That had gotten to him.
I patted his back soothingly.
“My only criticism is that you didn’t take off your shirt,” I told him to lighten his mood. “That used to be my favorite part of every show.”
It startled a laugh out of him. “Did I really used to take my shirt off at every show?” he asked, like he couldn’t remember.
That made my chest tight, thinking about all of the memories he’d lost. “Close enough,” I said lightly.
Looking up at him, seeing the way he looked back, I started to just freak.
I took two steps back away from him.
I’d tried to lock my feelings away in some corner of my heart and mind.
I hadn’t forgotten about them, had never failed to realize they were there, but I’d convinced myself that if I could just keep myself from looking directly at them, they would hold no sway over me.
But now, now they were creeping up on my peripheral, becoming brighter, more clear, with each passing breath, until the urge to look, the pull of it, consumed more of my thoughts than just looking would, I was sure.
Even when I’d known better, I’d just decided that those feelings could be put off. But how long could a thing like this be put off?
I was shaking, head to toe.
Slowly but inexorably, I was coming undone.
I couldn’t hold it together. Not for another day. Not for another minute.
It was happening. In spite of how I fought it, some steady unraveling was happening inside of me, had been happening. It was nearing its finish, and I was not prepared.
Tristan moved to put his hands on my shoulders, but I warded him off with both of mine.
“Oh Danika,” he said softly.
I started shaking my head vehemently.
“Tell me, sweetheart. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it.”
I closed my eyes, my face crumbling.
“Oh sweetheart,” he said, softer now, closer now.
“I feel so lost.”
He took my hands in his. “Not anymore. I’m right here. I’ve got you.”
“There is this hollow place inside of me, where my faith in you used to be. I am so full of fear, and I do not know how to let myself trust you again. I don’t have the strength to do this. Not again.”
“I’ve got enough for both of us.” He moved closer, wrapping me in his arms. “It’s about time I got a turn letting you lean on me.”
He’d set me adrift, so very long ago, and I had wandered into deepest waters, with depths far too vast for me to navigate alone.
And here he was, swimming out to save me. Had he been following me all the while? Had I been so blind?
Still, even knowing he was rescuing me, some part of me had to fight him. “What are you doing to me? Don’t you know I can’t take this, Tristan?”
He groaned and pulled me even closer. “You can. You don’t think you can trust me again, and I understand that, but you need to learn. However long it takes, you need to learn that being with me won’t turn out the way it did before. I won’t let it.”
I shook my head, but he was kissing my jaw, my neck, behind my ear, and I didn’t stop him. “You don’t seem to understand, Tristan. I don’t think it will turn out how it did before, because all of the damage has already been done. There’s not enough left of me to break this time.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
Of course he couldn’t know what I was referring to, because I hadn’t told him, hadn’t built up the stomach for it yet.
Even now, when every single defense of mine was disarmed, I couldn’t find the courage to tell him.
“And I won’t be doing any breaking,” he continued vehemently, “I swear it.”
My arms had gone limp at my sides but I raised them now, wrapping them around his neck.
“It’s not only about breaking me.” I took a very deep breath. “I saw it with my own eyes, Tristan,” I told him quietly, wretchedly. “That day at the café, that last time we met up, after the accident. After you’d moved on from me, and you were happy, laughing, healthy. That was when I moved on.”
“Oh, Danika,” he breathed.
“I saw how you were without me, how you’d gotten so much better with me out of your life, and that was when I really let you go.”
“Oh, Danika,” he said emotionally.
“How can we be so good for each other in so many ways, and so bad in just as many others?”
“We were never bad for each other. Never. That’s not what happened with us.”
“What did then? Explain your reasoning to me here.”
“I was bad for us. I was bleeding out. I’m sure you caught on, but I was f**king wrecked by what happened to Jared and everything after, well, I went into free fall, but don’t put that on us. That was on me. All of it. Every f**king ounce of it.”
“Oh Tristan. That’s just not true. I changed too, with you. I enabled you. I made you worse, not better.”
“Oh, Danika.” His voice was still gentle but chiding.
“Don’t ‘Oh, Danika’ me. I obviously couldn’t help you. I tried and tried—“
“And you thought this was your job? To help me? You thought this was your responsibility?”
“Well, yes. But everything I tried only seemed to make you worse.”
“Oh, sweetheart—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Sweetheart,” he emphasized. “No one can help a person in that condition. Sometimes, if we’re really lucky, we come out of it, and we help ourselves, and we do this because of the people we love. You were not responsible for making me worse. But I’ll tell you one thing, it’s a fact that you were responsible for making me better. I’d resigned myself to dying. That I could have handled. But when I saw what I’d done to you—”
“That wasn’t on you.”
“That may be your reality. You’re entitled to see it how you need to, but I can only see it one way. What happened to you was on me, is on me, and when I realized that I wasn’t only hurting myself, was in fact hurting you even more than I was my own numb mind, I found the motivation I needed to stop using, to stop trying to check out of my life. That’s on you.”