Free The Redemption by Lauren Rowe Page B

scowls.
    Boom. It suddenly hits me like a ton of bricks—this right here is the exact moment I’ve been wanting to avoid for the past three days—the exact thing that made me retreat from Jonas and seek out a little space. This. I don’t want to do this. I knew in my bones Jonas would view this entire situation as his frickin’ fault—as yet another example of how he’s miserably failed to protect the one he loves the most. I knew he’d blur the attack on me with the horror of his mother’s murder and wrap the two incidents together into a giant ball of intractable self-blame—and, frankly, I can’t handle it. I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to watch to him spiral into yet another tortured round of self-loathing.
    This beautiful man has blamed himself for twenty-three frickin’ years for his mother’s murder. So is he going to blame himself for my attack for the next twenty-three years, too? And if so, at what cost to his soul? And to mine? At what cost to our relationship? I’m a compassionate person, but I’m not a frickin’ saint. I don’t want to deal with this. It’s bullshit and I don’t have time or patience for it.
    “I don’t know how you’ll ever forgive me,” he says, covering his face with his hands.
    I leap off Jonas’ lap and pace the balcony, my thoughts racing. “Jonas,” I begin, adrenaline surging inside my veins. “No.”
    He looks up at me. He folds his arms over his chest, bracing himself.
    I take a deep breath. “No, no, no. Your entire life, you’ve blamed yourself for your mom’s death— and it wasn’t your fault. Fuck your father, Jonas. It wasn’t your frickin’ fault. No. ”
    He looks surprised. This isn’t what he expected me to say. 
    “ If you and I are going to have a fighting chance, you can’t blame yourself for what happened to me the way you’ve blamed yourself for your mother’s death. I’m just telling you, straight up, if you blame yourself this time, with me, it’ll poison you—it’ll poison me—and then it’ll poison us .”
    Now he looks shocked. And hurt. But it’s too bad. I’m on a roll.
    “You saved my life, Jonas—get it through your thick, tortured head. You’re my hero, baby—my savior. It’s the objective truth, but it’s also the truth I choose . Don’t you understand? I choose to be with the man who saved my life, not the man who’s forever trying to undo yet another ‘horrible failure’ that isn’t his fault. Enough with that tormented guy—enough with that self-blaming, mea culpa bullshit. In this fairytale— our fairytale—you’re the guy who rides in on a white horse and kicks ass and takes names and loves me like nobody ever has—because you are that guy, Jonas Faraday. This isn’t going to work for me if you’re going to seek my forgiveness forevermore for something you didn’t frickin’ do.”
    He swallows hard.
    “If you insist on talking about blame, fine. Let’s talk about it. Once. ”
    He opens his mouth to speak, but I hold up my index finger to stop him.
    “If anyone’s to blame here, it’s me. I’m the one who broke the rules and contacted you in the first place. I’m the one who went to spy on you and the software engineer, making it so damned easy for Stacy to put two and two together and rat me out. And I’m the one who refused to let you follow me into that bathroom because I’m the one who thought my brilliant and sensitive boyfriend was just being paranoid— and maybe even hallucinating.”
    He winces at that last word. Yeah, Jonas, I just called you crazy-pants.
     “And all that’s on me. Shame on me, Jonas. Shame on me. I’m the one who gave you a hard time for not trusting me completely—not leaping off a waterfall for me—and then I turned around and didn’t trust you.”
    He looks like he’s going to cry.
    “But I forgive myself for all that, Jonas, and I hope you will, too, because, otherwise, it’s going to eat me alive and doom our relationship.”