I Want It That Way - Aguirre Ann (книги читать бесплатно без регистрации полные txt) 📗

“I don’t see how that’s true. You do all the giving, make all the compromises, and everything’s on my schedule, because it has to be, or there’s nothing at all. But that’s not fair.” Sucking in a deep breath, Ty went on shakily, “We...we’re just not in the same place, and I won’t let you regret me.”

“You’re only three years older,” I said, incredulous. “We’re both in school—”

“And those years were life-changing. I have Sam. You need to meet other guys, and you’ll never do that with me on the scene. At this point, if I saw you with someone else, I’d probably kill him, even though I can’t call you mine.”

I am yours. I always have been. Pain was an ice pick, chipping at my insides, until there was only blood and shards of bone. Before, I thought people who threw around the word heartbroken were full of shit. But I couldn’t breathe for the vise tightening around my rib cage. It was like drowning, losing all the light beneath night-drenched waves.

“This isn’t right, Nadia. I have to let you go.”

“I don’t want you to,” was all I could manage.

“That face.” He finally came around the table, closing the distance between us, and I knew, I just knew he was going to frame my face in his hands, as he always had. “How can I live without this face?”

You’re killing me. Don’t turn the knife.

“So don’t.” It wasn’t quite begging. Any minute, I would quake apart at his feet and he could sweep up the dust. Maybe he could keep me in a jar on the shelf.

Ty shook his head, all certainty and sorrow. “We met too soon. This can’t work now, much as I wish it could. You deserve a guy who can be there for you all the time, someone without so much baggage.”

“Sam is not baggage,” I snapped.

“He’s also not your son.” Such a gentle tone for such awful words.

“And you’re not my boyfriend. I get it.” I bowed my head for a few seconds, fighting the tears. Then I broke away from his hold. “Does it matter at all that I love you?”

“Love isn’t a panacea,” Ty said wearily. “Or a magic pill. Diana loved me, too. But she didn’t stay, and I won’t put Sam through it again.”

“I’m not her,” I answered. “You won’t even give me a chance!”

“Can you honestly say you’re ready to move in and be with me, be Sam’s mom and live happily ever after? You’ve spent enough time with him to know exactly what that means.”

I’m twenty-one years old. I can’t, I’m not. That was my first, instinctive thought. And Ty read it in my face, in the slump of my shoulders. A light in him guttered and died.

I stopped fighting then because he was right after all, damn him. I would probably never forgive him for it. “So this is it. How does it end?”

“Like this.” Stepping close, he swiped his thumbs across my eyes, dusting away the tears, then he pressed his lips to my eyelids, one at a time. I raised my face, showing him everything one last time. Ty kissed me softly, honey and salt, hello and goodbye, and all the words we would never whisper again, holed up in bed on a snowy afternoon. He ran fingers through my hair with an awful finality. My breath came out so loud it was almost a sob.

“No regrets. You are a hundred times more wonderful than I deserve.”

This hurt so much; it made me angry. I had no experience having my heart torn from my chest, and he was being so very kind about it. His kindness made me cruel. “My mom said I could do better.”

Ty held my look steadily. “You can. Goodbye, Nadia.”

“Bye, Daniel.” I was even colder than I’d dreamed I could be. That was never what I called him, only what she did. And then I left, like her, because he made me.

AFTER THE AFTER

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Completely numb, I stumbled into the apartment. Max took one look at me and leaped off the couch. He was at my side in an instant, arm around my shoulders. I couldn’t breathe for choking back the tears. My breath came in sharp bursts, bordering on hyperventilation.

He sat me down, rubbing my back. “Okay. Okay.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I collapsed on him, and Max didn’t say anything else for a long time. Finally, he offered, “This might sound stupid, but I’ve been writing down the things I like about Lauren. I’m not sure it’s helping me get over her exactly, but...it is helping. Maybe you can try something like that.”

“Maybe.”

I loved that he wasn’t asking me to explain. For over an hour, we just sat together, holding hands. I didn’t cry; I couldn’t. When I heard Angus coming up the stairs, his tread too heavy to be Lauren, I retreated to my bedroom and closed the door. Always, I had plans and goals; I focused on what had to be done and worked through it. This situation was no different.

So I got out a clean notebook and started writing. I set down how I felt in this moment, and then I wrote about meeting Ty. Maybe I’d save the journal and read it later, once the memories weren’t so fresh. This way, I can keep them with me. Or hell, maybe I’d burn it. For now, the important thing was to finish.

I wrote until 3:00 a.m. and only stopped because Lauren came to bed then. I pretended to be asleep, and she didn’t bother me. There was a new distance between us, not because I didn’t care to share my pain, but because she’d chosen not to talk about hers. I fell asleep with the knife of losing Sam and Ty still in my chest, and it hurt to breathe.

Friday morning, I went to my practicum meeting, where I apologized profusely. Ms. Roberts was about ten years older than Ms. Parker had been, and she seemed more maternal, peering at me in concern. “People often get sick around the holidays,” she said, dismissing my worries with an easy wave. “And I can definitely see that you’ve been ill. Mind that you don’t let yourself get too rundown.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

The rules and expectations were more or less the same, and I left feeling like she’d give me a fair trial. See, Ty. I didn’t wreck anything. Outside the school, I sat in my car for at least five minutes, resting my head on the steering wheel. I skipped lunch and went home to change into my work uniform. I got to Rainbow Academy, knowing each day I spent with Sam would open the wound all over again, and I couldn’t let him see even a shadow of my pain.

In class I must’ve done a good job because he never gave me that big-eyed, worried look. He chattered and hugged me like always while I fought to keep the damage in check. It’ll get easier, I told myself. It has to.

That weekend, I holed up in my room and wrote more, until I came to the stopping point, our breaking point, and it was like a key turned in the lock, setting me free. I could breathe again because I had all the things I loved about Ty committed to ink and paper. The hurt dulled from dreadful-unbearable to the low throb of a broken bone, properly set. In my demented rush to finish the draft, I’d only thought of getting it out, like I was lancing a wound, and I’d pictured myself possibly burning it all, like an effigy, a symbolic cleansing.

But now, as I touched the pages, I couldn’t bear to imagine seeing everything I adored about Ty going up in sparks and ashes, only embers against the night sky. No, I’d keep it, instead. Someday, I’d want these words, needing to remember how these moments felt, before life went flat and quiet, and I learned to live without my heart. As I got back to my normal life—life without Ty—occasionally the pain flared.

Like two weeks later when Sam announced, “Daddy’s sad.”

“Oh?” It took every ounce of self-control to ask the question casually.

“Yeah. He draws your face a lot.”

My insides squeezed, and mumbling to the lead teacher, I excused myself. In the bathroom, I crouched inside a stall and cried until I saw stars. The wound widened, but I breathed through it. I put cold water on my eyes, and when I went back to Mrs. Trent’s room, I was an iceberg.