His eyes were shining when he lifted his head, the tops of his cheeks red, imperfect.
God, I was so in love with him, and it killed me knowing he didn’t love himself.
“Something happened to you,” I assumed. “Something awful, and I believe that, unlike me using my lies to protect myself, your lies are a form of punishment. A punishment you’ve placed upon yourself. You don’t want perfection, Hayes. That’s not what you were chasing.”
The question that spilled from his lips, the words weaved with agony and dread, had me wanting to run to him. Still, I stayed where I was, moving my hands to the arm of the couch, gripping the sides. Anchoring myself in place. “What was I chasing, my beautiful Margo?”
Hesitation weighed heavily on my shoulders. I was a mess. That much was true. But my mess was the breath of life compared to the neatly wrapped lie that had consumed him for over a decade.
“Tell me,” he begged. A tear fell from his eye, and my lips parted as I watched the first bit of his wall break when the moisture landed on his cheek. “Tell me what I was chasing.”
“Emptiness,” I answered, voice cracking. “You convinced yourself to call it perfection, Hayes, but you were never going to allow yourself to be happy.”
He tore his gaze from me, turning his head to the side. The light of my lamp hit that tear just right, and as silence suffocated the both of us, I watched it slowly slide down the sharp edges of him. When it disappeared into his neck, I whispered, “Your plan never involved your own happiness.”
“Until you.”
My heart lunged for him, but I held her steady.
A gust of wind rattled the building, a warning of the storm to come. The roof creaked above us, fifty years of history echoing throughout my home, raindrops beginning to hit my window. First one, then five more, then ten, and before I could release the air in my lungs, rain was pelting against the glass, bouncing off the roof. The low roar and rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, lightning striking the water over a mile away, illuminating my broken man even more.
“Until me,” I repeated.
“You were never a part of my plan.”
“And you weren’t a part of mine,” I replied, smirking at him. I’d hoped to get something out of that, but nothing came. His face was stone cold, unreadable.
His eyes?
They were an open book, but I couldn’t turn the page. He needed to do it. He had to give me something.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “I don’t deserve happiness.”
“Tell me why you believe that, because I believe you do deserve happiness.”
That was when he gave me a smile. It was small and quick, but it had the power to shake mountains. The words that followed also carried power…the kind of power that seeped its way into your soul, gradually consuming it until there was nothing but a void of your own mistakes in its place.
“Because I’m the reason my entire flight crew is dead.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Hayes
My confession hung in the air like a toxin, and with each breath she took, it slithered into her body, her heart, andher soul. The usual shame I’d always tasted when I thought about this day or discussed it with Dominic coated my tongue, heavy, thick, metallic. I watched her, studied her as if she were under a microscope, searching for even a morsel of disgust toward me.
I found none.
Yes, she’d paled.
Yes, her eyes had widened, giving me a better view of another layer of her endless beauty. A guilty pleasure I had no right to indulge in.
Yes, she’d sucked in a sharp breath of shock.
It was human nature.
Though her reaction to my truth was expected, it still stung. Down in the deepest parts of me, the sting lingered, because she was Margo and I was me, her Superman. I could practically see the image of myself that she’d conjured up the moment I saved her from cracking, shattering into a million pieces. Like the stained glass in a church shattered, raining down to the altar, dismantling all beliefs, all chances of absolution.
“There you have it, baby,” I whispered. “There’s my truth.”