She Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 2)

Chapter 20: Ronnie

Mom comes home from work wearing a look that I already know means she’s about to tell me something I don’t want to hear. It’s about her scheme to get me into therapy, I’m sure.

“I talked to Jason today. His heart is aching, Ronnie,” she tells me, giving me this long, pointed look, pausing to choose her next words carefully.

I sigh, not knowing what to say to that. I knew cutting him off again would hurt him, but I had hoped he’d be doing better by now. Actually, I figured he would have left by now and gone home to be with his pack. I’ve read that it’s important for werewolves not to be away from their packs for long, especially during emotional distress, and him choosing to stay here alone doesn’t make any sense.

“But even so, his first priority is making sure that you get what you want, as it always is,” she goes on. “I told him that it might be better for him to go back home and give you some space for now, and you know what he said? He said he doesn't want you to think he's given up on you, so he plans to stay until you tell him, personally, that he needs to go. Even after all the pain and heartache, that’s still where his head is at. Making sure you’re taken care of first.”

That takes my breath away. My mind flashes back to the day when I was freaking out about not hearing from him, worrying that he had given up and packed his things and left. Now, he has every reason to go, but that’s why he chooses to stay? Oh lordy.

“What does that even mean, until I tell him to go?” I question her. “We’re not even talking anymore. He can’t possibly be planning to stay indefinitely like that. He has a life and a job back home that he needs to get back to.”

“Then I guess you better tell him that,” she says, reaching her arm over the back of the couch to squeeze my shoulder. “If you want him to leave, tell him. If you don’t, tell him. That’s what that means. But if you ask that poor guy to stay, you’d better be planning on seeing him and making it worth his while.”

With that, she turns and leaves the room, heading down the hall to her bathroom so she can take a shower. And I’m left alone with my thoughts once again.

*************************

It’s not until four nights later that I finally get around to taking my mother's advice, and it’s not even on purpose. It’s late, and I find myself not able to sleep again like what always happens when I have Jason on my mind. I drag my exhausted self out to the bench on the back deck and pull out my phone to open our weeks-old conversation. It’s unlike me to leave old texts in my inbox, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to delete it yet.

My finger hovers over the option to unblock him as I debate with myself whether I even should. Eventually, I decide I need to. I thought that my last messages were enough to explain where I stand and offer some closure, but apparently not. Despite my declaration that it wasn't going to work between us and that last text where I even told him goodbye, he obviously didn’t find the same meaning there that I did.

But once our conversation is unlocked, I still can’t figure out what more I should say to him. I need to tell him to go home, but nothing I type feels right.

While I’m still staring at the screen and trying to form my thoughts into words, I see the three dots that mean he’s typing pop up. It’s the middle of the night, and yet he already noticed that I unblocked him. Freaking out because all I wanted to do was send a message, not have a conversation, I scramble to try to pull up the menu and block him before his message comes through, but I end up calling him instead. Since he’s already using his phone, he answers immediately.

“Ronnie?”

He doesn’t even wait for me to say anything. Just immediately there he is, and his voice sounds so desperate and broken. I already can’t take it.

“Ronnie, please,” he pleads after a few seconds of silence. “Just talk to me. Please.”

I should hang up and try to block him again, but I don’t. I just sit there silently, hopelessly fighting back my tears.

“Ronnie,” he says again, his voice breaking.

“I can’t do this,” I finally whisper.

“Yes, you can. Just don’t hang up. Stay on the line with me. I’ll wait with you as long as you need.”

“I really can’t do this,” I insist again. “With you, I can’t. It’s too much.”

“Ronnie,” he says again. “It breaks me when you give up on yourself so easily.”

What does he mean, give up on myself? It’s myself that I’m thinking of. Protecting my peace, protecting my sanity. It’s him I’m trying to push away.

“No, it’s you –” I start to argue, but he doesn’t give me a chance to form the rest of the words to explain.

“No, you’re not giving up on me. You’re giving up on you. You don’t think you can handle it, but you can. I’m easy, Ronnie. All I want is to help you, anything you want. Anything you need. You name it, and it’s yours.”

Easy? He’s not easy. Having him around is hard. It’s excruciatingly difficult for me. Whenever I try to let him in, I don’t want him to consume so much of my days and take all my mental energy, but that’s just how it goes. Every time.

“I only feel like a burden to you because you won’t let me in,” he claims. “You’re setting me up for failure by not giving me enough information to know the right things to do. But I promise you, there is nothing you could tell me about yourself that will scare me away or change my mind. Let me in, and then we can try this for real.”

It feels like hours pass as I sit there, silently trying to wrap my head around all that. He’s too good to be true. Why would he even want me after all I’ve put him through? All my neurotic tendencies aside, I’ve been selfish. He’s been hurting all this time, and he’s just going to let it all go? Why isn’t he upset about that?

“Why aren’t you mad?” I ask him.

I can’t help it. I have to know. He makes no sense.

“I am mad,” he insists, and I hear a quick burst of air that kind of sounds like a sardonic laugh. “If not for your friend Clarice, I probably would have torn your entire town apart during one of my rages. And Finn? He’s been impossible lately. I’m actually staying with Clarice and Fenawin now because I need ready access to somewhere I can safely let him out. I’m beyond mad, Ronnie. This whole thing is so unfair, and I’m almost completely certain I’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

There we go. That’s more like it. I can hear the underlying anger, though he’s holding it back, and I can feel just through his words how much he’s been struggling.

“But that changes nothing,” he goes on. “It’s not your fault either. You can’t help that you have all that noise in your head convincing you of things that just aren’t true, and it does neither of us any good for me to take out my frustration on you.”

One of my old texts flashes into my head when he says all that. The one I regret most, the one where I accused him of ignoring me to show me what it felt like to have to sit and wait and have no control over our interactions. I told him he needed to act like an adult. I still feel bad about that. Embarrassed too. He’s obviously far more mature and rational than I gave him credit for.

Far more mature and rational than me. Which is just one more reason to add to the pile of why he should forget about me and move on. I’m not good for him, and it’s not fair to him.

“Jason,” I barely manage to force out. “I ... I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say to you.”

“I know,” I hear him chuckle, but somehow it sounds sad. “But listen. Here’s the deal.”

I hold my breath, anxiously waiting for him to finish what he’s saying. It feels important, almost like he’s about to deliver an ultimatum or something.

“I left Clarice’s as soon as I noticed that you were trying to text me. I’m on foot, but I’ll be at your front door in like thirty seconds. It’s up to you what you want to do about that, though. I’ll just sit on your front stoop until Finn calms down and lets me leave if that’s what you want, but if you think you can handle seeing me, I’d love it if you let me in.”

“It’s late,” I protest.

“I know.”

“People are sleeping,” I feel the need to point out.

“I know.”

“It’s a bad idea.”

“I know.”

But my feet have already carried me through the kitchen and into the living room, where I have a clear view of the front stoop through the window panels in the front door.

“I’m here,” he announces softly at about the same time that I notice movement through the window.

“I know.”

“It’s your decision,” he reminds me. “I’ll just sit here if that’s what you want, and we can talk just like this.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to do anything. I just want to hear your voice.”

I sit on the couch and watch him moving out there, though it’s too dark for me to make out much of him. He’s still standing, and I think he’s facing away from me. He shifts around a few times, which I can also hear through the line. I hear him exhale a couple times as though he’s trying to calm himself, and it looks like he’s pacing now, stepping off the stoop to walk around and then back up to resume his perch in front of the door.

“What is it about me that’s the hardest for you?” he asks after a few quiet minutes have passed.

I don’t know what to say to that. It’s a tough question to answer.

“We’re past the stage of holding anything back, Ronnie. Being careful and tiptoeing around each other’s feelings went out the door a few weeks ago. It’s time to lay it all out there now. So, just tell me. What about me bothers you the most?”

What is it that bothers me the most? I have to think that over. If I think only about him, who he is as a person, I can’t even come up with anything I dislike. He’s sweet, thoughtful, generous, smart, funny, kind, everything I should want. So obviously, it’s not him that bothers me.

It’s what he is to me. It’s this mystical bond that was created between us without my consent. It’s that I either have to cut him out and forget about him or he takes over my entire life. The things that are important to me start to feel not as important, and I know that’s not good. It’s not right. I don’t want to become so consumed by another person that I forget to carve out an actual life for myself. I have priorities, and I want to keep them. I don’t want him to invade my mind, body, and life like that.

“There’s no option to let you in a little bit,” I finally answer, so quietly that I’m not sure he can hear me. “It’s all or nothing. I keep choosing nothing because it’s safer.”

“Not for Clarice’s breakables,” he quips, letting out a short laugh that almost sounds like a cry. “Not to make light of what you’re saying though. I hear you. It’s intense, this connection between us. But that’s a good thing.”

“No, it’s not. I don’t like what it does to me,” I protest. “It takes over so much of my focus. How am I supposed to function like that at school, when I’m glued to my phone all day? How am I supposed to succeed in life when I can’t even sleep at night?”

“Ronnie, the answer to that is pretty simple. Make it so you don’t only have access to me through your phone. It’s pushing me away that’s driving you nuts, and the only reason why it gets better for you when you shut me out is because you’re so practiced at burying things so deep inside you that you can ignore them. Ignoring them doesn’t mean they’re not there, though.”

“What are you saying? I don’t understand.” It’s not that what he’s saying doesn’t make sense, but I guess I’m just failing to see the options he’s seeing. “How do I make it so I don’t only have access to you through my phone? That’s literally how we talk to each other.”

“Yeah, unless we’re together in person. That day we went shopping there were no phones involved. Just you and me, hanging out, talking, laughing, having a great time. You were relaxing by the end of the night, Ronnie. I saw it. Yeah, I screwed up by not taking you home when you started to fall asleep, but that’s fixable. Focus on how it felt to remove the boundaries and just enjoy each other. That’s what we need more of. That’s how you get through grad school without losing your focus ... and without losing me.”

