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17. And The Truth Comes Out

17

AND THE TRUTH COMES OUT

LILA

I don’t know why I felt compelled to take Hayes’ car. And I really don’t know why I felt compelled to drive over to the Reapers’ mansion. I’m not interested in talking things out with Bristol. This may sound petty, but he should be the one showing up at my house—preferably with a bouquet of roses and a lifetime supply of Little Debbies.

Talking with Hayes was like shoving a finger into a still-fresh wound. I’m not in the right headspace to have a level conversation. Hell, I’m one fuse short from blowing completely, but I need answers. I need to know if it’s really my fault for driving Bristol away…or if this is something that’s bigger than the both of us. And once I get my rightful explanation, I’m done with him.

I rap my knuckles on his bedroom door as an unshakable malaise swirls in my stomach, and I absently pull my sleeves over the palms of my hands. All kinds of thoughts stew in my head, some of sound mind and offering comforting respite, while others scream at me for being a dumb girl racing back to a man who seemingly wants nothing to do with her. My whole body is dewy with sweat, my heart’s somersaulting in my chest, and regret assumes a bitter note on my tongue.

Seconds pass with no response, and I’m about to scrounge up the last of my dignity and leave when the door swings open, revealing Bristol in a rumpled shirt and baggy sweats, looking about as awful as I feel. His hair is roughed up in unruly spikes, his eyes are red and puffy like he’s been crying, and his febrile cheeks glisten with tears. This is the first time he’s ever looked so… vulnerable …and it’s like I’ve been pistol-whipped with the long-hidden truth.

“Lila?” His voice croaks from disuse, his eyes the size of platters as they regard me with shock and apprehension.

I don’t bother with pleasantries as indignation champions inside me. “We need to talk.”

He doesn’t move aside to give me clear passage, so I shoulder my way past him.

“I was going to tex?—”

“Save it, Bristol. I’m not here to listen to any more lies. I’m not here so you can cover your fucking ass.”

When I barge into his room, I’m met by the alarming sight of dirty dishes and a floor scattered with unclean clothes, a far cry from the organized, well-oiled machine he portrays himself to be. It’s as if a cyclone came crashing through his roof, cluttering every flat surface with piles of junk. I don’t even know what to say. This is the warning sign of a depression room, and I would know seeing as I’ve been rotting in my own.

What could’ve possibly happened in the span of a week to affect him like this? And why didn’t he feel like he could talk to me about it? I’m almost more hurt by that than the fact he’s been keeping shit from me this entire time. My lack of breath blights me, making my bleary vision bounce, and I’m running furnace hot as all the anger seeps out of my pores .

“What the hell is going on with you?” I thunder, nearly flinching at the cold detachment in my tone.

Bristol shrivels. “I…”

I know I should give him a chance to speak, but oh, I’m so mad at him! I’m so done with being taken advantage of when he sees fit, then being thrown aside whenever he gets bored of me! I’m so done with constantly questioning my self-worth because the man I have feelings for is emotionally unavailable. I’m so done with the endless cartons of ice cream and the wasted days sleeping and the questionable hygiene routines.

I’ve barely said anything, and yet tears sear my eyes. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this again ? I trusted you. I—God, I can’t believe I fucking trusted you. You ghosted me, Bristol. You ghosted me after we had sex . Do you know how that looks?”

His face flushes, his mouth opening to say God knows what, and then he thinks better and closes it. He doesn’t dispute. He doesn’t retaliate in defensiveness. He doesn’t try and invalidate my feelings. He doesn’t really do anything at all. He trundles over to his bed, sits down on the unmade mattress, and runs his hand through his hair.

If I don’t get everything out now, I’ll lose my gall. So I lock and load that shit on my shoulder like a bazooka. “I’ve always given you all of me when we were together. Always. I never hid anything from you, and yet you only gave me half of you. I feel like I don’t even know you. That’s not how a relationship should work—whether it’s romantic or not. I shouldn’t have to beg you to be all in. You should want to be all in on your own, and I’m the idiot who gave you a second chance when you didn’t deserve it.”

My heart’s in the goddamn shredder right now. A wretched sob streams from my raw throat as tremors terrorize my body. I can barely even see him through the veil of mist in my eyes. I feel myself sway, feel a headache skewer my cranium, and I’m going to give myself a few minutes before the waterworks flood the scene.

