The Fable of Us

  Dad shot to a stand, holding out his hand as he stepped in front of me. “Now, Boone, you’re walking in on the tail end of this conversation. I’d suggest you take a step back, cool that hot head of yours, and listen to what Clara has to say.”

  My father’s posture indicated he was trying to protect me from Boone. From what, I didn’t know, but didn’t he see? I hadn’t needed protection from Boone—I’d needed protection from my family. From my father, and whatever lies he’d woven that were just as responsible as Ford’s for tearing Boone and me apart. From telling Boone I’d . . .

  What had he just said? Abortion? My mind was lagging behind, not quite capable of keeping up with the moment.

  When Boone looked at me, betrayal drowning in his eyes, I finally got it—why he’d left me like he had. So sudden. So final.

  “I’m done listening to what she has to say,” he said, backing away from me like I was a viper about to strike.

  He hadn’t just bought one lie back then—he’d bought two. He’d listened to Ford and my father, not even thinking to confirm what they’d said with me. I suddenly felt like that viper, ready to spew venom in Boone’s direction.

  Thrusting off the porch, I stood as tall as I could. “You’ve never been ready to hear me out, Boone. You’ve been too busy listening to everyone else.”

  And then I walked away. Again. For the second night in a row. I was hurt and confused and felt betrayed by so many people for so many reasons.

  I didn’t really know where I was going until I wound up in my bedroom and slid the window open. I’d worked out so many problems and tears on this roof, it should have collapsed from the weight years ago.

  After crawling out and finding a good spot, I told myself I wasn’t going to cry. Not over this. Not again. Not after finding out three men who’d held important roles in my life had all betrayed me. For whatever reasons—selfish or unselfish—they’d hurt me and cut me out of the equation, leaving me to be the victim of their outcome instead of the creator of my own.

  I ordered myself not to cry again. I cursed and belittled myself, threatening that if I dared cry another tear over the past, I’d hurl myself over the roof and give myself a broken leg or something. I was already crying when I made my threats though, and they only made me cry more.

  I’d come to a place in my life where I’d been certain I’d left all of this behind. I’d left Charleston and Boone and the baby behind. But if that was the case, why did I feel like I’d just been gutted at the same time my heart was attempting to exit my body via my throat? Why did I feel like everything I’d known had been a lie and everyone in it had been a liar?

  I was trying so hard not to cry, because each tear that rolled down my cheek seemed to make it more real. Each one gave more credit to what had happened instead of allowing me to rebury it in the unmarked grave I’d been content to ignore for seven years.

  I should have listened to the warning siren in my head and never come back here. I should have listened to it after I had come back and it kept going off, warning me to leave before things got worse. Because things had impossibly gotten worse.

  We’re talking bottom floor of the Worse Building.

  From the corner of my eye, I noticed a big shadow crawl through the window toward me, but I was going to ignore him. Maybe if that was the policy I’d applied to Boone Cavanaugh all those years ago, like my parents had ordered me to, I wouldn’t be here now—on top of my childhood home and crying my eyes apart.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t even look over. He just sat beside me, leaving a couple feet of space between us, and stared into the darkness that he seemed immune to. Whereas the dark had always seemed to envelop me and take me under, Boone had always been able to wade through it.

  After a minute, I couldn’t take the silence anymore. He’d come looking for me and crawled out here for a reason. He should have had the balls to announce that reason without drawing out the waiting game.

  “What are you doing here? I’m just your slut ex who got an abortion.” I’d been going for venomous hate, but my voice fell more in the overwhelmingly sad realm.

  “You’re right. I never did stop to hear you out.” Boone looked at me. “Or listen. I would have done anything for you back then, but when it really mattered, when we probably both really needed to talk and listen to each other, I failed.” I wasn’t looking at him—not really—but even from the corner of my eye I could see his jaw go rigid. “I’m ready to listen now.”

  I curled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Sitting like this, on the roof next to Boone, transported me back in time, to a place I both wanted to never leave and never visit again. “But maybe I’m past being willing to explain.”

  “Maybe.” He nodded. “And that’s on me. So if that’s the case, I’ll understand.”

  “You seemed less ‘understanding’ down there.”

  Boone shifted so he was almost facing me. He might have been ready to face this, but I wasn’t sure I was.

  “Well, like your dad said, sometimes I just need to give myself a moment to cool my hot head.” One of his shoulders lifted. “Plus, he might have threatened to turn me into a shotgun target if I didn’t get up here and hear your side of the story.”

  “I bet he was disappointed when you listened.”

  Half a smile moved into place. “I’ve never seen a man so disappointed.”

  He was wearing on me. Wearing me down or wearing me ragged, he was getting to me. It could have been the partial smile, or it could have been him, again, being the only one to ever come find me when I left, or it could have been that I’d never been good at saying no to Boone Cavanaugh. Whatever it was, it seemed that after years of silence and misguided beliefs, I was ready. Ready to talk, explain, and finally bury this all for good.

  “Tell me this first,” I started slowly. “If what you believed was true, about what I’d done, why did you take me up on my offer?”

  “The money.” His answer was immediate, but his voice gave him away.

