I shook my head, my hands clenched into fists in front of me. “No, it wasn’t like that.” I let out a breath, trying to collect my thoughts. “I didn’t leave without a word, you know that.” It might have been six years ago, but I could at least remember how I left.
He let out a breath, though his shoulders were still visibly tense. “I remember. I remember the fact that after the pregnancy scare, we pretty much stopped talking. Then the next moment, it seemed you were moving away with your parents even though you were out of college. You left, Lauren.”
“It wasn’t at all like that, and you know it. After we thought I was pregnant and it turned out not to be the case, we drifted. Maybe we should’ve talked more, maybe we should have acted like the adults we thought we were, but we didn’t. You backed away just as much as I did. Don’t stand there and act as if I was the one who moved away first.”
Brandon’s eyes narrowed. “I loved you, Lauren. Yeah, I was scared, and a little disappointed that we weren’t going to have a kid even though I knew it wasn’t the right time, but I still loved you. I gave you the space I thought you needed. I didn’t run away. I was just giving you space.”
I bit my lower lip. “I know that now. But I didn’t then. I thought you were backing away because you were scared like I was. I thought you were pulling away because you realized that having that connection, that forced ball and chain or whatever, would be too much. In retrospect, I know I overreacted, but I had a lot of other things on my plate. More than I even knew at the time.”
He ran a hand through his long hair and scowled. “What are you talking about? You keep using these vague references I don’t understand. If you’re saying you didn’t skip town after our last conversation because of the baby, then what was it?”
I could still remember standing in front of him two weeks after finding out I wasn’t pregnant. I was so scared, but not for the reasons he probably thought. Not for the same reasons he thought now. I assumed he thought I was already too much for him—too much to deal with—so I said I needed time to think and then did exactly what he thought I did. I ran away. But now, I needed to explain to him that I didn’t run away from him. The running was from the circumstances that had led me here, today.
“I had to leave.” I rolled my shoulders back, meeting his gaze. “My family needed me to go with them when they moved for my dad’s job because I couldn’t be alone. Not with all the doctors’ visits and surgeries I needed at the time.”
There, I’d said part of it. It didn’t make it any easier to stomach, but at least I’d said something other than that I was sorry for breaking both of our hearts.
His eyes widened, and he took a step forward, his fingertips brushing the skin of my forearm. “What are you talking about? Surgeries? Doctors’ visits? What happened, Lauren?”
“It turns out the pregnancy scare was a symptom. You and I figured out we weren’t pregnant because we took, what, five pregnancy tests that were at-home kits? They were all negative, and then I got my period right after that. But it hurt more than usual and only lasted a couple days.”
“I remember you always had issues with your cycle. It was why you were on the type of birth control you were, even before we met. What happened, Lauren?” he repeated.
Baring my soul to anyone was hard. Baring my soul to the man I hurt because I was afraid of what my life would become would be agony. But he deserved the truth, and I wasn’t sick anymore, so maybe fate had decided that this was when I should tell him everything.
“I had ovarian cancer. I was only twenty-two, and even my doctors were surprised at how virulent it had become.” If I closed my eyes, I could still imagine the stab of needles in my skin as they did test after test to figure out exactly how such a young, otherwise healthy woman could have a body trying to kill itself. Because you weren’t supposed to get cancer when you were twenty-two. Ovarian cancer, breast cancer, all of those things were supposed to happen to older women who were forced to take tests and have mammograms and all of that other stuff every year because it could happen to them at any moment. And having cancer in the part of me that I had once thought made me a woman, especially right when I’d thought perhaps I could be a mother, had thrown my world off its axis. I’d since learned more about what it meant to be a woman, and what my body said about me, but at twenty-two—a sheltered twenty-two at that—my world seemed to crash down around me.
And I didn’t know how to explain that to the man in front of me. Because he had seen inside of me, had touched my soul at one point, and yet that same spark wasn’t there anymore. I wasn’t the same girl I once was. And while on some level I understood that, I didn’t know if he could.
Before I could open my mouth and say anything else, Brandon’s arms were around me, holding me close to him. He ran his strong hands down my hair, my back, and clutched me to him. He kissed the top of my head, my temple, my cheek, and murmured sweet words that I knew I had heard from him before. But I couldn’t quite comprehend them now because all I could do was sink into his hold and wrap my arms around his waist. I had felt like this before, I remembered: his arms and his touch like a sense of home I never knew I needed. I’d always felt safe with him, felt as if my center of gravity shifted towards him. I had forgotten that fact. I had forgotten what it felt like to be held by a man who truly cared, one who truly put his all into those he loved.
I had forgotten, but with one touch, it all came back with force.
“You healthy now? Or maybe that’s too personal a question, but I need to know. Are you okay, Lauren? Dammit, I wish I had been there to help you through that. And now I sound as if your illness had something to do with me rather than the very personal thing it was. I’m so sorry, baby.”
I let him hold me a few moments longer before pulling back so I could look into his eyes. He kept his hand on mine, and I didn’t mind. I needed that anchor, and knew he did, too—especially because I knew I wasn’t done yet.
