I stopped suddenly, turned my head to the side, and put my bowl by Boone’s.
“Ryn,” Boone said gently, wrapping a hand around the side of my neck.
I looked again at him.
“But he’s like a whirlwind. He’d sweep into a room and sweep you off your feet and then he’d cast you aside, leaving you dirty and broken and used in his wake.”
Boone flinched.
“Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It’s like those people who see what they see, only what their eyes can see, which is mostly what that might mean to them, and that’s all. There is nothing greater. There isn’t a whole wide world out there. There is only them and what they’re experiencing. And I’ll tell you something, it didn’t feel great, those vast amounts of time I was outside my father’s blinders and melted completely from existence.”
Boone’s fingers tensed.
“And it didn’t feel great, watching him do that to my mother and brother either,” I went on. “Do you know, I have not spoken to him in years, and do you know what that means to him?”
“What does it mean, sweetheart?” Boone asked hesitantly.
“It doesn’t mean anything, Boone. I’m not in his sights, so I don’t exist. But say, he needs something, and he can get that from me, he will suddenly remember I’m around and expect me to twist myself in knots to give it to him. He does not miss me. He does not wonder why I’m not in his life. But if he needed a kidney, he’d be on my doorstep, and if I told him to fuck off because he didn’t show up for visitations. He didn’t pay child support. He made my mother need to hire attorneys so she could sue him to get the money we deserved or defend herself because he was suing her, when we had nothing. We had dick. But the attorneys had to get paid.”
Boone’s other hand came up to the other side of my neck, he latched on, and he muttered, weirdly urgently, “Baby.”
But I ignored that and carried on.
“Even with all of that, and there’s more, Boone, a load more, he’d be pissed. Insanely pissed. At me. Because what kind of daughter am I, I don’t give her loving father a kidney? What kind of daughter am I, that when the rare happens and he remembers it’s my birthday, and he deigns to phone me, and I don’t take his call, and he calls back and leaves a ranting voicemail message about respect and family? What kind of daughter am I when he never loved me a day in my life and I was born loving him and I’ll die never having that back?”
Boone slid his hands to my jaw, dropped his forehead to mine, and looked into my eyes, saying firmly, “Stop now, baby. Stop.”
I breathed heavily in his face.
“That’s enough for now,” he said.
“I build walls,” I replied.
“Enough for now, Ryn,” he repeated.
“You’re right. I build walls because I’m utterly terrified someone I love is going to cast me aside.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“You get it now and I get where you’re coming from now so we can work on that,” he said.
“I didn’t know I felt this much about him,” I admitted.
He lifted his forehead away, but he did it in an “Ah-ha!” motion.
So I asked, “What?”
“Nothing, Ryn. Let’s finish our oatmeal.”
“Oh wise Master, share your wisdom,” I joked.
“Stop being a brat,” he replied, his lips twitching.
But I got serious because I wanted to know.
“What, Boone?”
He studied me.
Then he sighed.
After that, he spoke.
“You gotta be strong. You gotta be tough. You gotta take the hard knocks and keep on ticking. In other words, you gotta be perfect, because if you’re not, if you give anyone reason to go, you think they’ll go. You can’t let yourself be human because your dad taught you to work for love, when love isn’t work. It isn’t, Ryn. Love is a gift that’s the only gift there is that isn’t about earning it. People say that. Shit like, ‘You gotta earn her love,’ and it ticks me off. Because that’s not the way it works. Love just happens. It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it. The end.”
I stared up into his gorgeous face.
“But we get where you’re at with that now, you feeling the need to be all to everyone, stand strong, never fall down, and we’ll work on that too. Though I’ll say, that’s you. It’s obvious that’s how you’ve gotta be and it’s a part of you that’s beautiful. It’s just that I gotta get you to the place where you know you’re safe not having to be like that with me,” he finished.
I heard him.
But mostly I was hearing a repeated refrain of, Love just happens. It just blooms. Then it’s yours to give. And you give it. The end.