I am putting him first, as much as I can.I’d committed to Rocktoberfest long before we’d met up again. He couldn’t expect me to break my word, just because he asked me to.
Or could he?
I’d never had a real, healthy relationship, other than maybe with Lee all those years ago. I didn’t know what was too much, what was love and what wasn’t healthy. Maybe I was supposed to sacrifice everything for what Lee wanted. He’d lost so much. Could I blame him for not wanting to take any slightest chance?
Maybe if he came back and walked through the door and asked me again…
I dropped my face in my hands and sat there, every muscle tense. And I wasn’t sure if I was more afraid he would come backand ask again, or he wouldn’t. In the end, my fears didn’t matter. When I dragged my ass to bed in the small hours of morning, Lee hadn’t returned.
Chapter 18
Lee
I wasn’t sure how I’d driven home. All muscle memory and reflexes, because I found myself in Mom’s garage, my head pounding, and no recollection of the trip.
He’s doing it again.Worse this time, because this delay, this refusal to put anything ahead of his music and performing, might kill him. I could lose him not just to the distant whirl of the music world, but completely.
Or maybe not lose him. Maybe I never had him in the first place. He lied to me about what the doctor said, obviously. HeknewI’d worry, and he treated me like an unreasonable child.
Fucking Rocktoberfest and sixty thousand fans mattered more to him than I did. No doubt it would always be that way, even if the mass turned out to be nothing. He’d keep going. One more concert and one more, a trip here, a few days away there, a little series of shows, a longer series. He wasn’t made for a normal life, and he clearly couldn’t stick to one.
I might notneedhim at my side now the way I had when Alice got sick, but I still couldn’t afford to fall this hard and fast and completely—except I did fall— I wouldn’t stay with a man who couldn’t put me first.
I clenched the steering wheel and breathed through gritted teeth. If I didn’t calm the fuck down, Mom would see something was up. Too much to hope she wasn’t waiting up for me. Willow and the meds were helping her anxiety but she was invested in the success of the cat café concert.
At the back of my mind, a little pulse of panic beat like frantic wings, fluttering, calling, suggesting I turn around, talk to Griffin, that maybe I was the unreasonable one. That I was losing the best thing in my life by walking away. But a bigger piece of me clung to my panic and my escape. If I stayed, if I cared, losing Griffin from his own stupid obsession with performing, health or no, would destroy me in deeper and far more painful ways than this.
Yeah, every bit of me ached at the thought of walking into Wellhaven on Monday and treating Griffin like a stranger. My throat clamped down hard at the image. But it was better than the alternative. Better than being the one ditched and left behind in travel or in death, the one not worth staying for,afterfalling in love. I was dodging a bullet.
I’m being smart. Damage control. Triage. Take the smaller loss to avoid the big one.
Except this didn’t feel small. This felt like an earthquake ripping the ground from beneath my feet.
Well, so did Dad leaving when I was a kid. So did Griffin leaving twenty years ago. So did losing Alice. I survived, went on, made good choices. I’d do the same now.
I climbed out of the car, which took more effort than I was used to.I should work out more.I’d been skimping on exercise time for Griffin time.
The door into the house squeaked as I pushed it open. Mom called, “Lee, is that you?”
“Yes.” I headed her way. She sat sprawled against the pillows on the couch as if she’d drifted off while reading.
I squatted and picked up her book from the floor. Willow reached out from Mom’s lap and booped my chin with her paw. “Hi, kitty.” I rubbed her cheeks and she purred.
“So how did it go?” Mom asked. “Tell me everything. Did they make much money?”
“Went great.” I kept my eyes on Willow, petting her as I described the crowd and the stuffed donation jar and four cats with likely new homes.
“So what aren’t you telling me?” she murmured when I ran out of words.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Bullshit.”
That made me blink and look up, because Mom could cut loose swearwords with the best of them but she almost never did.
“I know you, Lee. If everything was fine, you’d be smiling and waving your hands and telling me the little funny stuff. You’d have a light in your eyes.”
“It’s pretty late and it was a long night.”
