It was as if blinders he had put up intentionally had dissolved. As if everything that he had put up between them had vanished.
Everything.
I love you.
And it was too much. Too much. It reminded him of the moment when he had hit Boone. Because it was like something sharp and vicious was cutting open his insides. Like his heart was going to explode. It wasn’t that he felt nothing. It was that he felt everything, and he had no idea how to combat that. No idea what to do about it. There was nothing, he realized. Because the problem was knowing it was the truth. Knowing that what he had been protecting himself all along from was the intensity of it.
The desperation of it.
And he couldn’t un-know it now.
He felt terrified. Utterly terrified. Because she loved him, and he felt more than any one person should. Because she loved him, and he felt like he might break apart. Because she loved him, and it truly felt like hell. Because she loved him, and he was faced with the realization that she was so fragile. So beautiful. And life had come along and taken that from him. It had already taken so much.
The more you cared, the more you could lose.
And he realized...
That was all this was. It was all it had ever been. All he had ever been truly afraid of. It was losing someone he loved again. It was caring so much he could be in that position where he felt too much. Where he wanted too much.
He had punched Boone, because Boone had felt all of the things that lived inside of him. All of the things he wanted to turn away from. All of the things he wanted to deny.
But he was still holding her, and he was still in her, and he couldn’t help himself. “I love you too.”
He lay back on the floor, feeling like he had just lost a war.
One he had been fighting for the better part of his life. One he hadn’t even realized he’d been on the slow path to losing from the minute he had first seen her.
Every bit of his resolve. Every bit of everything, it was broken. Demolished. And so was he.
He knew why he had been fighting it all this time. Knew why he had been fighting her.
He damn well did.
Because this was terrifying. He was happy to throw himself on the back of an angry bull; he was happy to work until his body ached and his hands bled.
It was the feeling. That was what he didn’t want to do. Not what he couldn’t do. It was the thing that scared him. Believing so much in something, hoping so much. Loving someone so much, and losing them anyway. Losing everything anyway.
“You love me?”
He sat up, staring straight at the Christmas tree that they had just decorated together.
Staring straight at the Christmas that could be his if...
“Shit,” he said.
“What?”
“I...”
He was suddenly choked. By the memories. The memories of that night that they had broken up. The memory of the night that he had lost her.
That he had let her walk away.
She had thought that she might be pregnant with his baby and he’d said he didn’t want it. Of course he wanted it. He wanted everything with her. He wanted a whole life. A baby and everything, but facing down that possibility, that little bit of hope... It had been too much for him. He hadn’t been able to claim it. He hadn’t been able to admit it.
And now... He felt swamped with it. With the loss of it. The loss of that potential future. The baby, her.
All the things that he hadn’t been able to say then. And he wanted to say them now.
So he looked up at her, and he tried. “I don’t know if I’ll be a good dad,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to be a good husband. I have lived in absolute fear for so long, Tansey. For so long. Because when I was a kid, I knew my sister was sick. Of course I did. We spent all that time in hospitals, all that time around doctors, and it wasn’t like my parents didn’t try to prepare us. But you don’t understand dead when you’re fourteen years old. And you can’t. It’s just the most absurd thing. I had a sister. And she was wonderful. The cutest kid. The sweetest... And why? Why? It never made any sense. That I could never... I couldn’t live with what it made me feel. I had to figure out some way to stop it. I couldn’t help Boone with what he felt because it was killing me. As if my own pain wasn’t enough, I had to watch it torture him too. I had to watch it torture everybody, and that was what broke me. It absolutely broke me into pieces. And that was the man that met you.”
He sat there, his words so heavy. Everything so heavy. “I have told myself that I did not have it in me to give anybody the support they needed if they were going through a hard time. That I didn’t have it in me, because of the way I reacted to Boone. But when you said that... When you said you loved me just now... It was like you shone a light on all those dark places inside of me, and I can’t pretend I don’t know what it really is.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“Fear. I’m afraid. I’m a coward. Because you’re a gift. A beautiful, lovely gift. Too perfect to be real almost. And more what I want than I ever wanted to admit. More than I ever wanted to want. And suddenly it terrifies me. Like the sky might cave in and take you away from me.” He cleared his throat. “When you told me that you thought you might be pregnant... It was the ferocity of what I felt that shut me down. Because it was like...hope, with teeth. It’s the best way I can describe it.”
“I know all about that. About hope with teeth. Every time I’ve ever looked at you, Flint. And wanted to believe that we could be something that we were never meant to be. Because you were that cowboy, the one that I was supposed to stay away from. The one that I was never supposed to love. You were that cowboy. And I knew better. But something in me didn’t want to know better. Because it just wanted you. What I really wanted was you.”
“I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know. But I know that I can’t walk away from you. Not again. Not ever again.”
“I can’t walk away from you either. I need you too much. I need us.”
“I... I don’t know if I can. I don’t know... But I want it. I want to do whatever I have to do to figure this out. To fix myself. So that I can be what you need.”
“Flint...”
“But you were always enough,” he said. “It was me. It was always me. I was the one who couldn’t cope. I was the one who flinched. You were always enough. What your father couldn’t do was fix himself. I want to. For you. For us. For the future. I’m glad you wrote that song. I’m glad you told the truth about what I did to you. Because I needed to know. I needed to really know.”
