“I don’t know. I don’t know what I would’ve been if things would’ve been different.”
“What, would you choose to do anything else now?”
“No,” he said. “I could have. A long time ago. But this is what I love.”
“It’s the same for me. And then I got thinking. Why hadn’t I dated? And yeah, maybe some of it was all that self-protection that I told you about before. But I think it was more. Logan, you always felt like another part of me. When you’re angry I can feel it. When I annoy you it makes my teeth itch. Like I can feel how yours are set on edge. And when we make love, I can feel all that pleasure echoing around inside of me. And I know it’s different. Not just me feeling good. I know I feel you, too. I think you feel the same about me. I don’t know if it’s soul mates or what. But I felt that from the beginning. Like my connection with you was something inevitable. Real. Like we made it working this land. So the roots are deep. Something happened. It all shifted. And that was when I realized, I’m in the place I love the most, with the man I love the most.”
“Rose,” he said, using the word to try and deflect what she just said. To keep it from sinking down deep beneath his skin like a bullet. But he wasn’t sure he could. He wasn’t sure anything could. Because she’d said it. She’d said it, dammit. And he couldn’t unknow it. That Rose had said she loved him.
Love.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You can. We are. There’s nothing more... It fits. We fit. In all the crazy ways that we shouldn’t, we do. It’s so silly, isn’t it? Because I’m twenty-three, and you’re thirty-three. Because I was a virgin, and you’ve been with... No, I don’t want to know how many women. Because of those things people think we’d be too different. But we’ve lost. And we’ve lived. And we work the same piece of ground with all the passion we have to give. And when we come together at the end of a long day it’s like magic. The only thing close to magic I’ve ever known in this world. I’m not a dreamer. I never schemed for myself. But I’ve been a scared little girl all my life that the people around me might get tired of me and leave me. And when I accepted that I didn’t have anything to earn, I could finally enjoy these things I was given. This is our life, Logan. It’s the one that we have. Yeah, our parents died. And it’s awful. No one should have to deal with that at the age that we did. The magnitude of our tragedy was... It was awful. But why does it get to have the say in who we are? Why is it everything?”
“Because some things scar you,” he said. “Some things change what you are, and you can’t un-change it.”
“Of course not. Of course we were changed by all of this. Of course we were. But we don’t stop changing. That’s been my lesson. These last weeks. I learned more about life since all of this began with you than I had in years. I thought that I was grown, and I was done figuring it all out, but I’m not. And now I realize how little I know, and I’m happy about it. Because it means... It means there’s no end to the wonderful things that could happen. To the wonderful things I could know.”
“There’s no end to the shit that could happen, either.”
“Logan. There’s shit in life. There’s nothing we can do about that. But why can’t we have something good?”
Desperation flooded his chest. And he couldn’t quite put words to why. It was just a feeling. Deep and enduring, and it felt like it was threatening to change the very makeup of all that he was.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “You are young. And you were a virgin. So I get that you think that this thing between us is love. But it’s not. It’s... It’s not.”
Saying that burned. It tasted like a lie. But looking at her, with all her great and glorious optimism, this idea that the world and all that she could be in it was ever-expanding...
He could never give her that sense of wonder. Not forever. He couldn’t be what she needed. There was just no way. She deserved more. She deserved a hell of a lot more.
A hell of a lot more than a man who wrecked her sister’s wedding by standing there in a tux looking identical to the people he was blood related to. People he lived across town from for years, and hadn’t shared any words with.
Yeah. She deserved a hell of a lot more than that.
More than what he’d been to his mother. A drain on her resources and her emotions. His one gift sending her on the trip that ended her life.
He was toxic. And it was unavoidable.
“Logan,” she said, “you accused me of not having any clue when a man wanted me. And you were right. You were right, I didn’t know. But you don’t know when the people around you love you. You wouldn’t recognize it if a woman stood in front of you and told you. And that’s on you. That’s some kind of dumb.”
“Rose...”
“I love you. I love you, and I know that you feel it. I know it. Because you know me better than anyone else. You know me. And I know you. You know I’m not making this up, or dramatizing, or anything like that. Don’t you dare dismiss me, Logan. Because you’ve never done that. You’ve never treated me like I was a stupid kid.
