“Would you really book me that ticket?”
“Yes. I’ll have it emailed to you in a few minutes.”
All I can do is stand there, hoping he can see this hurts me, too and that I really am grateful to him right now. I don’t deserve his kindness, and I kind of want to kick my own ass right now for my appalling lack of self-control and for being so thoughtless. That’s right. I can admit I suck, and maybe I can even do something to change that. Maybe. But I can’t make any promises because promises are even worse. They usually just get broken. Raiden and I already walked out of each other’s lives once. It could easily happen again, and this time, it wouldn’t be our parents driving us apart with their divorce. It would be our own fault, which would be so much worse.
I can’t stand here and sort through my deep-seated fears at the moment. I can’t sort through anything going on in my brain or even start to unpack the baggage, anger, pain, resentment, and bitterness I didn’t even know I had.
I don’t have anything else to say, so I just give Raiden a small, sad nod. “Thank you.” I do manage to get that out, at least.
He nods back.
I know. I’m a real winner. Some people aren’t the hero of their own stories. Some people are real, and real people have pasts. They have fears, feelings, and doubts, and they also have memories and crap that makes them who they are. Right, I should become a psychiatrist because I’m clearly good at examining my feelings. Or at shoving them down and pretending that they don’t exist. I’ve done that before too.
There isn’t anything more to do at the moment, so I turn and leave Raiden standing there with a pink floral sheet wrapped around his waist as he tries to fight off a sad expression, his eyes glistening with both hope and pain.
If I just broke him, I broke myself too, which isn’t any consolation. It’s just a fact that I can’t change.
CHAPTER 18
Raiden
I know Zoe didn’t want me to do it. She would never have asked me for it, and she probably thinks it’s just another piss poor sign from the universe or whatever. My head told me I shouldn’t send her a cheque, but I went with my gut.
I sent it.
And it turns out the good ol' gut is worth something after all because Zoe cashed it.
All one hundred thousand dollars of it.
It’s been over a month since that tree just about came down on the cabin. As it turns out, the lodge owners were really worried and super apologetic. The old thing had been giving the camp problems for a while, and they’d never gotten around to cutting it down. It really could have crashed right through the cabin. They felt awful about almost killing me (they didn’t know Zoe was there since I kept that to myself), so they gave me a fifty percent discount on the whole trip.
Zoe once told me I could have hired a private investigator to look her up or find her or whatever, so it gave me an idea.
I have to admit I went through with it even after telling myself it was a pretty shady thing to do. I hired a guy who gave me the details. Like where Zoe’s living and the school she enrolled in. She’s starting her vet-tech course, just like she said she would, which is why I sent her the cheque. I didn’t want her bombarded with student loans, and also, maybe I felt a little bit guilty. I messed up her life in more than one way. But it’s not just all guilt. I sincerely do want to help her. There are pretty limited ways I can do that, but giving her the cash she needed to pay for her rent and bills and tuition was one of them. I didn’t think she’d take it, but she did.
She used the money to enroll in training so she might make other’s lives better. Zoe’s just like that. She’s kind, and her heart is huge. It’s what gives me hope that there might, one day, be room for me in it. Eventually, she might change her mind. I want to believe her reaction that day at the cabin was just pure panic. She was feeling things, I was feeling things, and sometimes, people lose their shit a little. It doesn’t mean she meant all, or at least part, of what she said.
So all I can do is wait.
I told her I would, and I have. In short, it seriously sucked. Losing Zoe frightens me more than losing everything I’ve worked so hard for—the companies, all my money, my property. Everything. I already let her go once. Can I really do it again? Or maybe the question isn’t if I can. Perhaps it’s should I? Waiting and hoping—for a man who drove himself hard all his life, a self-made man—is hard. It’s hard for a man of action to do absolutely nothing.
I feel haunted. All I’ve done is go over and over that conversation we had in the cabin that day. Maybe I should have pushed her a little harder, pushed back, begged. Ultimately, I know I can’t force her into making a decision she doesn’t want to make, but maybe I should have fought harder. I didn’t want to hurt her, and I wanted to give her time, but maybe that wasn’t right. Maybe she thinks I didn’t really care after all. I don’t know. It’s confusing.
I can’t even count how many times Zoe has hijacked my thoughts since I saw her