It’s never really your enemy who hurts you the most, is it?

Bristol, as always, has nothing productive to add to the conversation. He just sits there, staring at the floor with his eyes glazed over.

“You’re not going to say anything?” I yell at him, not caring that the rest of his teammates are probably listening through the ceiling vents downstairs. “You’re not going to say anything after you disrespected me? Twice? After you used me and then decided to drop me?”

No, I’m not butthurt because he clearly doesn’t reciprocate my feelings. I’m enraged that he continues to lead me on, I continue to fall for it, and he wastes my time taunting me with a future I can never have.

I want to hit something. I want to scream at the top of my lungs. I want to have a meltdown and bang my fists on the ground like a fucking toddler. Every emotion is storming through me right now, necessitating the first tears to splatter my cheeks, and I redirect my full-body tension into closed fists, feeling my nails print crescents into my palms.

After a full minute of silence, Bristol responds. His voice isn’t apathetic…it’s empty . Unpurposefully empty. So analytically clinical that it erases all the warmth I’ve grown to love. “You’re right. You’re right about me never giving you my all, even though you deserve it. Even though I wanted to,” he whispers.

I stare at him in disbelief, spitting out the empathy that he’s trying to force-feed me. “If you wanted to, why weren’t you just honest? I’m not going to stand here and treat you like a child to try and get you to communicate with me. I have…I have more respect for myself than that,” I snap, though disingenuity booms in my ears like an atomic bomb .

His entire upper body is hunched over, and ruinous sorrow devastates the features of his face. “I think…” He swallows, his expression shifting more toward unease. “I think you deserve to know the truth.”

“Oh, I deserve to know now? How thoughtful of you. Truly.”

“I’m sorry. I meant…fuck, I don’t know what I meant, Lila. I should’ve been honest with you when we started seeing each other. I let this secret affect our relationship. I let this secret destroy what we built. And I’d do anything to take it all back and start over. If I hadn’t been a gigantic coward, you would’ve never questioned your worth or how much I care about you.”

I slowly make my way over to him, plop down on the bed, and call on the gods above to give me enough strength to refrain from wrapping my arms around him. We’re sitting right next to each other, but we’re worlds apart. I have no idea what he’s about to say. All I know is that it has the possibility to permanently destroy us, and I’m not sure if that’s a chance I’m willing to take. My mind’s running laps, practically quantum jumping to the worst conclusions.

But nothing—and I mean nothing —could have prepared me for the severity of the truth.

When Bristol fully looks at me, he doesn’t dab the moisture clinging to his lashes. He’s barefaced, finally letting me hold his heart in my hands. “There was…I…”

I give him room to continue, nodding my head encouragingly.

He exhales deeply, and it’s as if that single breath carries all the pain in the world. “When I was in college, I was…I was engaged to my long-term girlfriend, Summit. Or, I was going to be engaged if she said yes.”

Oh my God. Bristol was going to be engaged? I feel like the truth’s a double-edged blade that’s just gutted me down my belly. How could he keep such an important part of his past from me? Does he still have feelings for her? Is that why he’s had reservations this whole time? I’m a fucking fool. Of course there was another woman.

I gnash my teeth together to hide the quivering of my lower lip. The tears are still there, eager to trace the prior track marks, and a torrid heat infiltrates my head.

“I’m not going to downplay anything. I’m not going to lie to you and tell you that I wasn’t unconditionally in love with her. At the time, she was my everything. She made me a better person. She brought out a side of me that never existed before, and I was so adamant to hang on to that. She was it for me, you know? I was ready to share the rest of my life with her. I was ready to spend every waking day basking in her light because she scared away the dark.”

A sob—a terrible, guttural, all-human sob—shatters the bedroom, plucked from the very depths of his heart. “I was planning to propose to her around the holidays. The streets were packed with people coming into town. She was on her way home from work, and she was taking longer than expected. I got worried. I…”

And then, the worst feeling manifests in my gut. A feeling I can’t explain. A feeling so raw and powerful that I fear for the consequences it will bring in its wake.

“I texted her,” Bristol says, squeezing fistfuls of his sweatpants between his fingers. “I texted her, and she took her eyes off the road, and she…she was hit by an oncoming truck.”

