Ugly Love

He pulls out, then thrusts inside me again, this time with all his strength.

It hurts.

Give me your pain, Miles.

“My God, Rachel,” he whispers.

My God, Rachel …

Rachel, Rachel, Rachel.

That word gets put on repeat inside my head.

My.

God.

Rachel.

I turn my head away from his. It’s the worst pain I’ve ever felt. The absolute worst.

His body immediately stills inside mine when he realizes what he said. The only thing moving between us right now are the tears falling from my eyes.

“Tate,” he whispers, shattering the silence between us. “Tate, I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head, but the tears won’t stop. Somewhere deep inside me, I feel something harden. Something that was once liquid completely freezes, and it’s in this moment that I know this is it.

That name.

It said it all. I’ll never have his past, because she has it.

I’ll never have his future, because he refuses to give it to anyone who isn’t her.

And I’ll never know why, because he’ll never tell me.

He begins to pull out of me, but I tighten my legs around his. He sighs heavily against my cheek. “I swear to God, Tate. I wasn’t thinking about—”

“Stop,” I whisper. I don’t want to hear him defend what just happened. “Just finish, Miles.”

He lifts his head and looks down at me. I see the apology, clear as day, hiding behind fresh tears. I don’t know if it’s my words that have just cut him again or the fact that we both know this is it, but it looks like his heart just broke again.

If that’s even possible.

A tear falls from his eyes and lands on my cheek. I feel it roll down and combine with one of my own.

I just want this to be over.

I wrap my hand around the back of his head and pull his mouth to mine. He’s not moving inside me anymore, so I arch my back, pressing my h*ps harder against him. He moans in my mouth and moves against me once, then stops again. “Tate,” he says against my lips.

“Just finish, Miles,” I say to him through my tears. “Just finish.”

He places a palm against my cheek and he presses his lips to my ear. We’re both crying harder now, and I can see that I’m more than this to him. I know I am. I feel how much he wants to love me, but whatever is stopping him is more than I’m able to conquer. I wrap my arms around his neck. “Please,” I beg him. “Please, Miles.” I’m crying, begging for something, but I don’t even know what it is anymore.

He thrusts against me. Hard this time. So hard I scoot away from him, so he wraps his arms under my shoulders and cups his hands upward, holding me in place against him as he repeatedly pushes into me. Hard, long, deep thrusts that force moans out of both of us with every movement.

“Harder,” I beg.

He pushes harder.

“Faster.”

He moves faster.

We’re both gasping for breath between our tears. It’s intense. It’s heartbreaking. It’s devastating.

It’s ugly.

It’s over.

As soon as his body is motionless on top of mine, I push against his shoulders. He rolls off of me. I sit up and wipe my eyes with my hands, then stand up and pull on my underwear. His fingers wrap around my ankle. The same fingers that wrapped around the same ankle the first night I met him.

“Tate,” he says, his voice riddled with everything. Every single emotion wraps itself around each letter of my name as it comes out of his mouth.

I pull away from his grasp.

I walk to the door, still feeling him inside me. Still tasting his mouth on mine. Still feeling the stains of his tears against my cheek.

I open the door and walk out.

I close the door behind me, and it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I can’t even walk the three feet back to my apartment.

I collapse in the hallway.

I’m liquid.

Nothing but tears.

Chapter thirty-four

MILES

Six years earlier

We went home. Not to our home.

Rachel wanted Lisa. Rachel needs her mother.

I kind of need my father.

Every night I hold her. Every night I tell her I’m sorry. Every night we just cry.

I don’t understand how it can be so perfect. How life and love and people can be so perfect and beautiful.

Then it’s not. It’s so ugly.

Life and love and people become ugly.

It all becomes water.

Tonight is different. This night is the first night in three weeks when she’s not crying. I hold her anyway. I want to be happy that she’s not crying, but it scares me. Her tears mean she feels something. Even if that something is devastation, it’s still something. There aren’t any tears tonight.

I hold her anyway. I tell her I’m sorry again.

She never tells me it’s okay.

She never tells me it’s not my fault.

