Elizabeth Finn - Unforgiven

But truly hating him wasn’t possible. He was incapable of being anything but hurt by their past, and she understood that. He’d wanted to move beyond that or, at the very least, see if he could. She believed that. His intent hadn’t been malicious, even if his feelings about her were. He’d wanted more, but it just wasn’t in him anymore.

She talked to her mom for an hour on the phone, filling in the details of her most recent catastrophic decisions, minus the juicier bits.

“Oh, hon. Please come to Memphis, baby. There’s just no reason for you to be there.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You tried. You gave it a shot. You can walk away knowing you’re not the one who gave up on him. That has to be enough to give you peace. I know how much you cared for him.” Care. “But he’s gone.”

She sighed. It was overly long and overly loud. Her mom was right. There was just nothing left to stay for. “Okay.” Her insides clenched tight, and she heard herself moaning in pain in her head. It hurt. But staying would hurt more.

They decided on a week and a half later. Her parole officer was going to think she was insane. But the decision was made.

* * *

The next time Darren had to work, Bailey asked Michelle for a lift to his house. They hadn’t spoken, and she wasn’t going to assume she was no longer expected. She let herself in, cleaned up the kitchen, tossed some laundry in, including her own from her abandoned bag of clothes, and hobbled around aimlessly after that. She found herself in his bedroom, staring down at his bed. It’d taken her a ridiculously long time to get upstairs, and there was no real pressing reason she needed to be up there. But she’d gone up anyway.

His bed was made and the nightstand drawer was ever so slightly cracked. A rush of jealous pain stabbed her, and she instantly pulled the drawer out. It was pathetic that she was studying the box of condoms to see if it had been moved, and it was even more pathetic how very relieved she was to see that it was in exactly the same position it’d been in when she’d gone snooping before.

But once her heart rate returned to normal and the anxiety and paranoia faded, she noticed something else. The picture wasn’t wedged up against the side of the drawer as it had been before. It was lying face up in the middle, staring at her. The Bailey and Darren in that picture were taunting her with their smiling, carefree, and happy existence.

She picked up the picture, caring not at all that he’d know she was rifling through his nightstand, and she started the slow trek back downstairs. She could walk again, but it didn’t mean it felt very good, and when she finally made it to his dining room table, she collapsed exhausted into the chair. She started writing him a letter.

Darren,

I’m going to be leaving for Memphis the Friday after next to be with my mother. It’s time. I’ll continue to take care of Macy until then, and I hope that will give you time to make other arrangements for her care. She’s a peach, and I’ll miss her. As for us, I hope someday you can remember us as we were and not what we became. There was a time when everything you did made me smile. You’ve changed so much since then, but there’s still so much good in you. My words have changed too, and while I miss the old ones, you should know there’s no shame in the new ones. Hurt. Heartbroken. Sad. Strong. And I hope someday soon: Healing.

Yours always, whether you believe it or not,

Bailey

She set the picture by the letter, and after reading it over, nearly destroyed it, but then changing her mind and deciding it was perfect, she finally left, biking herself home slowly and awkwardly. He didn’t call that night, and it hurt that he gave her no acknowledgement, but she supposed that was just easier for him. Whatever he needed was what he should get. He’d suffered long enough.

Crying wasn’t something he enjoyed doing or that he’d done in front of anyone for more years than he could recall, but it was exactly what he did when he found her letter. She was so right to leave, but it felt like an utter failure. He’d been so certain that he needed her near. He hadn’t been sure why, only that nothing else felt right.

It’d taken a while to sink in after she’d left him that day, but she was right. His mother was right. Hell, Michelle was right. He had no business touching her, no business trying to be close to her. All he did was cause her pain. But to think nothing had changed since she’d returned to town and he was still bitter and angry at the world wasn’t entirely true either. He cared. He couldn’t pretend he wanted to hurt her or that he relished her anguish in anyway. Just thinking about her in pain caused him grief. He might not be able to quiet the past enough to put it away yet, but he’d learned not to hate her. How could he ever have? She was his Bailey.

He sat at the dining room table, holding that fucking picture and reading her letter over and over again. He had tears on his lower eyelids for some time before they finally fell, and when they did, it was silent. He stared back in time at where they’d come from and let himself feel the pain of losing her all over again. Knowing the woman he loved was responsible for the most devastating loss a person could endure had broken him. He’d learned to push it away and to let the pain feed his anger and hatred, but he didn’t feel any of that now. He just felt the sadness, and he soaked it in. It was at least honest. Anger had just been a façade that hid the hurt for him. He needed to feel the hurt, and so he did. He sat there, remembering every last amazing memory he had of her, and he let the grief of losing his sister and then Bailey wash over him. He gave himself over to it in a way he never had before, and when he finally pulled himself up from the table, he found his way to bed and collapsed in a stupor to stare at the ceiling for half the night.

* * *

She avoided him her last week in Savoy, and he let her. He didn’t communicate with her in any way, though he was dying to. He stayed away from her and tried to deal with the fact that very soon it wouldn’t even be difficult to stay away from her. She’d just be gone—likely forever. There was nothing at all keeping her in Savoy at this point, and he made sure not even he could. He wasn’t going to ask her to stay again. It had been an impetuous and selfish mistake to ask to begin with. None of it made him feel better about what he’d done.