I immediately cover my mouth with my hand. Even though I didn’t know this woman, the tears spring into action, sullying my skin. My lungs cave in, my throat dries up, and my stomach turns with acrid nausea. This isn’t the truth I wanted to hear. This isn’t the reality I wanted to live with. Bristol may have treated me badly, but that doesn’t mean he deserved to endure something so traumatic. I can’t even imagine what he’s gone through. I’ve been lucky enough to evade loss in my family, but I know that a lot of people my age have experienced more loss than I ever will in a lifetime.

“She was killed on impact.”

There is nothing I can say to make him feel better. And to think that all this time he’s been shouldering this grief privately. How could I have ever hated him? How could I have blamed him for his actions without knowing what prompted them? How could I have yelled at him when he was trying to heal?

“Bristol…”

Wails impede his sentences, water and snot and spit slathering his face. Every time he tries to breathe, it turns into a sickening choking noise that I’ll never be able to get out of my head. “S-she’ll never know that I w-was planning to p-propose to her. S-she’ll never know h-how much I l-loved her,” he cries, taking a wrecking ball to his own fortified defenses and finally letting me in after a year of exile.

No longer swayed by my frustration, I embrace him without a second thought, and his large body racks with bawls that vibrate through me. He clings to me like a baby, nose nestled into my neck, arms squeezing me with enough strength to fracture glass. I try my best to ameliorate his pain as I rub circles on his upper back—coaxing him with hushed whispers—but the fountain of tears is bottomless. He’s kept everything pent up since the accident happened, giving every negative feeling the chance to fester. Now I’m watching, helplessly, as they overpower him.

“She knew, Bristol. I can promise you she knew. If you loved her with an ounce of the compassion you’ve shown me, there’s no doubt in my mind that she knew.”

“It’s all my fault. I was the reason she crashed. If I hadn’t texted her, she wouldn’t have looked down. If I had just waited a few more fucking minutes, she would still be here today. ”

I gently pull back from him, taking his face in my hands. “It wasn’t your fault. Please tell me you know that. I need to hear you say it.”

He eschews eye contact, trying to rip himself away from me, drowning in the rivulets of tears slipping down his nose and into the part of his cracked lips. “I ruined everything, Lila. It was my fault. It was my fault. It was my faul?—”

“Bristol, stop. It wasn’t your fault. I can’t…I can’t listen to you blame yourself like this. It was an accident. There’s nothing that you could’ve done, or she could’ve done, that would’ve changed the outcome. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry that you’ve had to live with this pain. And I’m so sorry that all I’ve done is give you shit because of it.”

“You had every right to,” he admits quietly. “I should’ve told you the truth before things got serious. I handled everything poorly. I disrespected you. I can’t— won’t —blame my actions on my fucked-up past.”

My thumb wipes away an errant teardrop. “I handled things just as poorly. I can’t believe I didn’t notice what you were going through. I made assumptions about you that weren’t true, and instead of exploding at me, you just sat there and took it.”

He blinks clarity into the warped brown of his irises, but they’re devoid of the warmth that brings out the flecks of green in his eyes. “I don’t deserve your apology. I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m sorry for the way I ghosted you. I’m sorry for giving you any speck of doubt about my feelings for you. A year ago, things were getting so serious, and I…I panicked.”

Even though we’re a hug apart, I can’t feel any warmth radiating off his body. It’s like—it’s like he’s a hollow shell. I’ve never seen him in pain before. He’s always so put together. He never burdened me with any emotional grievances. I was always the one leaning on his shoulder to cry.

“You don’t have to expl?— ”

A frown brands itself on his mouth, highlighting the heavy bags hanging under his eyes. “I do. It’s the least that you deserve. I wanted to make things official with you, Lils. I did. So badly. But the more I lost myself in you, the more I feared losing you. And I couldn’t—I couldn’t go down that road again.”

I want to cry. I want to burst into sobs. But I have to be strong for him. I can’t believe I pushed him to tell me this. I basically pushed him to relive the worst moment of his entire life, and it’s clear he hasn’t healed from it yet. I’ve waited so long to hear those words, but under these circumstances, they’re as easy to digest as a dry pill. Seeds of desolation sprout too quickly for me to weed out.

“Fuck, and then I ghosted you this entire week.” Bristol finally severs our contact, turning away from me to cradle his forehead in his hand, his pallor turning a muted shade of green. “I should’ve never left you in the dark, especially not after the incredible night we had together. I’m an idiot for not realizing how that could’ve looked. I…there’s no excuse for the way I treated you.”

