Hate You Still by Lyssa Lemire

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

KNOX

“I, uh, think I found the problem,” I deadpan, checking behind the television.

Clare called me over, telling me her TV hasn’t been working and that she’d tried absolutely everything to fix it, with no success.

“Oh? What is it?” Clare asks in a voice of faux excitement that could win her an Oscar award if they had an Obviously Bad Fake Acting category.

“It’s unplugged,” I answer in a flat voice.

“Really?” The insincerity in her voice makes me roll my eyes. “Well,” she continues, her tone suddenly turning much more serious. “Since my technology expert was able to take care of that so quickly, we have time to talk!”

“Talk, huh?” I ask.

“Yep, you take a seat right here,” she walks over to her kitchen and pulls out a chair at the table position in the middle of the floor, patting the seat invitingly before easing herself down into one across from it.

I stifle a groan as I walk over and take the seat she’s offering me. I have a pretty good idea of what she wants to talk about so badly. And I also have a pretty good idea of the fact that it would be utterly futile for me to try to wiggle out of this conversation.

“So, you and Emma,” she cuts to the chase, leaning in my direction across the table, her eyes narrow and searching behind her classes.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” I say.

“Yeah? I don’t want my left knee to hurt when it rains. But I’m old, so tough shit. We don’t always get what we want.”

I grumble in displeasure.

“What’s that young man?”

“Nothing,” I reply, set straight by her sharp tone.

“Tell me what happened,” she continues, her voice now the tender and grandmotherly voice that I can’t resist.

I’m able to spill my guts to her, explaining my reasoning. I explain to her how my football talent has left me – like everything and everyone else has. I explain that without that, I’m nothing.

I have no future – shit, I don’t even have an identity. I explain that I know that someone like that – someone like me without football, and without the future it offered me – isn’t someone who Emma should be with. I explain that without football, I’m going nowhere fast – and that this fact will doom Emma and me one way or another, either a long drawn-out dysfunction as I sink lower and lower and drag her with me, or, better yet, I can cut the cord now and spare her the suffering and pain.

When I finally get done emptying the contents of my mind, heart, and soul, Clare tilts her head to the side and looks deeply, penetratingly, into my eyes.

“So you left her for her own good?” She asks the question in a voice that’s actually … understanding. I can tell she actually comprehends, even appreciates, my position and my reasoning. A wave of relief washes over me. Finally, someone understands.

“Exactly,” I say, letting out the word like a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you understand.”

She smiles a wistful, almost sad, smile. “Oh, I understand, alright. I had the same idea once, myself.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“My husband, Gerald, God rest his soul,” she begins, her eyes lighting up when she mentions him. “I tried to leave him once, because I thought it was for the best.”

“Really?” I’m intrigued. Clare’s never really talked about her past with me, other than mentioning her husband, the fact that he passed a while ago now, and the fact that he used to be a professor at Alton University.

“Both of us wanted children. We talked about it all the time.” A shadow of sadness passes over her brow. “But I found out I couldn’t have children.”

My heart twists.

“After struggling with the news, I told Gerald that he should leave me. That he should find another woman to marry. When he refused, I tried to leave him. But he wouldn’t let me. I tried to tell him that we could never have the life we imagined together, the life with a big, happy family.”

She shuts her eyelids for a minute. I reach out and place my hand gently on her shoulder. She gives the back of my hand a couple soft pats with hers before opening her eyes and continuing.

“He wouldn’t hear of it. He said that even if our life could never be the one we imagined, that any life without me would be worse than any life we would have together. It’s true, we didn’t have the life we imagined. I was never able to have children. But we had each other. I know he never regretted a day, not even a moment, of his decision for us to stay together. And I sure as anything never regretted it, either.”

“Clare,” I try to protest, wanting to tell her that my situation is different.

“I’ve seen the way you two look at each other. I’ve felt the energy that’s generated when you’re together. That’s love. Real love. When you’ve been around as long as I have, when you’ve felt it yourself before, when you’ve seen real love, when you’ve seen relationships without love … you learn how to recognize it. And I recognize it between you two. It’s unmistakable.”