She never tells me she forgives me.

She does kiss me tonight, though. She kisses me and takes off her shirt. She tells me to make love to her. I tell her we shouldn’t. I tell her we’re supposed to wait two more weeks. She kisses me so I’ll stop talking.

I kiss her back.

Rachel loves me again.

I think.

She’s kissing me like she loves me.

I’m gentle with her.

I go slow.

She’s touching my skin like she loves me.

I don’t want to hurt her.

She cries.

Please don’t cry, Rachel.

I stop.

She tells me not to stop.

She tells me to finish.

Finish.

I don’t like that word.

Like this is a job.

I kiss her again.

I finish.

Miles,

Rachel wrote me a letter.

I’m sorry.

No.

I can’t do this. It hurts too much.

No, no, no.

My mother is taking me back to Phoenix. We’re both staying there. It’s all too complicated, even between the two of them now. Your father already knows.

Clayton brings families together.

Miles rips them apart.

I tried to stay. I tried to love you. Every time I look at you, I see him. Everything is him. If I stay, everything will always be him. You know that. I know you understand that. I shouldn’t blame you.

But you do.

I’m so sorry.

You stopped loving me with a letter, Rachel?

Love,

I feel it. All the ugly parts of it. It’s in my pores. My veins. My memories. My future.

Rachel.

The difference between the ugly side of love and the beautiful side of love is that the beautiful side is much lighter. It makes you feel like you’re floating. It lifts you up. Carries you.

The beautiful parts of love hold you above the rest of the world. They hold you so high above all the bad stuff, and you just look down on everything else and think, Wow. I’m so glad I’m up here.

Sometimes the beautiful parts of love move back to Phoenix.

The ugly parts of love are too heavy to move back to Phoenix. The ugly parts of love can’t lift you up.

They bring you

D

O

W

N.

They hold you under.

Drown you.

You look up and think, I wish I was up there.

But you’re not.

Ugly love becomes you.

Consumes you.

Makes you hate it all.

Makes you realize that all the beautiful parts aren’t even worth it. Without the beautiful, you’ll never risk feeling this.

You’ll never risk feeling the ugly.

So you give it up. You give it all up. You never want love again, no matter what kind it is, because no type of love will ever be worth living through the ugly love again.

I’ll never let myself love anyone again, Rachel.

Ever.

Chapter thirty-five

TATE

“Last load,” Corbin says, picking up the remaining two boxes.

I hand Corbin the key to my new place. “I’ll make one more walk-through and meet you over there.” I open the door for Corbin, and he exits the apartment. I’m left staring at the door across the hall.

I haven’t seen or spoken to him since last week. I’ve been selfishly hoping he would show up and apologize, but then again, what would he even be apologizing for? He never lied to me. He never verbalized promises that he broke.

The only times he wasn’t brutally honest with me were the times he didn’t speak. The times he looked at me and I assumed the feelings I saw in his eyes were more than what he was able to verbalize.

It’s apparent now that I more than likely invented those feelings from him in order to match them to my own. The occasional emotion behind his eyes when we were together was obviously a figment of my own imagination. A figment of my hope.

I scan the apartment one last time to make sure I packed everything. When I step outside and lock Corbin’s door behind me, my movements are taken over by something I’m unfamiliar with.

I can’t tell if it’s braveness or desperation, but my hand is balled into a fist, and that fist is knocking on his door.

I tell myself that I’m free to escape to the elevator if ten seconds pass and the door doesn’t open.

Unfortunately, it opens after seven.

My thoughts begin to riot with rationalization as the door opens wider. Before rationalization wins and I dart away, Ian appears in the doorway. His eyes change from complacent to sympathetic when he sees me standing here.

“Tate,” he says, capping my name off with a smile. I notice the shift of his gaze toward Miles’s bedroom before his eyes fall back on mine. “Let me get him,” he says.

I feel the ascent in the nod of my head, but my heart is making a descent, scaling down my chest, through my stomach, and straight to the floor.