Every facet of this situation just gets more and more complicated. It feels like we’re playing Russian roulette, except every chamber of the gun is filled with a bullet.

“It wasn’t something I did?” I ask with genuine confusion.

He quickly wipes his nose with his sleeve, then grabs me by the arms, looking into my eyes with something that I don’t recognize. It’s terrifyingly powerful—nothing like the countless glances we’ve shared before. “God, no. You’re perfect. The only thing you’ve done is make me fall for you even harder than I thought was possible.”

“But…your ex?”

“I’ll always care for her, Lila. And I’ve been trying to separate her from my current life as much as possible, but I clearly haven’t done a stellar job at that. I don’t want to live in the past,” he insists. “I don’t want this grief to swallow me.”

I grab his hand, finally feeling warmth saturate my palm. “I won’t let it,” I promise. “I’ll be here whenever the tide gets too hard to fight. I won’t let you drown. I won’t. ”

He doesn’t withdraw his arm, though I know he’s contemplating it. I can see him fighting. I can see him fighting to be here with me, right now, while haunted by the memory of a heart that no longer beats. I don’t know much about grief, but I know it’s not linear. I know everyone deals with it in different ways. And Bristol…Bristol deals with it by cutting people off so nobody else has to experience even a shred of that pain.

He’s still teary-eyed, but I think it’s for a different reason this time. “You’re all I want, Lila. You’re all I’ve ever wanted. I need you to know that. I need you to know that you’re the only person I have feelings for. I will always love Summit, but she’s a part of my past, and you’re a part of my present.”

None of the guys I hooked up with in the past had a dead ex. None of them were ever married or formerly engaged. This is all unfamiliar territory for me. And while I believe Bristol with my whole heart, I can’t help but feel like I’ll always play second fiddle. But I shouldn’t feel that way, right? That’s…God, that’s selfish of me.

“I know,” I say, albeit hollowly. “Of course I know.”

Why am I making this about me? I should be here for him. No wonder he didn’t tell me—he probably knew I’d react like this.

He slides off the bed and onto his knees in front of me—coming up to my chest even with our height difference—and he situates his hands on my hips. “I’m sorry about disappearing this week. Having sex just made everything more real, and I…I needed time to think if I could survive losing you again.”

A dagger slowly plunges into my heart. “I just wish you would’ve told me the truth in the first place. You made me…you made me think I did something to drive you away.”

He hangs his head in shame, his grip tightening, and when he does lift his chin up, the look he gives me cracks my chest open like a walnut. “I know. Shit, I know, Lila. I shouldn’t have kept it a secret from you. You deserved to know. I was a coward who couldn’t…”

I can’t decide: should I be mad, upset, confused? On one hand, I understand how hard reliving this trauma must be for him. But on the other hand, I can’t ignore the fact that he totally blindsided me. “Couldn’t what?”

“Couldn’t stand to see the way that you’re looking at me right now.”

I…I hadn’t realized my disappointment was that obvious. I tried to camouflage it, I did. I’ve tried to do a lot of things that I seem to fail at, including leaving my heart in the hockey-roughened hands of a man who’s broken it once before.

Bristol crumples further into himself, resting the side of his face against my stomach and fully encompassing my body in his arms. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry for not giving you the love you deserve. I’m sorry for not trusting you. I’m sorry for not being honest with you. I’m sorry for so many things that sorry doesn’t even begin to cut it. There’s nothing I can say to change the past. There’s nothing I can say to even impact our future. I regret the way I went about everything, and I’ll always regret it.”

The hockey captain of one of the biggest teams in the NHL—who has enough fame and fortune to last a lifetime—is the same man weeping on his knees before me, begging for my forgiveness.

I pet the back of his head, trying to recover from the emotional whiplash. “I just…I need some time to think about everything. ”

Bristol raises his head to meet my eyes. “I’ll wait. And if you decide you never want to see me again after this campaign, I’ll leave you alone for good. I promise. I won’t let myself hurt you again.”

Now tears fall down my cheeks, and the strength that I’ve been trying to muster evaporates. I hold him tighter than I ever have before, as if he’s the antidote to the poison currently filtering through my veins. I hold him with an urgency that’s been foreign to me until now—an urgency that tells me I’m the one with everything to lose.

I don’t want to live the rest of my life without you, but I don’t know how much more my heart can take.

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