Fuck. She’s right.

The words Emma spoke to me yesterday come flooding into my head. Of course, she was right, too. I wasn’t protecting her. I was protecting myself.

How could I have been so stupid?

Sitting here in Clare’s kitchen, I realize something: the past is the past. My past of being constantly abandoned, thrown from place to place, having no one who truly cares about me … that’s the past. That’s not my reality anymore.

Clare cares about me. That’s not going to change. Gavin, my best friend, is always going to be like a brother to me. I know that, no matter what the future does to us, no matter how many twists and turns it has in store and where either of us wind up, I know that he and I have a bond that will never be broken.

And Emma … fuck, she never would have abandoned me. Even if football didn’t pan out, she’d stand by my side while I figured out what else to do with my life, supporting me and encouraging me all the way.

I realize something else: I love her.

There’s no if, ands, or buts about it. No question. I love Emma Willows.

And I need to fucking tell her that right now.

That is, if she’ll still hear me.

I stand up from Clare’s kitchen chair.

“Going somewhere?” she asks, that knowing look on her face as if she’s read my mind.

“I have to tell someone sometime,” I say, adding, “that is, if it isn’t too late.”

“I don’t think it is,” she smiles. “But there’s only one way to find out for sure.”

I hurry to my Jeep and drive home. All the way back I’m kicking myself, questioning how I could be such a fool.

I just hope it’s not too late. I couldn’t blame Emma if she’s decided to take me at my word and leave me in the past for good this time. No one could blame her.

I just hope there’s still a spark of feeling for me in her heart that I can reignite. Then I can spend the rest of my life, the rest of our lives, proving to her that I’ll never let her down like this again.

I run up to her front door once my Jeep is parked. I knock hard on her front door. I hear a set of footsteps walking down. I pray it’s her. The door opens and there she stands.

Beautiful as ever. Beautiful like she always has been. Like she always will be.

“Knox,” she says, taken aback by my presence.

I fall to one knee. I take her hand and clasp it tight between mine. “Can you forgive me?” I ask.

“Forgive …?” Her voice is trembling and unsteady. She’s surely still trying to take in the scene in front of her.

“I was an idiot. A fucking moron. And I was wrong. So wrong. You were right. Will you take me back?”

“Knox, I,” she begins, but I cut her off by standing up and gently grasping both her hands in my own two.

“Before you answer, I need you to hear something. I love you.”

Her eyes widen, her irises sparkling. Her lips part barely.

“I love you, Emma Willows,” I repeat, so that there can be no mistaking what I’m telling her. Because there’s sure as fuck no mistaking that feeling in my heart.

“You mean it?” she asks.

“I’ve never meant anything more in my life. And I never will.”

A glint of a tear sparkles from the side of her eye. “I love you, too, Knox.”

“You forgive me?”

“There’s nothing to forgive,” she says, shaking her head.

I’d love to accept that statement, but I can’t. “You’re wrong about that, Emma. There is something to forgive. There’s no excuse for how I acted. I shouldn’t accept that behavior from myself, and you shouldn’t accept it from me, or from anyone.”

Her lips rise into a smile. She brings her soft palm up and places it gently on my cheek. “I forgive you for it, still,” she adds.

“I don’t know what the future holds for us,” I say, worries about my football career still hanging heavily over my head. “But I know one thing for sure. As long as I’m holding you, for as long as possible, the future can throw whatever bullshit it wants at me. And I’ll overcome it.”

“We’ll overcome it,” she corrects me.

I wrap my arms around her waist and pull her in for a kiss. A deep, passionate kiss, trying to communicate all my love and feeling for her, all the things that I don’t have the words to describe.

“Have I told you I love you lately?” I ask with a smile.

She giggles, blushing like crazy. “Not enough.”

“I’ll be sure to say it a lot more often then.” I wipe a tear of happiness from her cheek with my finger. “I love you, Emma.”

“I love you, Knox.”

Whatever the future holds for me, I know that as long as I have Emma Willows’ heart, I’ve won a game far more important than any ever played on any field.