Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130255 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 651(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“I’m not admitting to it.” Yes. Completely and utterly.
“You don’t have to,” she continued, her voice soft. “I can see it. The mistake you’ve made is assuming that you have any control over your heart, my darling. You can control your brain and distract it and divert it and all those other wonderful things one does when they’re desperately trying to avoid something, but you can’t do that with your heart. Your heart decided that Ellie is the part of you that you didn’t know you needed, and you’re going to have to deal with that.”
I rubbed my hand over my face. “I can’t. I can’t risk hurting her.”
“And you think letting her go back to London without any acknowledgment of your feelings is not hurting her? The last time we spoke she wasn’t too far off the end of her book. She’s here for, what? Another week or so? Then she’s going to go back to London, and you’ll have lost your chance.”
“She’s better off if she doesn’t know the truth.”
“Is she? Have you asked her what she thinks about that? Or are you assuming it because you’re too fucking scared to tell her how you feel?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
MAX
Self-Care
I jerked around to look at her.
She stood up, using her walking stick to steady her, and wiggled a finger at me. “Michael was a coward. He was a spineless, weak man who cared for nothing and nobody but himself and what he found in the bottom of a liquor bottle.”
“Grandma—”
“I love him, Max. He was my son. My baby.” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Just as he was your father, but I hate him for what he’s done to you. I hate him for all the bad decisions he made that he left me to clean up. I hate him for making me have to tell you the truth about how your mum truly died. I hate him for killing her with some misguided thought process that killed him, too, because she didn’t deserve that, and neither did you.”
The lump in my throat was overwhelmingly uncomfortable, and it took everything in me not to let emotion overtake me.
“But he didn’t deserve you.” Her eyes welled with tears. “He didn’t deserve your mum, and he didn’t deserve you. You are far more of a man than he ever would have been. You are so much like your mother that I don’t believe you could ever be anything like him.”
I dipped my chin, fighting back my own tears. I’d never heard her criticise my father before—she’d always defended him, as any parent would, and I didn’t know what to say to her.
Because I felt the same.
He was my father.
I loved him.
He’d been my hero for the longest time, until he’d become the villain in my life.
I hated him.
He took the person I’d loved most in my life away from me, and what should have been a peaceful retirement for my grandmother after my grandpa died turned into her raising another child.
Me.
She hadn’t deserved that, either.
“You didn’t deserve what he did to you, Grandma,” I said quietly, meeting her gaze. “You went through so much after Grandpa died, and you shouldn’t have had to raise me, too. He treated us all horribly, and I think the sooner we realise that he was just a bad person unwilling to do anything to change himself, the better we’ll be.”
“Oh, I know that, Max. Your father wasn’t a good person. Not when he died, anyway. Good people don’t do what he did.”
“It’s not your fault. You know that, don’t you?” I walked over to her and took her hands. “You gave him everything. He had the world at his feet, and he chose not to make the most of it. He chose the worst possible path for all of us.”
“Oh, I know. If I ever doubt it, I just look at you, my darling.” She squeezed my hands tightly. “You are the single best thing he ever did in his life, and for as much as I wish your mum could see you now, I am so grateful that I’m lucky enough to be here to do just that. I am the luckiest woman to have been able to raise you into the wonderful man you are today.”
Shit.
I was going to cry.
“Which is why you need to tell Ellie that you’re in love with her,” Grandma continued softly. “My greatest wish in my life is to see you happy, and I have never seen you quite as happy as you are when you’re with her.”
“I don’t want to hurt her.”
“You have to stop carrying his burden as if it’s your own. Let go of the guilt that you couldn’t protect your mum.” She held my hands tighter. “You were a child, Max. Protecting her was not your job. She wouldn’t want you to punish yourself for your entire life because of what Michael did. Isabel would want you to grab life by its balls, to be happy, to fall in love and live how she did. Because despite what Michael did to her, she always looked on the bright side.”