Happy Place(81)

He tucks me against his chest, the water from his skin sluicing down my arms and back. His mouth burrows into my hair. “It wasn’t you,” he says. “I promise it was never you. I was in such a fucking dark place, Harriet. After I lost my dad. I was drowning.”

He presses me closer.

“I’m sorry,” I say, voice crackling. “I wanted to help you. I didn’t know how. I’ve never known what to do with pain, Wyn. All I’ve ever done is hide from it.”

His hand furls against my ear. “You couldn’t have done anything else, Harriet. It was never you. I just . . . I lost the best man I knew, and it was like I stopped knowing how to exist. Like the world didn’t make any sense anymore. And you had this new life, this thing you’d been dreaming of for so long, and all these new friends, and—and I was greedy for your time, and I hated myself for not being happy for you. I hated myself for not being good enough or smart enough or driven enough for you.”

“Fuck that.” I try to push back from him.

He holds me fast, doesn’t let me go, and it makes me so angry, how he’s holding on now, when it’s too late. “Listen,” he murmurs, “please let me say this.”

I lift my gaze to his. I think of the first time I ever saw his face up close, how his features had struck me as contradictory, a rare mix of magnetism and standoffishness: I want you close, but don’t look at me. Now he’s pure quicksand. No stoniness. Wide open.

“I was lost,” he says. “As much as I loved my parents—as much as I always knew they loved me—I grew up thinking I was a letdown. I had these two incredible sisters, who came out of fucking left field and were nothing like my parents or anyone else in our town, and as early as I can remember, everyone knew they were going to do something amazing. I mean, when I was twelve and Lou was nine, people were already talking about how she’d win a Pulitzer someday. No one was giving me imaginary awards.”

“Wyn.” We’d been down this path too many times.

“I’m not saying anyone thought I was stupid,” he says. “But that’s how it felt. Like I was the one who didn’t have anything going for him except that I’m nice.”

“Nice?” I can’t help but scoff.

Generous, thoughtful, endlessly curious, painfully empathetic, funny, vast. Not nice. Nice was the mask Wyn Connor led with.

“I wanted to be special, Harriet,” he says. “And since I wasn’t, I settled for trying to make everyone love me. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but it’s true. I spent my whole life chasing things and people who could make me feel like I mattered.”

That stings, somewhere deep beneath my breastbone. I try again, feebly, to draw back. Wyn’s hand moves to the back of my neck, light, careful. “And then I met you, and I didn’t feel so lost or aimless. Because even if there was nothing else for me, it felt like loving you was what I was made for. And it didn’t matter what anyone thought of me. It didn’t matter if I didn’t have any other big plans for myself, as long as I got to love you.”

“So that’s it?” I say raggedly. “I took up all the oxygen, and you didn’t tell me until I’d suffocated you. Until you didn’t love me anymore, and there was nothing I could do.”

“I will always love you,” he says fiercely. “That’s the point, Harriet. It’s the only thing that’s ever come naturally to me. The thing I don’t have to work at. I loved you all the way across the fucking country, and at my darkest, on my worst days, I still love you more than I’ve ever loved anything else.

“But I wasn’t happy after my dad died, and I kept waiting for things to feel even the tiniest bit better, and I couldn’t. I didn’t. And I was making you unhappy too.”

I open my mouth, but he cuts across me softly, his hands gentling in my hair: “Please don’t lie, Harriet. I was drowning, and I was taking you down too.”

I try to swallow. The emotion grips my throat too tightly.

Wyn drops his gaze, his voice cracking. “When I went back to Montana, I could feel him.”

“Wyn.” My hands go to his jaw, and his forehead dips to mine.

His eyes close, a deep breath pressing us closer. “And I felt so stupid for running away from all that. For trying so hard to be different from him when he was the best man I’ve ever known.”

“You’ve always been like him,” I say, “in all the ways that matter.”

The corner of his mouth turns up, but it’s a tense expression, a wrought one. He’s shaking, from the cold or adrenaline.

“I just . . .” He takes a breath. “I felt like I was failing him, and my mom, and you. I wanted you to be happy, Harriet, and the Martin thing—maybe it was an excuse, but I was so low then that I genuinely convinced myself that was the kind of guy you wanted to be with. And you kept pushing the wedding off. You never wanted to talk about it. You never wanted to talk about anything, and when I saw you with all of your new friends, I thought . . . I thought you should be with someone as brilliant as you, who could fit into this world you spent your whole life fighting for.”

“That’s not fair, Wyn,” I cry.

“What was I supposed to think, Harriet?” he asks, voice fraying. “When I’d have to cancel a visit, you didn’t care. When I missed a phone call, you didn’t care. You were never mad at me. You never fought with me. It felt like you didn’t even miss me.”