Coming Home (50 page)

He wasn’t sure it would even be possible to earn back her trust after everything he’d done, but on his good days, Danny promised himself he’d exhaust every avenue and deplete every resource trying.

And today had been decent for him, which meant it was a horrible day to attempt a conversation with her.

He couldn’t allow this temporary sense of well-being to sway him, because tomorrow, it could be gone, and there would be no way to guarantee if or when it would come back.

Danny watched her shoulders rise as she took a deep breath, but her expression remained impassive as she watched him standing there, rooted to the ground.

He tried to summon the resistance he’d relied on so many times when the need for her pulled at him relentlessly. The same power that prevented him from dialing her number, despite the amount of times he’d gone into the call room to do exactly that. The same resistance that prevented him from sending her emails, despite the fact that he’d drafted several, only to delete them before logging out of the system.

Danny knew it wouldn’t be fair to allow the good days to give either of them false hope. He couldn’t call her on a good day and then abandon her when he was pulled back under. He couldn’t email her one day and then ask her to leave him alone the next.

And so he resisted every urge he had to reconnect with her.

But she was here. And he could feel the unmistakable tug in his body, his heart galloping in his chest.

He wanted so desperately to know what she was thinking in that moment. Why she had come. But he had absolutely no idea what the past month had looked like for her.

The one time Danny had given into an impulse and asked Jake about Leah, Jake’s response had been a lengthy tirade focusing on what a complete asshole Danny was being.

He vowed then and there never to bring her up with Jake again.

And he knew better than to ask Gram about her. She wouldn’t be as blunt as Jake, but her quiet disappointment in Danny’s decision would be even more cutting in its own way.

Danny didn’t need a lecture from anyone. He knew he was doing the right thing by letting her go, no matter what anyone else thought. No one else was in there with him. No one else was living his every day. So how could they even pretend to know what was best?

As he stood there, watching her watch him, there was a split second where he contemplated turning around. No good could come of this visit with her—he knew that—but the thought of walking away from her made his gut wrench. It was excruciating enough when he’d done it the first time, and he hadn’t prepared himself for the task of doing it again.

She wasn’t supposed to come back here.

He felt himself take a step in her direction before he’d even made a conscious decision to move, and then she stood, releasing her mother’s bracelet as her hands fell to her sides. He watched her curl and uncurl them into fists a few times before he lifted his eyes back to hers.

Now that he was closer, he could see the emotions fighting for control on her face: a knotty combination of sadness, fear, and determination.

Danny reached for the chair across from her and pulled it out. He could hear his heart beating in his ears as he sat before her, and Leah lowered herself into the chair, pulling her lower lip between her teeth.

For a few seconds, they sat there in silence.

Danny cleared his throat softly. “Jake?” he asked.

“Knows I’m here,” she responded softly, and Danny looked down and nodded slowly.

Silence.

“He said I could have his visit if I promised to bring him back some Skittles.”

Danny laughed before he could stop himself, and he glanced up to see her smiling uneasily. She reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear, and then her smile dropped at the same time her eyes did.

Leah took a deep breath, her eyes on her lap as she said, “A long time ago, I asked you to stop playing games. And you promised me that you’d never lie to me.” She looked up and met his gaze. “I came here because I need to know the truth about something.”

Danny nodded once. “Okay.”

She wet her lips, the determination temporarily winning out in her expression. “Why did you break up with me?”

Danny closed his eyes before he exhaled.
Goddamn it
. He’d been prepared to answer any question but that one.

“Leah,” he said weakly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

“I want you to tell me the truth.”

The seconds ticked by, hollow and unforgiving.

“Is it because you really don’t want me anymore?” she asked.

Danny rubbed his hand over his eyes. “Don’t do this, Leah.”

“It’s a simple question,” she said, completely undeterred by his plea. “All I’m asking for is honesty.”

Danny looked down at his hands. There was no answer he could come up with that wouldn’t send him down a path he refused to travel down with her.

“Are you afraid the truth will hurt me?” she asked. “Don’t be. Nothing you can say now will hurt me more than the words you said last time.”

Danny’s head snapped up; her eyes were on him, her expression unapologetic.

Her words hung in the air between them, acrid and insufferable, and Danny had to look away. He could feel little pinpricks in his chest, shame and self-loathing battling for control in his body.

“Do you still love me?” she asked.

He took a breath before he looked across the table at her. This time, there was nothing behind her eyes but vulnerability, and he knew if she deserved an honest answer to any question, it was this one.

“Yes,” he said gently.

“And do you still want to be with me?”

“Leah—”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Enough of the run-around. I want an answer, Danny. Because all of
this
,” she said, gesturing around them, “is only temporary. Don’t lose sight of that. And when this is over, what do you want? Do you want to start a new life with me? Do you want to come home to me every day? Do you want to have dinners with me, and go grocery shopping with me, and watch crappy TV together, and make love to me while we listen to our song? Do you want to get Christmas trees together, and go on vacations, and have babies? Do you want to take bubble baths with me, and teach me things in the garage, and hold me every night while we fall asleep?”

Danny’s chest constricted, squeezing and compressing with vice-like intensity until it sent his heart up into his throat. What she had described was so agonizingly beautiful, it felt like there wasn’t enough room in his body to accommodate it.

It had been so long since he’d allowed himself a fantasy of that caliber. Dreams like that cost too much to entertain inside these walls.

But her words were warm and palliative in his veins, and for a moment, envisioning what she described didn’t feel torturous. It wasn’t a cruel act of masochism. It wasn’t a hopeless pipedream.

Because Leah was sitting in front of him, momentarily turning that fantasy into a promise.

