The Reason for Me

by Prescott Lane

  “If you love me, then give me another chance,” I say.

  “Are you ready to share yourself with me—good and bad? You ready to face your demons? You ready to choose happy? If you’re not, Holt, there’s no point in dragging this out any longer.”

  Just once could she bullshit me? Throw me a little small talk? No! Everything with this woman is no bullshit. I give her the most honest answer I have. “I don’t know how.” Her only response is to head for the door. She makes everything seem so easy—figure shit out, choose happy! “I can’t . . .”

  “Do you remember what the first thing you ever said to me was?” she asks.

  “No, I was . . .”

  “You said I can’t love you.” She heads for the door then turns back. “I should’ve believed you.”

  “I’m not going to give up,” I call out. “I won’t give up.”

  “Then you better learn to open up because I deserve better than this shit,” she says.

  “Annalyse!”

  She looks at me over her shoulder with so much sadness, but then gives me a spark of hope. “July 23,” she whispers, disappearing inside.

  What the hell just happened? I came over to apologize and made things that much worse. I could barge in and demand she talk to me, but I have a feeling that might blow up in my face. I need a game plan first.

  “You really screwed the pooch on that one,” Judy calls out.

  “Yep, shit the bed big time,” I say back.

  Judy laughs and waves me over. I do what she wants, and Carla already has food in front of me. “Sit down. Maybe we can help,” Judy says.

  “I don’t really think . . .”

  “Who better to get advice about women from?” Carla asks.

  “It’s hardly the same.”

  “Just because we don’t have pregnancy scares or give blowjobs doesn’t mean we can’t understand.” I chuckle. “Come on. You can be our lesbro!” Judy laughs out.

  Carla rolls her eyes and places her arm around me, encouraging me to sit. “You’re a lady doctor. You should know women better than that,” she says, waving her hand in the direction of Annalyse’s house.

  “We had a good thing going. I mean, why do women always want more?”

  “Because we’re smarter than men,” Judy says. “What’s she asking for? Something crazy?”

  “That’s not the point. If you’re just having sex, she wants to date. If you’re dating, she wants marriage.”

  “What bullshit!” Judy cries.

  “Fine, then what is it women want?”

  “The short or long answer?” Carla asks.

  “The short.”

  “To be wanted,” Carla says. “To be certain that someone has your back no matter what. That’s what loving someone is—knowing you’ve got their back, and they’ve got yours. If that’s true, everything else just works.”

  That’s the second time tonight love has been mentioned. “I really fucked this up.”

  “You’re so scared of losing her. You’re about to piss your pants, right?” Judy asks.

  “Pretty much.”

  Carla points her finger in my face. “That’s how you know you love her. The thought of life without her is the scariest thing you’ve ever faced.”

  The Dirty Truth Blog

  July 23

  Love waits

  “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

  What more is there to say, really? That quote pretty much sums it up. We have to get out of our own way, stop looking outward and look inward because . . .

  Love is waiting.

  As patient as a thief in the night, love waits. As unexpected as the first snowfall, love comes. I hear people say it all the time. When you aren’t looking for love, it finds you. Perhaps it’s there the whole time, lying in wait, waiting for you to be ready, waiting for the slightest opening to come through.

  Love waits—Are you ready?

  *

  HOLT

  Love waits.

  But how long will she wait?

  I toss out my dinner then walk to my dresser, telling myself not to open the damn drawer tonight. Just do this one little thing differently. I learned that somewhere. Think it’s called the butterfly effect. A small change can lead to a bigger change in something else—change the whole direction of things.

  But I can’t do it.

  I reach into the dresser drawer and lay my hand inside, closing my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  Caught between the hell of my past and a chance at happiness, the choice seems easy. So why can’t I march right over to her house and kiss her? Judy and Carla were right. The answer is simple.

  Fear.

  Fear is the worst fucking four-letter word there is. It’s the only one that holds you hostage and strangles you like a noose. Shit, fuck, damn, cunt, cock, piss—none of them paralyze you the way fear does.

  No other emotion seems as overpowering. I’d rather feel anything than scared. Shame . . . You can usually right a wrong. Anger . . . it often can push you to do better. But fear is a sick, fucked-up stalemate. You can’t go anywhere or do anything.

  So how do you get out of it?

  Most people would probably say courage. That courage is the opposite of fear. Still, it’s not courage I need. It’s peace. Peace from the second worst four-letter word—pain. Pain and fear are a bad combination. Trust me, I know. There are no medicines to cure me. There is only one thing to cure me. It’s another four-letter word. The one Annalyse used tonight—love.

  And unlike fear, love is an action. Having sex is called making love for a reason. It’s a movement of two people—a push and a pull—a desire to always move closer to the other person. So why in the hell is she over there, and I’m over here?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  ANNALYSE

  My suitcase is open on my bed, half my stuff packed already. I was born with a case of wanderlust, and right now, the urge to run is so strong I’m having a hard time controlling it. Screw housesitting. I could go visit Meg for a few weeks, just long enough that I won’t get sucked back into Holt.

