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A/N: Okay! We're all done! I'd just like to thank everyone for all the wonderful reviews! You made writing this story so amazing for me!
I posted this and the epilogue together, because I didn't want to make you wait, but I'd love to get reviews for this one before you read the epilogue, so I can get your reactions. If it's not too much trouble. Thanks again for everything! Enjoy!
Chapter Forty-Nine:
I wrapped my arms around her immediately, because I could see how crushed she was. I could see the disappointment in her eyes. She had already loved it, we both had, and so even though we hadn't ever been pregnant, it still felt like a loss. I kissed her softly and held her tightly and after a few minutes, she looked up at me.
"…We'll try again though, won't we?"
I frowned. "…So soon? Maybe… maybe we should wait until you're out of school, honey."
She whimpered. "I… I thought you wanted a baby."
"I do." I said, drawing her to my chest again. "And when I thought there already was one, honey, it was fine but… but if we have the ability to plan, don't you think it makes more sense to wait?"
She shrugged gently against me. "…You're so disappointed though."
I swallowed. She hadn't said it, but if there was one thing I knew it was the woman in my arms—she meant that she thought I was disappointed in her. …And that sort of clinched it. I mean, I comforted her… I told her I wasn't disappointed, I told her that there would always be time later, but I had also crossed a point of no return at the realization that she was afraid I would be disappointed in her for not being pregnant. It made me realize how far I had pushed this—and what I had to do now.
I gave her some time—a week, two… so that it wouldn't be so close to 'losing' the baby we'd never had. And then I sat down with her and I told her we needed to talk. …I was coming clean.
She bit her bottom lip. "Are you breaking up with me? Griss—I'm sorry. I really thought I was pregnant. I… we can try again or… or never again. Whatever you want."
The desperation in her voice told me I was doing the right thing. "Sara, honey, listen… I, uh… I have to tell something. …A lot of somethings."
She frowned and looked at her feet, her hands twisting in her lap. I sighed. "…When I first met you, honey… I knew that I had to have you. I knew immediately that… that you were something else. Otherworldly. That I would never find another girl… woman… like you, even if I spent the rest of eternity searching."
She looked up at me, eyes wide and hopeful. She thought I was being nice. I scowled and looked at her hands. "But I also knew that I couldn't have you. I couldn't have you because I was your teacher, and because you were so young, and because I knew that to… to have you honestly… to become romantically involved with you… would mean that, someday, I would lose you to someone younger and more attractive and more deserving."
She raised her head and opened her mouth to argue with me but I held up a hand. "I… I won't ever get this out if I stop, honey. I'm sorry…" I ran a hand over my forehead in agitation. "…I knew that I wanted you, and that I couldn't be your lover—"
"I was seventeen—I understand that."
"No, Sara… I did this before I knew you weren't an adult. It was not because you were a minor; it was because I'm a coward and a fool. Honey, I… that first day in my office, you… you looked so eager to please. You wanted my approval… you wanted to know that I thought you were smart and competent. And I saw the fervor in your eyes—the longing for just the tiniest praise—and I saw an opportunity. I couldn't be your lover, but I could still have you."
She wrinkled her brow in confusion and I sighed. "I… I manipulated you, Sara. I answered you in certain ways and denied you praise even when you so deserved it because I knew that if you didn't receive it you would only try harder. I made you work for it, and I loved the way you looked when you finally received it, and I loved that you were dependent on me for that approval."
She frowned. "I… I don't understand."
I nodded, slowly. "Okay—I'll… I'll say it more directly. Sara, when I first met you, I didn't want to be with you—I couldn't—but I also wasn't willing to not have you. So I decided that if I could possess you, that would be just as good. Maybe even better. …I had no intention of claiming you, at least not for many years to come… but I wasn't going to let anyone else have you and I wasn't going to let you have yourself either. I set up situations to make you dependent on me, I manipulated our interactions to make you want me, I twisted our relationship so that you felt like you were okay with what I was doing to you… I made you feel like you were asking for too much when I was demanding everything of you."
Her corners of her lips twitched back several times as she blinked rapidly, attempting to hold off tears. She shook her head again. "I… I still don't… understand."
I closed my eyes. "I used you, Sara. Every interaction between us, every intimacy, every soft word… they were calculated. I disregarded how I felt in favor of considering how it would affect you—I wouldn't be your lover because it made you my equal. And when we were lovers, I wouldn't sleep with you because I wanted it to be on my terms. I wouldn't tell you that I loved you, even though I had known I loved you for almost a year, because I didn't want you to feel like you had power over me."
She sniffled and wiped at her cheeks. "But you do love me. You just said it… you love me."