“Tate’s at the door,” I hear Ian say. I inspect every word, every syllable, searching for a clue wherever I can find one. I want to know if he rolled his eyes when he said that or if he said it hopefully. If anyone knows how Miles would feel about me standing in his doorway, it would be Ian. Unfortunately, Ian’s voice gives no indication of what Miles may feel about my presence.

I hear footsteps. I dissect the sound of the footsteps as they close in on the living room. Are they hurried footsteps? Are they hesitant? Are they angry?

When he reaches the door, my eyes fall to his feet first.

I get nothing from them. No clues that will help me find the confidence I so desperately need in this moment.

I can already tell my words will come out raspy and weak, but I force them up anyway. “I’m leaving,” I say, still staring down at his feet. “I just wanted to say goodbye.”

There’s no immediate reaction from him, physically or verbally. My eyes finally make the brave journey up to his. When I see the stoic look on his face, I want to step back, but I’m afraid I’ll trip over my heart.

I don’t want him to watch me fall.

My regret over making the choice to knock consumes me with the brevity in his response.

“Goodbye, Tate.”

Chapter thirty-six

MILES

Present day

Her eyes finally find the courage to meet mine, but I try not to see her. When I really look at her, it’s too much. Every time I’m with her, her eyes and her mouth and her voice and her smile find every vulnerable spot on me to breach. To seize. To conquer. Every time I’m around her, I have to fight it, so I try not to see her with anything other than my eyes this time.

She says she’s here to say goodbye, but that’s not why she’s here, and she knows it. She’s here because she fell in love with me, even though I told her not to. She’s here because she still has hope that I can love her back.

I want to, Tate. I want to love you so much it f**king hurts.

I don’t even recognize my own voice when I tell her goodbye. The lack of emotion behind my words could be misconstrued as hateful. A far cry from the apathy I’m attempting to convey and an even farther cry from the urge I have to beg her not to go.

She immediately looks down at her feet. I can tell my response just killed her, but I’ve given her enough false hope. Every time I ever allowed her in, it hurts her that much more when I have to push her away.

But it’s hard to feel bad for her, because as much as she’s hurting, she doesn’t know pain. She doesn’t know it like I know it. I keep pain alive. I keep it in business. I keep it thriving with as much as I experience it.

She inhales and then looks back up at me with slightly redder, glossier eyes. “You deserve so much more than what you’re allowing yourself to have.” She stands on the tips of her toes and places her hands on my shoulders, then presses her lips to my cheek. “Goodbye, Miles.”

She turns and walks toward the elevator, just as Corbin steps out to meet her. I see her lift one of her hands to wipe away her tears.

I watch her walk away.

I shut my door, expecting to feel even the slightest ripple of relief over the fact that I was able to let her walk away. Instead, I’m met with the only familiar sensation my heart is capable of feeling: pain.

“You’re a goddamn idiot,” Ian says from behind me. I turn around, and he’s sitting on the arm of the couch, staring at me. “Why are you not going after her right now?”

Because, Ian, I hate this feeling. I hate every feeling she evokes in me, because it fills me with all the things I’ve spent the last six years avoiding.

“Why would I do that?” I ask as I head toward my room. I pause with the knock at my front door. I expel a frustrated breath before turning back to the door, not wanting to have to turn her away for a second time. I will, though. Even if I have to lay it out in terms that will hurt her even more, she needs to accept the fact that it’s over. I let it go too far. Hell, I never should have allowed it to even begin, with us knowing it would more than likely end this way.

I open the door but find Corbin in my line of sight rather than Tate. I want to feel relieved by the fact that it’s him standing here rather than her, but the fuming look on his face makes it impossible to feel relieved.

Before I can react, his fist connects with my mouth, and I stumble backward toward the couch. Ian breaks my fall, and I steady myself before turning to face the door again.

“What the hell, Corbin?” Ian yells. He’s holding me back, assuming I want retaliation.

I don’t. I deserved that.

Corbin trades looks between the two of us, finally settling on me. He pulls his fist up to his chest and rubs it with his other hand. “We all know I should have done that a long time ago.” He grips the doorknob and pulls the door shut, disappearing back out into the hallway.