  If he showed up at my door tonight, I’m not sure I’m strong enough to keep him outside my house, my bed, my heart. I love that damn man, and he’s fucking it all up.

  Some people may say you can’t fall in love in a month, but they’d be wrong. I’ve protected my heart for a long time—no one got in. Holt likes to tease me that I like sex quick and dirty and that’s probably true. But I think it’s true for my heart, too.

  My heart fell quick, and unfortunately, that means it can also be dirty. We both bring a shitload of mess with us, so maybe he’s not the only one to blame. Maybe it’s my fault, too. I knew what I was getting with him, and I did it anyway. I can’t blame him for that.

  And while I said I didn’t believe in magical dicks and vaginas, and that I wouldn’t fix him, deep down, I was hoping my love—as quick as it was—would be enough. Maybe my mistake was not that I didn’t want to fix him, but that I should be holding his hand while he does it himself.

  Isn’t that what you do when you love someone?

  But you can’t do that unless the other person lets you in, and Holt seems bound and determined not to let that happen. That’s what hurts. I shared so much with him in such a short time, more than I ever shared with anyone, and he still never opened up to me. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so open.

  The old saying is true: “If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned.”

  “Annalyse?” I hear my name being called, and turn around, finding Holt standing by the bedroom door, his eyes glued on my suitcase.

  “You can’t just barge in my house,” I snap.

  “Going somewhere?”

  I glance down at my clothes folded neatly in the suitcase. It shouldn’t, but guilt settles into my chest. “I was thinking a little getaway might do me some good.”

  “No small talk bul
lshit with me,” he barks.

  “Oh, I thought that’s what you liked,” I bite back.

  His eyes pierce right through me. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Now you want to talk?” I laugh out. He doesn’t say anything. Turning my attention back to my suitcase, I lift the top and start to fold some more clothes and place them inside.

  His hand gently lands on mine, stopping me. “I need you.”

  That simple touch of his hand starts to settle my anxious heart, but I’ve got needs, too. And they go beyond what’s between my legs. He meets those needs just fine. It’s the needs of my heart that he misses. “Holt . . .”

  “And I can’t do this without you,” he says.

  And not for lack of trying, I can’t think of anything to say to that.

  “I know I need to work my shit out,” he says. “I can’t fuck my way to feeling better. I can’t work my way to feeling better. I can’t go numb to get by. I just need to know that you are there.”

  “You want me to stand in your flames,” I whisper and can tell he’s never thought about his fear, pain, and sadness as fire before.

  “A living hell,” he says softly.

  “I know all about that.”

  His eyes shoot right to mine. “I’ll do my best not to burn you again.”

  “I can stand the burn,” I say.

  “But I can’t. Knowing I hurt you . . .” he shakes his head. “That shit fucking rips my heart out.”

  “What do you want from me?” I ask.

  “Remember when you told me that I was good at the fucking part, but needed to work on the friends part of our relationship?” he asks, and I nod. “Well, you were right. I need to be a better friend to you.”

  “You want to be my friend now?”

  “I want to be everything you’ll ever need,” he says.

  I feel my resolve weakening. This is exactly why I need to get out of here. I’m not strong enough. It’s too easy to fall back into him. That’s what happens when you love someone. You want to believe every syllable coming out of their mouth, but I have to remember all the times he was silent, didn’t let me in.

  “I’m sick and tired of just going through the motions, making small talk and faking a smile,” he says, reaching out and lightly touching my hand. “I want more than that, and I want it with you.”

  I inhale slowly, wanting to breathe that in. His hands gently stroke up and down my arms.

  “I need to go out of town for a few days,” he says, “so you don’t need to run away.”

  “You’re going to her?” I ask, and the way it comes out makes me sound jealous. “Celeste?”

  “No,” he says, using his thumbs to wipe away a few of my tears.

  “What were your last words to her?” I ask. “That day in your apartment?”

  “You read the letter?” he asks, swallowing hard. I give him a little nod. “Don’t marry him.”

  “Did she?” I ask, and he nods. “Holt, I don’t understand. It sucks what happened, but . . .”

  “There’s more to it,” he says, looking down.

  But he doesn’t say anything else, and I can feel my anger rising up again. “Will I ever get more than a grunt or a nod?”

  “I’m trying,” he says.

  “It’s simple. Are you ever going to face your past? Whatever the hell happened? Whatever the hell is in that drawer?”

  “For you, I will.”

  “Promise,” I demand, tears tolling down my cheeks.

  “Promise,” he says, wiping my face. And that one little word seems to heal so much in me—there’s so much hope in that one little word.

  “Promises made in tears are the strongest,” I say, reaching up and taking his face in my hands. One lone tear falls to my fingers—his silent promise.

  *

  HOLT

  I take Annalyse by the hand, leading her over to my house. I have to talk to her, it’s now or never. And I won’t lose her. Life without Annalyse? Even the thought of it makes my chest hurt. Everything I’ve been through. Everything I’ve done. All the lives I’ve destroyed. Nothing hurts more than the thought of a life without her.