“I’m cancer-free now. But it was really bad back then. Right when I thought you were pulling away because you were afraid of being a dad, I was finding out that I had cancer in my body that was trying to take away my life. My mom went with me to the doctor’s office that day because she didn’t like how pale I had been looking, and even though I was way over the age of being an adult, I have always been thankful that she was there with me. I had stage III ovarian cancer—a death sentence in some cases. But because I was young and healthy in all other aspects, they were able to aggressively attack the cancer. My parents were already planning to move to Seattle because of my dad’s job, and though there were wonderful doctors here then, even cutting-edge doctors that could have helped me, there was an even better oncologist up in Seattle. So I went with my parents. Moved away from the home that I had grown up in, the home I had made for myself once I moved out, and the city that had been my own, to move into my parents’ new house. It wasn’t easy, and I knew in the end that I was running away from not only you but also the girl I was when I thought I had a full future ahead of me. But I think it’s what I needed to do. I’m just sorry that I hurt you in the process.”
He shook his head and cupped my face again. “How could you think about me at all during that? Yeah, a part of me is pissed off that I couldn’t be there for you and that, somehow, you didn’t trust me enough to be strong for you, but that part needs to go away. Because you being sick had nothing to do with me. And I’m just so damn sorry about everything. But you’re okay now? Right?”
“Like I said, I’m cancer-free. But it wasn’t without a cost.” A terrible cost that I was just now learning to live with. I just had to remember that I wasn’t the same woman I once was, and that was a good thing when it came to the strength in my body and in my veins. “I had a full hysterectomy at the age of twenty-two that put me through early menopause. So, in addition to all the chemo, and radiation, and constant poking and prodding to make sure I could live, I also lost a part of myself I had truly thought I relied on to give me a s
ense of self.”
“And you did this on your own. I always knew you were strong, Lauren. But I never knew how strong you could be.” His thumb ran along my cheekbone, but I didn’t lean into his touch. He wasn’t mine anymore, and we weren’t the same people we were. I didn’t know this man, and he was only starting to learn the bare facts of who I was.
“I wasn’t alone. I had my parents. Yes, maybe I should’ve called to tell you when and why we left town. But I was so focused on the future in front of me, and how scared I was, that I couldn’t find the strength to do so. I was young, and so damn scared that I was going to die that I didn’t want to bring you into that part of my life. That might have been selfish, but I thought you’d find someone else to fall in love with and have a life where you didn’t have to worry about a woman who was literally dying inside.”
“Jesus Christ, Lauren. How could you even think that I would have run away from you being sick? I would’ve been by your side, no matter what. I would’ve helped you through that. We might have been young, but we weren’t that young. I was ready to make a life with you, a family, and I would have stood by your side if you needed me. I’m just sorry that I didn’t seem like a man who could do that for you.”
I shook my head, leaving his hold so I could try to get my thoughts in order. “Like I said, I was young and scared and probably a little stupid, too. I’m not young and scared anymore. But I’m also not the same woman I was. We’re taught at a young age that we can’t be whole unless we’re truly whole. I’ve learned differently. We are taught as females that we cannot truly be women without a way to bear young and be the perfect mother. And I spent countless hours trying to figure out exactly how to make that statement untrue.”
“Having a uterus doesn’t make you a woman, Lauren. And I know that sounds idiot coming from a man, but I don’t really know what else to say other than I don’t see you differently because of the hell you went through. No, that’s wrong, I see you as stronger than you once were, and I already thought you were pretty damn strong.”
I couldn’t help but smile at his words. But I knew the expression didn’t quite reach my eyes. “I know that. I know that I’m still a woman even though I had a hysterectomy far too young. I know that I’m still a woman even though I can never have a child of my own. And I know that there are many other ways to have children that have nothing to do with carrying one to term. I know all of that. The facts were laid out before me, and I can even say that with a straight face and feel the truth of it now. But I didn’t feel that way when it first happened. I thought someone had torn away the part of me that made me me, the part of me that made me a woman in the eyes of society and those I cared about. That’s what I thought when everything first happened. So I couldn’t call you. I couldn’t call the boy I loved and tell him that I wasn’t the same girl he had fallen for. That I was a girl who could run away because she was scared. I couldn’t do that. So I let time pass and thought maybe you could move on and find your happily ever after. All the while, I just tried to heal. And it wasn’t just my body. It was also my mind. And like you said, I’m stronger now.” I swallowed hard. “I’m stronger now.” I repeated the words as if a mantra to myself. I had said them to myself over and over again over the years as an exercise, and it had helped. And yet being in front of Brandon right then, some tendrils of fear and inadequacy were slowly weaving their way through my system. I knew if I didn’t get it out soon, I might break again. And I refused to do that.
“You are so strong. And I don’t know what it means that you’re back in town and that you happened to walk into my tattoo shop, but I have to think it happened for a reason. Don’t you?”
I really, really wanted that to be the case. My hands were shaking, and my stomach hurt. I’d been doing a good job of living my life day by day, trying to be this new Lauren I’d become. But my job had brought me back to Denver, and my need for a symbol of the supposed strength I held had brought me back to Brandon. I wasn’t sure I could handle them both.