  “Oh yeah? The fat check you still haven’t cashed? That was your reason?” My brows lifted in his direction. “Well, paint me skeptical.”

  “Seven years have gone by. That’s ancient history for all I care.” His tone was still off, barely, but it was enough to give away that he wasn’t telling the truth. At least not the whole truth.

  “And that’s why you’re acting like it all happened yesterday?” I waved at him, his posture tense and his eyes darting over everything but me. “Well, slap a double coat of skeptical on me.”

  That was when his eyes finally moved in my direction. They didn’t dart away. “You know why.”

  “I know what?” I pressed, not about to make this easy on him. Why start now after years of trekking down the hard road?

  “The same reason we touched on last night.”

  My heart stopped climbing up my throat and dropped back into my chest where it belonged. It was beating harder than I was used to though, and faster. “We touched on a lot.” I sounded almost out of breath. “What reason are you specifically referring to?”

  Boone glanced at me, waiting for me to say it so he didn’t have to. I kept my lips sealed.

  “The one having to do with that damn connection of ours,” he half-shouted, throwing his arms into the air. “The one I wish to hell I could wash away, but it’s immune to everything I try to destroy it with. The connection I thought could be killed with the things that happened back then, but here it is, still pressing down on me and making me crazy.” He rolled his head like he was trying to diffuse his feelings. “I want to scream at you as damn badly as I want to lay you down on this roof and kiss you until I’m goddamn done.” He took a deep breath, his body finally relaxing. When he glanced at me again, his expression had softened. “Which might take a while.”

  When he flashed a sad smile, I swallowed and smiled back. It felt as sad as his looked. We were both sitting in front of each other’s what-could-have-been and
realizing that what could have been could have been amazing had things not gotten fucked up along the way.

  “I didn’t have an abortion.” The word took my breath away. “I had a miscarriage.”

  Boone’s eyes closed as his forehead creased. “Your dad,” he said with a nod, “he told me.”

  I found myself twisting around so I was almost facing him. His expression . . . he looked like he was experiencing the kind of pain few people ever experienced.

  “I didn’t know until tonight what he’d told you,” I explained. “I mean, I knew he told you I’d lost the baby, but not that you’d showed up at our house looking for me, and not that he’d told you I’d lost it voluntarily.”

  The muscle running up his jaw went rigid. “That man is a son of a—”

  “I know.”

  “Why would he do something like that? Why would he lie about—” Boone closed his mouth like nothing good could come from what he wanted to say next.

  “I’d just miscarried the day before,” I said softly. I’d come up here sure that I was the one who’d been cheated, and a few minutes later I found myself realizing I hadn’t been alone. “I’d lost my boyfriend, the father, a few days before that. My dad was under the impression I might have been in a bit of a fragile state.”

  “I get that. I do.” He kicked at one of the shingles. “But why not tell me the truth? If anything, that would have made the situation better instead of worse.”

  I didn’t have an answer. At least not one I wanted to give any dignity to by verbalizing it, because I might not have agreed with what my dad did, but I knew why, in his mind, he’d done it.

  “Never mind,” he said, realization dawning on his face. “I know why.”

  “You do?” I hoped he didn’t. I hoped he’d arrived at another conclusion than the actual one.

  “He wanted me gone, and that was his chance.” Boone’s arms went around his head, his fingers lacing at the base of his neck. “Same thing Ford did to me, but your dad’s tactic actually worked.”

  My eyes closed. Of course he’d figured it out. My family had never made it much of a secret that they’d do anything to weed Boone out of my life. Stooping to lying about an abortion included. “He might have wanted you gone, but I didn’t.”

  A moment of silence passed between us. The kind that reminded me of standing at a headstone and saying a silent farewell. I wasn’t ready to say another farewell, silent or otherwise. Not now that we’d finally sorted through the shit that had ripped us apart in the first place. Not now that we’d figured out we’d been lied to, manipulated, and deceived. I wasn’t ready to say good-bye.

  “Why aren’t you pissed?” I asked, my voice louder than the small distance between us warranted. “Why aren’t you doing your usual beating your chest and grunting thing now?”

  “Because I understand.” Instead of angry, his voice was calm.

  “You understand why my dad lied to you about me having an abortion? You understand why Ford lied to you about us fucking behind your back?” If he wasn’t going to get angry, I was. What had happened was deserving of unrestrained anger.

  “Ford’s a piece of shit I’m going to punch in the face when I see him next,” he cursed. “But your dad . . . I understand what he was doing.”

  “Which was what exactly?”

  Boone looked at me. There it was—that good-bye in his eyes. “Protecting his daughter.”

  My head shook so violently my hair whipped into my eyes. “Protecting me from what? Heartache? Pain? Depression? Feeling like all that love I’d had for you had been for nothing?” I was glaring at him, but another tear slipped out. I swiped it away so fast it didn’t count. “He protected me from nothing.”

  “He protected you from me.”

  I huffed, frustrated at what he was saying and why he wasn’t letting himself get pissed like I was. I was frustrated at everything tonight, the stars and moon included.

