“How?” I snapped.
“Because I was figuring out a way to tell you without hurting you.”
It was always going to hurt. Always.
“You’re having a baby with someone else. How could that ever not hurt me?” I asked as my shoulders slumped.
Kale licked his lip, and instead of answering my question, he said, “This is so fucked up.”
Finally, something I agreed with.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “It is.”
He remained silent in the doorway of the sitting room, blocking my exit. I pushed my glasses up the bridge of my nose and checked the watch on my wrist. When I saw the time, I cursed. “I’m not going to make my flight if I don’t leave now,” I said to Kale. “I have check-in and security to get through, and my gate opens in an hour.”
He stood rooted to the spot.
“Kale,” I said with impatience. “Move.”
“No,” he replied firmly. “I won’t. We can figure this out. You don’t have to leave the bloody country, Lane.”
I didn’t want to hear any of this, so I gripped my cases and tugged them over to the doorway and tried to get by his lean body. I angrily shoved at his chest when he wouldn’t budge.
“Move!” I pleaded.
“Lane!” he shouted and grabbed hold of my arms. “What the hell do you want from me? Nothing I do is good enough for you. What the hell do you want? Tell me, because I don’t fucking know.”
I dropped my guard and unleashed the feelings I’d bundled deep down for years.
“You, Kale!” I bellowed. “I just want you!”
Kale stumbled back a step or two from me like my words hit him with the force of a train. When he balanced himself, he stood motionless as he stared at me. The silence between us was deafening, but I used it to get everything I had wanted to say all my life off my chest. I needed to tell him how I felt, even if it meant the end of everything.
“I’ve always wanted you, but I couldn’t have you,” I cried, breaking down as fat tears fell from the brim of my swollen eyes and rolled down my flushed cheeks. “I have to leave. It’s ripping me apart watching you be happy with someone else. I want you to be happy, I swear I do, but it’s hurting me that I’m not the woman making you smile. I’m so tired of being sad, Kale.”
Kale didn’t speak; he just continued to stare at me.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you . . . just not in the way you love me.” I looked him in the eye. “I’m in love with you. I have been forever.”
Kale opened his mouth to speak, but when nothing came out, he closed his lips.
I held my hand up. “You don’t need to say anything – you don’t even need to feel any type of way about this,” I assured him. “This isn’t your issue; it’s mine.”
Kale blinked his eyes a couple of times.
“You love me?” he whispered, his eyes wide and distant.
I swallowed. “Yes, I love you.”
Kale blinked his eyes back into focus and trained his gaze on me. “But . . . but you told me it wasn’t like that between us – you told me it wasn’t. I asked you, and you told me no. You told me no.”
My heart shattered once again.
“I was terrified what I felt was wrong. I tortured myself for years because I thought I was dirty for loving a person who everyone considered my brother.” I cast my eyes downward to try and gain control of my tears; if I didn’t look at him maybe I wouldn’t hurt as bad.
“We have been around each other since the day I was born. You were the first man that wasn’t my father to hold me. I know you were little too, and at that time it was friendship that sparked, but it changed for me, Kale. I’ve loved you since that night when I was ten years old and you slept outside my wardrobe all night with a baseball bat to keep the monsters away. I just didn’t realise you keeping them away would awaken new ones within me.”
I could tell by the look on his face that he was in shock. He couldn’t begin to think about the weight of my words until he had time to process what I was telling him. He needed space, and I was going to give it to him.
“You told me no,” he whispered.
I sobbed when his eyes filled with water.
“You told me no. I wanted you, and you told me no. I hurt when you refused me your heart, God knows.” He wiped his tears as they fell onto his cheeks. “I hurt so bad, Lane, but I learned to live with it. I learned that there was never going to be a Kale and Lane together in the way I wanted. I learned to love you without needing you. I learned to move on from you.”
I didn’t think I could hurt more than I already did, but hearing the words “move on” come from Kale broke me into a million pieces. I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole.