in a note.

Perhaps I wasn't as far along with my healing, my journey to forgiveness, as I had thought I was. Was it easier to think so because he was absent? Had him abandoning me forced me to accept reality, bury us, and move on? Probably. What I hadn't planned on was a visit where he took it all back and basically demanded I try again.

Demanded. There was the source of my exploding. ‘We'll finish the beach house. You'll bring the food truck there. You'll do your business there.' What? Hello? You just up and deserted me, and you want me to do what?

"It was the note, Mom," I said softly. "That and he tells me all about the new plans he has for us like nothing he did even happened."

Mom remained seated at the kitchen island, listening to me, nodding, but not adding anything to my ramblings.

"My first emotion was bewilderment over how he could do what he did, you know?" I picked at a loose thread on my cargo shorts. "He shows up and thinks I've had nothing happening in my life. Like I've been waiting for him to deem me worthy enough to love," I added.

Mom listened, taking sips of coffee in between silent acknowledgements that she was there to hear me vent.

"I gave all I had to that relationship. Never blamed. Never yelled or threatened. I did nothing but try to help him, Mom. And he leaves a note," I muttered.

Mom looked up and caught my eye. "Tell me about the note," she asked. "Explain why you are so fixated on that note."

I gazed at her in shock. "Why am I so angry about a note?" I questioned, thinking she must be joking after hearing me go on and on about the damn thing for nine months. Mom nodded. "I gave my heart to that man, Mom," I began. "Every bit of me went into saving that relationship," I added, building steam. "Clint returned nothing but silence when I begged for him to help me understand his fear of living his life with me. But I still believed he was worth the effort. I would have stayed and given even more had he asked."

I began to cry into my hands when Mom came across the room and knelt in front of me. "Then why didn't you stay?" she asked. "Why didn't you give more? What was the reason you couldn't do those things, honey?"

I moved my hands from my face and stared at her through my tears, her questions dawning on me as she asked them.

"You know the answer, sweetie. Do yourself a favor and tell me why you didn't stay."

"He'd left, Mom," I cried. "He'd already gone."

"And he left that note, right?"

I nodded through my tears. It wasn't my fault that I didn't give more. I wasn't wrong for coming home. I'd had no choice, no reason to keep our apartment. He'd left despite me trying harder, giving more.

I crumpled into my mother's arms. A space that, despite being an adult, a child can always depend on. Mom held me tight as I wept. I'd spent nearly nine months blaming myself for not working harder on my relationship with Clint. It had to be me that failed. I was the person he depended on to make our love work and I had failed him, and I had failed me. I was the failure.

I pulled back. "He gave up on us," I whispered. "I didn't give up."

"I'm glad to hear you get to that realization, and that might be true honey, but he's here right now," she stated. "And guess what?" she added. I looked at her, my stomach lurching at what she might say. "He still doesn't believe that you have given up on him. The question is, have you?"

I wiped my eyes and studied my mother's face. She had always known my true weakness in life. A weakness that many would call an honorable trait, but one she'd mentioned she worried about before. I didn't give up. On life, or on people. And sometimes, that was to my detriment.

"I need to talk to him," I said. "It's time he understands my feelings."

"And you can accomplish that rationally, son?" she inquired, squeezing my leg.

I nodded and smiled sheepishly. "Yeah, Mom. I can."

I stood at the slider and took a deep breath before opening the door. Mom spoke before I stepped out, but my back remained to her. "Despite everything, Chad. You love him. We love him. Please remember that, honey." I nodded and slid the door open.

Clint turned when he heard footsteps on the wooden stairs as I descended to the lower pool deck near the guest house. He flinched when he saw it was me. Not a physical flinch of fear that I might still be angry, but more of a flinch of recognition that traveled across his face where he realized that he would have to face me finally.

"Hey," I whispered, hesitating briefly. "Can we talk?"

Clint stood, his eyes, as always, darting everywhere but toward mine. "I'm not going to be violent," I stated. "I'm sorry for that, too," I added.

"That's okay," he mumbled, gesturing toward a matching chair across from him. "I waited so we could talk. I hope your folks don't mind that I stayed so long."

I sat down and watched as his massive frame settled back into the chair. Clint was a brick wall of muscle. I'd forgotten just how big he actually was. His chest was barely contained in a sleeveless tank top, the veins in his arms as wide as the river Nile. He was the type of guy that if you saw him walking toward you, you might cross the street.

But on top of those mountainous shoulders sat a kind face, creating a softness to his look that betrayed the obvious brute strength he possessed. I knew him as a pussycat and that he would only wield his power if he was actually physically threatened. My tiny, wailing fists caused him zero alarm, and there was no chance he'd ever raise a fist at me.

I studied the man I was in love with before and suddenly realized that my love was still there, just that it had changed. "They are just fine with you being here, Clint. Mom and Dad care about you."

"Have you had time to think about coming back with me?" he asked, wasting no time and getting to the reason he'd showed up. If he was anything, he was persistent and to the point. I'd give him that.

My true, calmer self, smiled gently, a reaction far different than twenty-fours previous. "Yes, I've had time, Clint," I acknowledged. "I've had the chance to clear my head of the anger as well," I added.