I nodded slowly. "I wouldn't be telling you all of this if I didn't. …I would just have continued."
A sob slipped from her lips and she wiped frantically at her eyes again, distraught. "I… I don't know… what to say. I…" She sobbed again and then buried her face in her hands. I watched her cry, wanting so badly to wrap my arms around her and offer comfort, but resisting. I had to stay strong.
"Honey… ninety percent of our relationship has been a lie. I love you so much—It's the only thing that's important enough to… to make me give you up."
Her head snapped up and she choked on a sob. "W…what? No! Griss… You love me. You said you loved me. …Stay with me!"
I shook my head slowly. "I want to. More than anything."
"This… This is about the baby! I'm… I'm so sorry. I wanted to be pregnant, Griss… we'll try again! We'll… Here…" She stood up, starting to tug her shirt off and I stood up in alarm, wrapping my arms around her as she sobbed into my shoulder in defeat.
"Honey… stop now. This isn't about the baby. I don't blame you at all. …This is about you. It's about us. You… you're better off without me."
"No!" She clung to me, desperately, and I had never, ever known pain like this before. I felt the tears burn my eyes and I tried to look away to blink them back but she was holding my face and drawing me to her and kissing me with such aching desperation that I could not keep them in and they slid down my cheeks like they hadn't since I was a child. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed kisses into her hair and stroked her back, trying to calm her, and all the while a steady stream poured from my eyes, seemingly endless.
I waited for her to calm, and I wiped my cheeks angrily, and I drew in breath again.
"Sara, honey… listen to me." She shook her head no. I sniffled. "Honey… If I stayed—the dynamic for the relationship is already set in place. …It's so hard to break that kind of thing. And then… and then you have to realize how much doubt will be in our minds."
"…Doubt?" Her voice came shaky and frail. I nodded.
"If we stayed together… You would never know if I wanted you for who you are—as an equal and a partner—or if I wanted you because it makes me feel powerful to control someone so young and beautiful and vivacious. …Even if I stopped manipulating, I wouldn't stop owning you. How could you trust that I could love you as more than a possession?" Another sob slipped from her lips and her eyes squeezed closed in pain, more tears leaking out. I sighed, feeling my own start anew and not even bothering to blink them away this time.
"And… I would never know if you loved me because you truly know who I am—my soul—and love it as the second half to your own… or if you believed you loved me, because I made you believe you did. Or because I was your first love and your first time and the first man to love you maturely. I wouldn't know if your affections were a product of my manipulations—believe me, you wouldn't know either… you spent a year and a half begging for my approval and fearing my disappointment without knowing why you did such a thing—or honest feelings of love."
She shook her head slowly. "I loved you from the beginning. I loved you before you manipulated me."
I shook my head too, just as slowly. "Sara… there wasn't a time that we knew each other that I wasn't manipulating you. After… everything you've been through… Do you want to spend the rest of your life with a man who could treat you so poorly? A man who could disregard your feelings and your thoughts and your right to make choices of your own free will?"
She swallowed hard. "No, but…I want to spend the rest of my life with you. …You're not that person."
I wanted to look down—in guilt and shame and regret—but she deserved better. I looked her in the eyes, blue to brown and both wet with loss. "Yes, I am."
I offered to leave her Hank, but she wouldn't hear of it, and I offered to leave her money, but she wouldn't let me. I left her apartment and spend the night alone—for the first time in ages—and I cried like a baby. Like I hadn't since my father died. I cried for everything I'd done to her, and to myself, and at the sheer impossibility of our situation. I had twisted everything so dramatically that there was no way to untwist it now and go on. It was my fault, and I hated myself.
If I had loved her any less than with every fiber of my being and with everything that I am, I would not have been able to walk out her door. But I did. I loved her, and she was everything, and I gave her the opportunity for the kind of life she deserved.
I hired movers to come take the things back to Vegas and I returned the car I had leased in favor of a rental car that I could drop off somewhere in Las Vegas. I emailed George my resignation and heartfelt apology along with my list of grades for the class and a long list of daily instructions for my T.A.s. I boxed up the things of Sara's that were in my home—keeping only a Harvard t-shirt that smelled like her—and deposited them on her doorstep. I thought about knocking, but I didn't.
I went to her back and made another sizable deposit—knowing she would not have let me help otherwise—and Hank and I piled into the rental car back to Vegas. My tenants' lease would be up in May—I'd find a place that rented for a couple months at a time and stay there.
I had the plan—the pieces of my life back together—but they were nothing, Just pieces that wouldn't fit together, no matter how you turned them. A broken puzzle.