“Lauren?” There was such vulnerability in his voice that I knew I would probably break whatever fragile trust we had established in the past hour we’d been in each other’s presence again, but I needed to breathe.
“I’m so glad I got to tell you why I left. I’m so happy that I got to see you and get a glimpse of the man you’ve become. But being near you reminds me of what I lost. What we lost. I don’t know if I can do that. It brings me back to the time when I couldn’t breathe. When I couldn’t stand on my own. The time my body betrayed me when I shouldn’t have had to worry. I don’t think I can stay, Brandon. I don’t think I can be here anymore. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell you why I left. I hope your life is amazing. Just…without me.”
And with that, his hand fell to his side, and I turned on my heel and walked out the door, leaving him behind like I had done once before. But this time, in a way I knew would probably break me in the end. I hadn’t meant to see him today, hadn’t known if I would ever see him again. Denver, after all, was a big place.
I hated myself for leaving, but I knew I might hate myself even more if I stayed.
I couldn’t go down that road again, couldn’t let those memories slam into me one by one. So I would walk away and let Brandon live his life as he had been. And, one day, maybe I might be able to find my own path. One day.
Chapter 4
Brandon
I could still hear the echo of her words, the sound of her shoes against the hardwood of my floor as I stood in my living room, trying to figure out what the hell had just happened and what I was going to do about it.
So much had been thrown at me, I wasn’t sure I could possibly figure it all out at once. The thing was, though, I didn’t have to figure it out for myself. She left because she was scared, just like she had left before. But unlike last time, I didn’t have to watch her run away. If she truly wanted me out of her life, I would let that happen. I wouldn’t go all stalker on her and force myself somewhere I wasn’t wanted. But she needed to know who I was now. Because I had seen the strength in her, and though she had left, saying she wasn’t strong enough, I didn’t think that was the case. From the look in her eye, I think she knew that, too. She was scared, and I couldn’t blame her. But I couldn’t just let her go. Not again. Maybe if I begged, she would stay. I wasn’t too proud to beg. No matter what people thought about big, bearded, tattooed men. I would go down on my knees and plead. Because I had let her walk out of my life once before, and honestly, I didn’t think I was strong enough to do it again.
I quickly ran out of my apartment, hoping I could catch her before she turned off on some block, and I lost her forever. I didn’t have her number, wasn’t even on social media myself beyond what I needed to show off my art for work, so I couldn’t find her that way either. Plus, if I did that, that would be a little too stalkerish for me. So I would hope that she was still near enough to the building that I could still find her.
Because as she had spoken earlier, I realized that even though we had both changed, one thing remained the same. I still loved her. There was a reason I hadn’t had a strong connection or any commitments with any of the men or women I had been with in the time since Lauren. There was a reason I always pushed everybody away so they didn’t get too close. It was because I was waiting for her. That may sound crazy, might sound as if I were putting all of my hopes and dreams into a revenant of my past, but that wasn’t the case. I’d seen my friends fall for the loves of their lives one by one over time, and I knew one thing for certain. Once you found the person—or sometimes people as in Maya’s case—you knew was meant for you and was wrapped around your soul so tightly that you couldn’t tell where one person ended and the other began, you didn’t let them go. You fought. You fought for what you could have and what you wanted. You talked to each other and figured out what you needed, and what you wanted. There was no running away from the hard things. And even though I knew that Lauren had a damn good reason to fear the
memories I had brought back up for her, she didn’t have a clear picture of who I was now. She didn’t know how we could be together now. It had been six years, and yet seeing her had brought back every single moment of passion, love, and need I remembered. I loved her even more now, and I prayed I’d be able to find her because I didn’t want to lose her again.
I ran down the stairs, not bothering to take the elevator that wasn’t that old but felt like it, and slammed open the outer door. The fresh Denver air mixed with the scents of the inner-city filled my nostrils, and I looked everywhere I could for those chestnut waves. And because, perhaps, fate decided to be on my side for once in my life, I didn’t have to look far.
She sat on a bench right outside my apartment building. Others walked past us, unaware of the heartache and tension that lay bare between the two of us. Of course, no one really knew what truly went on between two people unless they stopped and studied them or perhaps asked. And, now, I was getting way too philosophical when I should be trying to figure out what I was going to say to her. She’d run from my apartment, from my building, but she hadn’t gone far. Could I count that as a sign? A step in the right direction? Or maybe she’d known where she was going when she left. I tried not to think that the latter could be true, but knowing her—or at least knowing who she once was—I really didn’t know the answer.
She hadn’t noticed me yet, and for that, I was grateful. It gave me a few moments to collect my thoughts and figure out what to say. Because I was going to say something. I wasn’t sure I could watch her walk away. Walk out of my life just like before. I was going to take a chance and hope she wanted me back, even with everything else going on around us. And if she said no, if she said it was too much, I would walk away. I would do the walking this time so she didn’t have to. Because that was how much I had once loved her, and a testament to what I felt for her now. But I hoped to hell that she didn’t want either of us to walk away this time.
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