“I put up with a lot worse from you.” I said it automatically. I said it without thinking.
Eyes flashing, he said, “I never once cheated on you. I never even looked at another girl when we were together.”
I slid away from him and started to climb down. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I didn’t know why he was bringing any of this up now. I just wanted it all to go away.
“I thought I knew you,” he said.
“I guess you thought wrong,” I said. Then I jumped the rest of the way down.
I heard him jump down behind me, and I started to walk away. I could feel tears coming, and I didn’t want him to see.
Conrad ran up behind me and grabbed my arm. I tried to turn my head away from him, but he saw, and his face changed. He felt sorry for me. That only made me feel worse. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said anything. You’re right. It’s not my business.”
I spun away from him. I didn’t need his pity.
I started walking in the opposite direction of the house. I didn’t know where I was going, I just wanted to get away from him.
He called out, “I still love you.”
I froze. And then slowly, I turned around to look at him. “Don’t say that.”
He took a step closer. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get you out of my system, not completely. I have… this feeling. That you’ll always be there. Here.” Conrad clawed at his heart and then dropped his hand.
“It’s only because I’m marrying Jeremiah.” I hated the way my voice sounded—shaky and small. Weak. “That’s why you’re saying all this all of a sudden.”
“It’s not all of a sudden,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “It’s always.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.” I turned away from him.
“Wait,” he said. He grabbed my arm again.
“Let go of me,” I said, and my voice was so cold, I wouldn’t have recognized it. It surprised him, too.
He flinched, and his hand dropped. “Just tell me one thing. Why get married now?” he said. “Why not just live together?”
I had asked myself the same question. I still hadn’t come up with a good answer.
I started to walk away, but he followed me. He wrapped his arms around me, over my shoulders.
“Let go.” I struggled, but he held on.
“Wait. Wait.”
My heart was racing. What if someone saw us? What if someone heard? “If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to scream.”
“Hear me out, just for a minute. Please. I’m begging you.” He sounded strangled and hoarse.
I let out a breath. In my head I started to count backward. Sixty seconds was all he would get from me. I would let him talk for sixty seconds, and then I would go and not look back. Two years ago, this was all I wanted to hear from him. But it was too late now.
Quietly, he said, “Two years ago, I fucked up. But not in the way you think. That night—do you remember that night? The night we were driving back from school and it was raining so hard, we had to stop at that motel. Do you remember?”
I remembered that night. Of course I did.
“That night, I didn’t sleep at all. I stayed up, thinking about what to do. What was the right thing to do? Because I knew I loved you. But I knew I shouldn’t. I didn’t have the right to love anybody then. After my mom died, I was so pissed off. I had this anger in me all the time. I felt like I was going to erupt any minute.”
He drew his breath in. “I didn’t have it in me to love you the way you deserved. But I knew who did. Jere. He loved you. If I kept you with me, I was going to hurt yousomehow. I knew it. I couldn’t have it. So I let you go.”
I’d stopped counting by then. I just concentrated on breathing. In and out.