He should have been used to it by now; from the moment she came into his life, she started reviving him—making him
feel
again, making him appreciate things, helping him learn how to forgive himself, making him think he was someone worthy of love. And here she was, offering to save him all over again.

He wanted to let her. God, he wanted everything she had described and more. He wanted to give her things she’d never even thought to ask for.

And for a split second, with her looking at him the way she was, he believed he could have it all with her.

“Do you want that life with me?” she asked, her voice trembling slightly.

Two answers bubbled up into his throat simultaneously—the sincere one and the safe one—and Danny felt like he was choking on their scuffle.

Leah’s gentle eyes implored him for a response, but he couldn’t open his mouth, too afraid that the wrong answer would escape.

Instead, he nodded.

The tension in her shoulders melted instantly as her eyes pooled with tears.

“But Leah,” he said quickly, “I can’t make you promises like that. I don’t know who’s gonna be coming home to you.”

Danny ran his hands up through his hair; he could feel the words backing up in his throat, clogging like a traffic jam of candid statements desperately seeking an outlet.

And all at once, he lost the will to inhibit them anymore.

“This place, Leah,” he said, shaking his head. “I feel myself bending to it. Every day, I bend a little more. I’m doing my best. I’m learning how to manage my thoughts, and I’m trying so hard to keep myself…
me
.” He looked up at her. “But some days, no matter what I do…it’s just not enough. And I just don’t know how many times I can bend before I break.”

“But it’s okay if you bend,” she said earnestly. “It’s okay if you break. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t want that,” he said with a firm shake of his head.

“Don’t want what?”

“I don’t want you to see it. Or to wait for me only to learn at the end of all this that I’ve become someone you can’t see yourself with anymore. It’s so much harder than I thought to be away from you all. And sometimes I just…I go to a dark place, and I’m not even
me
anymore. I don’t want you to have to deal with it. I’m not going to ask you to wait this out when I can’t guarantee you’ll be happy when it’s over. This is an ugly clusterfuck of a ride, Leah. And I don’t want you to be a passenger.”

Danny could feel his heart thrumming as he looked across the table at her. He had thought it would be humiliating to admit how he felt, but there was an odd sort of comfort in confessing his fears—like the weight of the burden had somehow lessened simply because he had allowed it outside of his body.

“Why did you sit in the room with Bryan when he died?”

Danny felt a tingle run down his spine. “What?” he asked, startled.

“Why did you go in when they turned everything off and let him go?” she asked. “Better yet, why did you go visit him, day after day, with all of those horrible tubes and machines attached to his body? When all the doctors said there was no hope. That he couldn’t even hear you. Why did you do it?”

A heaviness settled in his stomach, quickly transitioning into a wrenching pain.

“Because he…because I…” Danny shook his head and trailed off, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes.

“I know exactly why,” she said gently, reaching over and pulling one of his hands away from his face. He dropped the other to the table as she intertwined their fingers, running her thumb over the side of his hand. “It’s the same reason I sat with my father every night for two weeks, praying by his bedside. It’s the same reason Holly and Robyn have been taking turns coming to my apartment every day for the past month, despite the fact that I’ve been miserable and wretched and depressing to be around.”

She gave his hand a tiny squeeze. “Because when you love someone, you don’t bail when it gets hard. That’s when you stay the most.”

It felt like his throat was closing.

“And it’s not always easy,” she said, running her thumb over his hand again. “It’s hard to watch someone you care about suffer. But when you love someone, you do it. You do it without question or reservation. You do it because there’s no other option—because the thought of being without them is a hundred times more excruciating than bearing their burden.” She leaned over and brought his hand to her mouth, kissing the back of it before she said, “And I love you, Danny. You made it so easy to fall in love with you. You’re funny, and loyal, and patient, and selfless.” Her eyes welled with tears. “And you’re considerate, and honest, and intelligent, and compassionate. And you were able to become all of those things—to
maintain
all of those things—in the face of all the shit life handed you.” She smiled a watery smile. “And I know that’s who you’re still going to be when you come back to me.”

She released his hand to swipe at the tears on her cheeks. “So that’s
me
, being honest with
you
,” she said with a sniffle. “There’s no doubt we’re both going to suffer through this. I’ve always known that. Some days will be bearable and some will be completely miserable. But I’ve made my decision. I know what I’m up against, and I know what I want. I want you. And I want us. I want our life together.”

It felt like his heart might come out of his chest; like a strange current was running through his body, making his breath erratic and his muscles feel like they were humming.

“My father once told me that if something seems too hard, before you give up, you should always ask yourself if the reward will be worth the suffering.” She took a deep breath. “So I guess what it comes down to…what I need to know…is whether or not I’m worth the suffering to you.”

Danny rested his elbows on the table and dropped his forehead to his clasped hands. He could feel his chin trembling, and he inhaled slowly, trying to pull himself back together.

The magnificence and purity of her love for him—the all-consuming force of it—could break him and heal him simultaneously. It could destroy him and piece him back together, better than he was before.

And it could restore his faith faster than this place could take it.

Danny remembered wondering once how anyone could keep his head above water here. And suddenly he realized—
this
was how. When you have something to hold on to. A reason to fight every day. A beautiful lifeline pulling you through to the other side.

The guys who don’t have it—or the ones who are foolish enough to let go—those are the guys that go under.

He thought he could save her by letting her go, but he’d had it all backward.

She wasn’t the one who needed saving this time.

“Leah,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “I could suffer through anything if you were my reward.”

A smile curved her lips before she cupped her hand over her mouth and burst into tears.

Danny was out of his seat in an instant, walking around to her side of the table, and she stood, throwing her arms around his neck as he lifted her off the floor and buried his face in her hair.