  “Come on, Clara. Look at me. Look at you.” Boone waved between us like he was comparing an apple to a rotten banana. “You wouldn’t have gotten where you have if your dad hadn’t stepped in and taken a butcher knife to the bond tying us together.”

  “How the hell do you know that?” My tone was biting, arsenic in audible form.

  “How can you keep denying it?” He paused long enough to give me a chance to respond. When I didn’t, he continued. “Look at what I’ve done with my life. Other than age seven years and move into my own place, not a hell of a lot. I’m still sputtering through town in that same relic of a truck. I’m still as single as I have been since the day we broke up and as I will be until the day I die. I’m still getting calls to come rescue my mom, and I’m still an utter failure at saving my sister. Shit, even my business, the one good thing I tried to do with my life since you and me, failed. That’s what I am, Clara, a failure. It might have taken me a while to see it and you might be blind to it, but your dad has always seen it. He wanted better for his daughter than some failure. I would have wanted the exact same for mine had ours been born a daughter.” When his eyes sealed shut again, he forced them back open. “I can’t fault him for what he did.”

  “Well, I can.” I sounded like a child. One who hadn’t gotten her way and, instead of moving on, was going to pout about it for the next lifetime and a half.

  “Why?”

  I actually grunted in frustration at his iron-clad calm resolve. This wasn’t the way I was used to these kinds of talks/arguments going between Boone and me. “Because you might choose to see yourself as a failure, but that’s not what I see when I look at you. That’s never been what I’ve seen. Even a few days ago, even still being under the impression you’d left me because I’d gotten pregnant, I didn’t see a failure when I looked at you that night in the bar.”

  He laughed. “I am what I am. Not what you think I am.”

  That, perhaps more than anything else that had been said or discovered tonight, was what pissed me off the most. The person I’d looked up to for years was incapable of seeing just how great he really was.

  My hands curled around my legs. “That’s right, Boone. You are what you are. Not what you think you are.”

  Instead of laughing, this time he sighed his disagreement. “You know, all that time, I was so worried about protecting you from your family and the rest of this town, I didn’t see where the real danger really was. It was right beside you.”

  “You weren’t a danger.”

  Boone shifted so he was at the edge of the roof. When he looked down, it was almost like he was contemplating what it would feel like to drop from this high up. I found myself creeping closer, ready to grab him in case he did something crazy.

  “Tell that to the guy who just found out he walked out on the girl he loved when she was pregnant because he believed the lies of two people who he knew better than to trust,” he said.

  “It’s strange, isn’t it?” My anger was dissipating now that I’d run out of adrenaline. I was back to feeling sad and betrayed. I would have rather been angry. “Realizing we’ve both been living with the wrong idea of what really happened back then.”

  “Strange isn’t the word I’d use to explain it.”

  “What word would you use?”

  He glared in front of him. At nothing. Or at everything. With Boone, the enemy was as obvious as it was invisible. “Devastating,” he said at last, like the word had drained the last of his energy.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner. I should have.” I scooted closer, until I could have reached out and touched him if I wanted to. “The moment after I found out. I should have told you before my parents found out and before Ford found out and he told you.”

  “Why didn’t you?” His voice was muffled and his expression tired, as if someone had plunged a hose into him and siphoned the life right out of him. Down to the last drop. “Why did you wait to tell me?”

  I glared out at the same darkness, knowing my eighteen-year-old reasons for not telling him weren’t
the same reasons the twenty-five-year-old version of me would have used. “I’d only found out a week earlier, Boone. I think I was paralyzed those first few days, then I just felt so many things, I couldn’t tell what I felt most. I couldn’t explain what had happened to myself yet, so I wasn’t sure how to go about explaining it to you.”

  “How far along were you?”

  “Ten weeks,” I answered. That hung in the air for a moment.

  “And I just left you.”

  “You came back. You might not have made it through the front door and I might have only just found out about it, but coming back counts for something.”

  He shook his head. “I should have stayed away. I should have listened to your dad and your friends and this whole town when they told me I’d bring nothing but destruction into your life.”

  In the background, the music got louder. Laughter and celebration was echoing from one end of the estate to the other. The Abbott family was having the time of their lives while mine felt like it was ending. Again. Some stories just kept repeating themselves.

  “You brought more of the good stuff to my life than anyone else ever has,” I said, looking at him so he could see how serious I was. When he wouldn’t turn his head, I knew I had two options: I could leave and try to put all of this into a sealed folder marked The Past, or I could stay and ask all my questions until I didn’t have any more. I went with the latter option before realizing I’d made my decision. “Why did you come back?”

  Boone rolled his head to one side, then the other. “I decided I didn’t care about the Ford thing. Or which of us was the father.” He wasn’t looking at me, but when my eyebrows lifted as high as they’d go, he added, “Okay, so I might have cared, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being with you and being a father to that baby.”

  “And what was your plan? To marry me and move me into a two-bedroom house in the country?” I asked, scooting just a bit closer.

  “Actually, yeah, it pretty much was.”

  My face ironed out. “Oh, Boone, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that . . .” I hadn’t meant to tease him, but he’d clearly taken it like I had. “But were you really?”