“His name is Maverick. I can see it. We do look good together, and he rides motorcycles, too. He’d make a decent replacement for you.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and counted back from ten.
She knows just what buttons to press to piss me off.
I opened my eyes and scowled at the playful smirk that briefly ghosted her lips.
“The problem we’d run into is that we’d just be using our spouses to fill a void. We’d lie to their faces and tell them we loved them when, in reality, we tolerated them because it was better than being alone. I fucked up, Ki. I, too, should’ve taken accountability and gotten the help I needed sooner. While in therapy, I realized that I didn’t opt for sobriety because, deep down, I enjoyed being a fucking train wreck because I knew in the back of your mind that you’d always be worried about me, and if you worried about me, then you loved me.”
“Grant—”
“It’s fucked up; I know, but it’s the truth, and I’m owning up to it. I’m done with the alcohol and excuses, and I’m done pretending that we can be with other people. It would never work—we’d always come back to each other.” I pointed at her and said, “If you think that we’re hurting people now by being together, then you don’t realize the magnitude of pain and chaos we’d cause if we ‘moved on’.”
“You’re unwell, Grant,” she professed as if she wasn’t on the crazy train with me. I cupped her cheek, and the self-doubt I felt dissipated like a slow-moving fog when she leaned into my touch.
“At least I’m not alone in this sickness, but you have some options, Kiyah.”
“What are my options?”
“You could move on with a man you wouldn’t love nearly as much as me and settle on having clandestine meetings.”
She raised a brow and asked, “Are you seriously suggesting you’d be my sneaky link?”
“What other option would I have?”
“Intense psychotherapy,” she quipped, forcing my eyes to roll to the back of my head.
“Will you attend therapy with me? I said some unforgivable shit to you, and it all needs to be unpacked with a professional in a safe space.”
She chewed on the inside of her cheek for several seconds as she considered my offer. Eventually, she relented.
“I’ll go to therapy, but I can’t promise that we can go back to the way things used to be.”
“I’m not asking for us to return to how things used to be. What used to be didn’t work for us. I want us to be better.” She broke away from me and cursed under her breath while pacing the office. “It can be better, Kiyah. Everything’s out in the open—our family knows about and accepts us, and there are no more secrets between us. We can have a clean slate.”
She halted in her tracks and asked, “Can I think about it?”
It’s not a no.
“You have forty-eight hours to make a decision.”
She propped her hands on her hips and stared down at the rug.
“It doesn’t matter what I want. Therapy, no therapy, you’ll pursue me relentlessly.”
I approached her and firmly grabbed her tense shoulders.
“We tried doing what you wanted for the past seven years, and it didn’t work out. It’s my turn now.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kiyah
Two Weeks Later
Grant:Good morning, Cinderella. We have therapy at 4:00. Do you need a ride?
Cinderella? Fuck him.