“Darren, you’re making the right decision to stay out of her life.” His mother hadn’t given up her opinions on the matter, and she really didn’t care that they were already on the same page. He knew she was trying to make him feel better. She’d come over a few nights after they’d fought, nearly in tears, and he’d been civil this time. He didn’t hold much back from her when he brought her up to speed on exactly how Bailey had ended up naked in his bed with a sprained ankle, and his mother’s anger faded quickly when she saw just how distraught he was.

“I know. I know you think I want to hurt her. It’s my fault. I let you think that, but it’s not true.” He owed her more of an explanation than that. “I was in love with her six years ago.” His mom froze in place. She stared wide-eyed at him as he tried to hold her gaze. “Maybe if she’d just been some casual acquaintance, even just a friend, I could have just hated her the way I thought I was supposed to.”

“You say hate like it’s this requisite thing. Why are you so certain that’s what you’re supposed to feel? No one’s setting some expectation that you despise her. And frankly, you’re not doing a very good job of it.” She smirked, and it was the first break in the tension.

“All I do is hurt her.”

She reached to his arm, and her face saddened. He braced for it. He knew what she was going to say before she even said it, and she was right. That was the hard part. “Then you need to let her go.” He just nodded his head numbly. He wanted to fight it. He wanted to refuse to accept it, but then he saw Bailey’s face standing on the landing at the top of his stairs, pinning him to his spot with her glare. The glare he could handle. But it had been her tears that destroyed him.

“She heard our conversation the other morning. I thought she was asleep. The bedroom door was closed. I just thought she was too far away to hear, but she wasn’t.”

“Oh, Darren.” His mother looked as guilty as he felt.

“Well, the letting go part happened whether I wanted it to or not as a result. She left, and I didn’t stop her.”

His mom just stared at the tabletop between them. Her eyes teared as he watched, and then she dashed them away. When she looked back up to him, her eyes were glossy but resolved. She took his hands in hers. “Losing your sister was hard enough. Losing the woman you loved at the same time. . .” She just shook her head. “You endured so much on your own by keeping that secret.” He nodded again.

To say a weight was lifted was accurate to a point. For the first time since he’d realized how he felt long ago, he wasn’t hiding his feelings for Bailey—what they had been, what they hadn’t been, what he’d wanted them to be. But as liberating as that honesty felt, he was still weighted down by the pain of what he’d done to her, and worse than that, what he’d likely continue to do to her if she stayed for him. He had to let her go.

He didn’t once call her or show up at his home while she was there with Macy over the next few days, and before she knew it, she was packing up her life again. Every time her phone rang, she expected it to be him, but it never was. He wasn’t going to try to stop her from leaving, and sad as that was, it didn’t much matter. She was going whether he asked her to stay or not. She’d learned her lesson. She’d learned it painfully.

Michelle called her every day and tried to talk her into bailing on her job at his home, but she couldn’t do that. He worked through Wednesday of that week and then wasn’t back on the schedule until Saturday, so that gave Bailey all day Thursday and Friday to pack and be depressed. She wasn’t going to see him anyway, so his schedule was a non-issue, but she sobbed on Wednesday afternoon when it was time to leave his home for the last time. Macy bounced, slobbered, and barked while Bailey cried, and after she’d sat on the floor and cuddled with the blonde, curly-haired girl, she finally stood, put her key on the table, and left.

She came home to see the two large garbage cans she’d filled while packing had been emptied at her front door again, but at least they’d left her new paint job and windows alone. She sat, still straddling her bike, just staring at the garbage. She didn’t need this. Perhaps she should see the silver lining—they were making it easier to see moving away as a really good thing . . . but all she saw was a shit load of clean-up that she didn’t have time for. Assholes.

There was a note on her door this time, and she was guessing it was going to be from her secret admirer. She didn’t want to read it, but how the hell does one not read such a thing. Once she’d waded through the heaps of garbage, she snatched the paper that was stapled on the door, and then she read.

Not much she didn’t already know people thought of her—just a reiteration of what had been scrawled across her walls last time. She was a killer, and she was a drunk (not true), and how dare she come back to this town. Fucking assholes!

She called Michelle, and ten minutes later she pulled in. Her face was scrunched up before she even climbed out of her car. She climbed out and grimaced, but she stowed it quickly and turned to her, winking. “Oh, Bailey. I’m gonna miss you. Look at you.”

“I’m lookin’. Don’t see much right now.” She smirked, but the moment she reached down to grab a rumpled-up bill she’d chucked in the garbage a couple days before, Michelle caught her arm. “Well, I do. One of the strongest bitches I ever met. And I’m allowed to call you bitch because I take the cake on bitch, and I mean it with the respect it deserves.”

“I’m not strong. You are. Jess was too. You were the strong ones. I was the sweet one.” Her eyes shifted away for a moment. “How did this happen to me?” She looked at Michelle and smiled. It was a legitimate question. She’d tried to figure out the answer to that question for years, and she knew she wasn’t going to be solving that mystery today.