  Until now, I’ve avoided this moment at all costs.

  I never told Brent about Celeste and me. There was no point in hurting her or making things worse for her. She’d chosen a path that would bring her enough hurt, and that path included a quickie wedding at the Justice of the Peace, complete with a gold band.

  That sealed the deal for me. There was no way to fight to win her back once she walked down the aisle to Brent—if there even was an aisle. Breaking up a marriage, even one doomed to fail, was a line I’d never cross. I counted my blessings that they eloped, and I didn’t have to be there.

  But I couldn’t avoid telling my family what happened. I told them the whole truth, that the baby wasn’t mine—the whole shitload. I’m not sure if it was the weight of it all or the disappointment, or that she no longer had something to live for, but my mom died a few days later.

  Residents don’t get much time off, so my trip home to Arkansas was shorter than I would’ve liked. My dad was a mess, my brothers were devastated, and I had to go back to North Carolina within a few days.

  And during those few days, Celeste and Brent became parents. And to rub salt on the wound, they named the baby girl Lulu—the name Celeste and I picked out together. I wasn’t there and part of me was glad.

  Celeste stayed on maternity leave for a few weeks, so I didn’t have to see her, which was good. Brent brought his daughter up to the hospital to show her off—the baby was cute, for sure. I was a bit relieved that he brought the girl to the hospital because that meant I didn’t have to go by their house, didn’t have to see Celeste. And maybe motherhood was busying her enough, because she didn’t call or message me, either.

  I didn’t have time to think about it too much. Exactly a month after my mom died, my dad passed away in his sleep. No medical reason.

  Ethan and Eli called me frantic. They were barely into their first semester of college, eighteen, hardly equipped to deal with this, and I couldn’t help them much from eight hundred miles away.

  Another quick trip home, another funeral, and my mind was completely shot. My little brothers decided not to go back to college, opting for a year off, which was fine. I understood. It wasn’t an option for me, though.

  We talked daily about insurance policies, financial planning, how to take care of the house. I’d always planned on moving back home to Little Rock, but now it couldn’t come fast enough. They needed their big brother, but they had to make it on their own for several more months until my residency ended, and that was only if I could find a job in Little Rock after.

  It was too much to process, too much to deal with, so I threw myself into work.

  Until Halloween.

  *

  Standing on my back patio, I can’t believe I’m about to do this. My knees start to shake and a thin sweat covers my body, even though it’s almost freezing outside, the wind whipping off the lake. I hate when cold air hits sweat; it just makes you that much colder, clammy, like a corpse.

  But it’s not nearly as bad as the pounding in my chest, echoing up into my head. The pain and fear have me paralyzed. I didn’t set out to keep a secret from Annalyse. It’s not about that at all. It’s about avoiding this—this horrible panic that’s settling into my soul. I look over at Annalyse, knowing what she would tell me. She’d tell me to find my happy.

  Some of the happiest times in my life have led to some of the darkest places. My recent good memories are work-related, and I know they say a man is defined by his success, but that’s not what Annalyse is talking about. Damn me, even thinking her name makes the corner of my mouth turn up just slightly.

  Hands down, the best night of my life was our date in Hot Springs—the night she finally slowed down. Don’t get me wrong, fucking quick and dirty will remain a staple in our sexual repertoire, if I can convince her to take another chance on me. But
that night was different. For risk of sounding like a complete pussy, the only way to describe what happened that night was making love. I knew it, she knew it, and we both avoided discussing it.

  That’s the part that really makes me a pussy. Because she is everything. She is the hottest, most adorable, smartest, dirty-minded beauty, and I’d be a dumb fuck to lose her.

  We walk inside, and I know I’m in over my head. I do the only thing I can—draw a deep breath and lead her into my bedroom. If I don’t do this, I’ll lose her for good. Standing in front of my dresser drawer, Annalyse looks up at me, but I can only think about what I’m about to tell her, searching for the words.

  I hurt in my soul in a place so deep that the pain has become the core of me, indelibly tied to who I am. I’m a slave to it. It has owned me. I know I am facing a lot. I know I’ll never be the same, that I’ll always feel the pain, but I’m sick of how this feels—the hold it has on me.

  I begin to open up that drawer, and my past is resurrected. It’s as if I’m once again standing in front of the automatic doors, the air still smelling of death. Every sense in my body recognizes this place, this darkness, and my fight-or-flight response kicks in. I can picture the elevator up to the maternity floor, past the nurses’ station, past the little cubicle where I used to type my notes. Past all the little nooks and crannies where Celeste and I would steal kisses and even a quickie now and again. In my mind, I can see so clearly the end of the hall, the window, the spot where I stopped living.

  The night comes rushing back—the same night I’ve tried to avoid all these years.

  *

  I’d been staring at the computer, typing my notes for the night. I was thankful my shift was almost over because it was Halloween, and that always brought out the crazies. The hospital was no exception. Logging off the computer, I reached over and stole a piece of candy from Nurse Wicks’ station, and she flashed me an approving smile.

  “Holt?” Brent’s voice boomed down the hallway.