“I won’t have time for stuff like that very often,” I can't help but protest.

“Then forget your grad school roommates. I’ll be your roommate. We’ll rent a place together. Separate rooms, separate bathrooms, but you won’t have to spend the day worrying about keeping in touch with me. I’ll be right there. I’ll work and help you pay for stuff too so you won’t need other roommates. I know you were worried about that anyway, and with me, you won’t have to take a chance on your bad luck with roommates.”

And that takes us right back to the part about how all or nothing it is with him. We’re standing here having a conversation that basically comes down to whether I’m about to block him and send him on his way back home, and his solution is to move in together. He’s too much. It’s all too much.

I won’t lie and say there isn’t a tiny part that wants what he’s offering. One roommate is definitely better than three, and I’m getting increasingly more anxious about moving into my new apartment the closer it gets to time to move in. On the other hand, those three roommates don’t have the intense connection with me that he does. I can keep a safe distance from them. Him, I can’t.

But as always, I don’t know how to say that. I don’t know how to argue with him and make him understand where I'm coming from, which is why it’s easier just to block him out.

“You have a job and responsibilities back home, and you need your pack,” I say instead, hoping to appeal to his better judgment. “You can’t just up and leave it all behind for years like that.”

“I can take a sabbatical or whatever you want to call it. Maybe I’ll even enroll in some classes of my own. I’ve always wanted to.”

“You’re crazy. You need to go home,” I insist stubbornly. I only wish he’d listen. I don’t know how to make it clearer and more impactful.

“Ronnie, you are my home. I have a house, but it’s not my home. Not without you. But we can go visit it and let Finn out once or twice a month. Plus, you can finally meet Aly’s triplets and visit the library where we met.”

He laughs again, but this time it doesn’t sound so sad. Then I see him turn around so that he’s looking through the window at me, and my breath catches. I could handle this when he was looking the other way, but now he feels too close. Too real.

“Finn has been trying to learn enough words so that one day he can give you a proper apology for that,” he reveals proudly, looking straight at me through the window.

It’s still too dark to make out his features, but I can tell that’s his face now. And I know he can see me, even though it’s dimly lit inside. It makes me feel exposed.

“Turn around,” I whisper into the phone.

“Okay,” he says softly. Sadly. But he does as I ask anyway.

I hate that he has this whole fantasy in his head about the magical life we could share together. In his head, he already has me moved in with him. He probably has my bedroom at his house all picked out, or maybe he pictures me staying with him in his bed. He acts like Finn is our family dog, and it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that the longer I let him stay out on the front porch and talk to me, the worse that’s going to get.

He thinks we’re bonding, and that I’m going to change my mind and let him in. He’s been deluding himself with fantasies of how it could be instead of facing the reality of how it is, and that’s my fault. I need to take a breath and lay out what I’ve been struggling to say this whole time, putting him out of his misery once and for all.

Deep breath. Think out your statement, Ronnie. Now, say it firmly and clearly.

“Jason, I want you to go home. I want to keep my plan for school the same as it was. I don’t want to keep in contact right now. I need space, and I need peace.”

I hear him suck in a breath as though I just knocked the wind out of him, and maybe I did. I feel tears threatening to fall, and then I realize my cheeks are already wet. The tears have already been falling, and I don’t even know for how long.

I hear some breathy sounds that almost sound like panting and wheezing and rush over to the door so I can get a better look at him. As if he can sense me, he turns to face me and steps into the narrow beam of light cast down by the single lamp outside the door.

I think those were the sounds of him crying, maybe even hyperventilating a little. His face is red, and his cheeks are as wet as mine.

“Ronnie, are you rejecting me?” he asks me point-blank, his teary eyes meeting mine head-on, and now it’s my turn to fight for breath.

“I ... I don’t –”

“Yes or no, Ronnie. Are you rejecting me?”

“I ... I. Jason, I … No. No, I’m not. I can’t,” I finally force out.

Which is weird, because I was trying to say yes. It would be so much easier if I could just end things once and for all, but I couldn’t get it out.

He inhales sharply, his eyes closing as he leans his head back and pauses there like that for a moment. Then he opens his eyes and drops his head down to meet my gaze through the window again.

“Okay,” he says softly. “I’ll go. But only for now. Not forever.”

Then he abruptly ends the call before turning and walking straight off my porch, taking off running as if he can’t wait to get away from me. I don’t know what to do with that, or with the tears that start flowing freely and just won’t stop no matter how hard I fight them.

I know I did the right thing, made the move that I had to make for both our sake, but knowing that brings me very little peace in this moment. Somehow, the sight of him turning his back on me makes me feel so empty inside that I can't help but worry about where we go from here.

Stick to the plan, that's where. Law school, new roommates, new and better life awaiting me on the other side. Soon, I'll be too busy to worry about any of this, and besides, that hollow, aching, burning feeling inside my chest is probably just my guilty conscience getting the best of me, still haunted by that devastated look Jason had on his face before he turned and left. I know this will be hard for him, but he's tough. He can handle it. It's better this way. We'll be fine.