"I'm figuring you was mad about the note," he said, once again in Clint speak, getting directly to the point. "Least you mentioned it quite a bit the last time," he added.

"That was yesterday," I corrected. "And yes, the note."

"Not my best," he acknowledged. "I'm just dumb is all."

"You are not dumb, Clint."

"I do dumb shit," he stated. "Not smart about love stuff."

"You make up for your inexperience with a good heart," I said. "I loved you, didn't I?"

His face was instantly covered in anguish. The painful realization of the word I'd just used in the past tense hit him directly in his heart. "‘Loved?'" he asked, looking away and staring at the water a couple of hundred yards away. "Figured as much from you fighting me."

"Please look at me." He turned back, his eyes filling. I knew he hated to cry. He felt weak if he did. "I love you, Clint," I admitted.

"But you're not coming back to Beaufort with me, are you?" I shook my head to confirm I wasn't. "You just can't do that, right?" he asked, his lower lip quivering as he fought his fear of showing emotion.

"I can't," I answered.

"Because you don't love me like I love you?"

How do you answer a question like that? I was no longer sure that Clint knew how he loved me. And what if he decided that our type of love was once again incompatible with his comfort if I did go back?

What if he shut me out again? But more importantly, I could never trust his love. Not the all-important kind of trust that would allow me to do what I always did, give my all. And I realized I was okay with wanting to give my all. Giving your all is required to achieve great things. I was twenty-two years old. There were great things ahead of me.

"I can't provide what you need, Clint, and that's okay," I said. "And how could I ever trust that I'll be enough for you? I can be a good friend, though," I added.

He looked me in the eye as I spoke, and I wondered what he'd heard. Did he understand what I'd said? Really, truly understood? "Lucas did the same thing," he stated, reminding me of how I'd met him and his brief history with Lucas. "I loved him, too. He didn't love me, though," he said softly, looking away when he recognized his eyes filling again. "Come to think of it, Rhonda either. She said she did. Said she wanted me back, but she was only after my money," he muttered. "I guess I'm not good enough for people to love."

His words struck a painful chord in my heart. What he just said was how I was feeling after he left. After David died, too. I imagined we all feel abandoned sometimes. Clint was a person who didn't understand there were rules or a system in place where one is more respectful about how they leave a relationship. He had one simple thought that he couldn't do it, so he up and wrote a note expressing those exact words because he couldn't say them to me.

"You couldn't just have spoken to me, could you?" I asked, finding space in my heart for forgiveness. Forgiving isn't forgetting, but I had the capacity to do both.

"Wouldn't have known how," he confessed. "Didn't know how to tell ya the truth."

"But I deserved better than that, Clint," I stated, forgiving and forgetting, but needing the words to be spoken for me, nonetheless.

"You did," he agreed.

We sat silently, both of us absorbing the situation. I was sad about what I'd done, and I assumed he was for his part in it, too. For me, having him in front of me was what I had wished for many times. I'd needed a chance to say what I had to say. To point out how shitty what he'd done was. But here he was, and basically he already knew.

"Are you going to be okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, I suppose," he replied, swiping at one of his boots as he tried to not look at me. "I don't have anyone, but of course, don't deserve anyone either though," he added.

"Who is it you want, Clint?"

"I wanted you," he answered, gesturing toward me with a thumb. "But I see now that I'm not good for ya."

"I meant who do you want for your life partner," I corrected. "A man? A woman? Do you know?"

"Don't like thinking I'm gay, but I like guys," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I like girls too, but I feel like something's missing there."

"How about you see who you like better?" I suggested. "Or maybe you are a true bisexual, Clint."

"A bisexual? Now what in the heck is that?"

"You like both men and women," I said, laughing just a little. "That is a real option."

"Tell ya the truth, I think I'd be lying."

He stood and walked to the railing, where he gazed at the water. "You'd be lying?" I asked, joining him by the railing. "About what part?" I asked, leaning against him, feeling his familiar power.

"The lie is that I know I prefer men," he muttered. "But I just like the idea of being seen with a woman. That's easier."

"Love is never easy, my friend."

He turned to face me. "Friend, huh?" I nodded. "Don't like the idea of that, Chad. Not gonna lie. I just don't."

"I'm a good friend," I stated. "You can count on me."

He studied me carefully. I think he was making sure that what I was saying was what I meant. I assumed he needed the clarity. "I can use a friend," he said.

"Me too," I confessed. We locked eyes before he finally looked away. "Are you going to be okay?" I asked.

"Can I reach out to ya if I'm not doing so good down the road?"

"Always," I said. "Always," I repeated.

"Well… okay then. I'll leave ya be." He pulled me into him and held me gently. We embraced for several seconds before he buried his face in my neck and spoke in a broken voice. "I'm sorry about the note. You deserved better, and I let you down. I won't let you down again," he said.

His words were precisely what I'd needed to hear. Sensing his sincere apology, I relaxed into his arms further. And then I opened my eyes, facing the opposite way as him. He couldn't see what I saw.

Cole stood halfway up the steps that led from the beach trail, staring at me, hurt evident on his face.