Page 105 of A Return For Ren

“Yes. It seemed easier to do that. But the week before I was going to go back I asked my father for a few days off. I wanted to spend them with you.”

She stilled. “That makes no sense because you broke up with me.”

“I know. I was conflicted. I loved you, Zara. And I know that doesn’t make it any easier for you to believe me. I’m sure in your mind you’re thinking, how I could break up with you if I loved you? And I said I loved you again and can you trust me not to hurt you?”

“When you put it that way, yeah.”

He dropped his head on her shoulder. “I’m making a mess out of this. That isn’t what I wanted. I only want you to know what really happened.”

She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear this but knew she had to. She’d told him she was scared on Saturday to be in love with him again. She had to accept that he was trying to make her believe in him.

“Then tell me.”

“My mother wasn’t feeling well. She’d been battling a cold for a week. I wanted her to stay home and rest and she said she had work to do. My father was pissed because people were out that week too and work was backing up. He said he couldn’t afford to have me take time off.”

“I can understand that to a point,” she said. “When you own a business you are responsible for getting the work done.”

“I didn’t care at nineteen,” he said. “But then he started to give me shit that it was my fault my mother was working so hard. That she needed to rest and wouldn’t or couldn’t if I took some time off.”

“That was wrong of him to put that on your shoulders.”

“And I gave him shit right back for it. I was cleaning the boats and fueling them more than I was waiting on people in the store or the main office where they were coming in to make payments. My mother spent most of the time in the office and she waited on people when they were short staffed. My father rarely had me in the building. I was always outside doing things my mother didn’t do.”

“He knew you were close to your mother,” she said. “He tried to make you feel guilty and not go back to college, didn’t he?”

“Yes. It pissed me off. I called him out on it. He told me I was nothing but an ungrateful selfish kid that was making my mother work her ass off so I could get a degree and think I was better than them. That the marina was worth a lot of money and an honest living.”

Zara knew Ren didn’t think working at the marina was beneath him as much as it wasn’t what he wanted.

“He didn’t understand you, Ren. That was on him.”

“I know. My mother is going to be able to retire well once the marina is sold. I know it will sell at some point. It’s worth millions. Money was never the issue. I told my father he was the selfish prick. That he was the one working Mom all those hours, not me.”

“Which I’m sure he didn’t want to hear,” she said.

“He didn’t,” he said. “We fought some more. We always fought. I told him to fuck off, stalked away and gave him the middle finger on my way off the property.”

“Ren,” she said. “How could you do that? He was your father!”

“Not my proudest moment. My father didn’t have too many of them either. We never got along. We didn’t understand each other. He never tried in my eyes. Nothing I did was good enough because it wasn’t what he wanted. To throw it on me that it was all my fault that my mother was tired and sick was too much. I couldn’t take it anymore. He was lying to me and I knew it. I’d asked my mother before and she’d told me no. He was playing on my emotions to get his way. I told myself I couldn’t come back here. I couldn’t see my mother always have to be in the middle. I couldn’t watch my father put the stress of the business on her. I couldn’t fight with him again like that either. It was just too draining.”

Her eyes started to fill. “I was here. I was the thing making you come back.”

“You were,” he said. “I’m sorry. I made a rash decision based on one more horrible fight with my father. One of many, but it was the last straw for me. I was just done. I regretted it every day since. When I made that comment about you not getting mad and fighting for me, I think it’s because if you had, I would have realized what I’d done sooner. I would have remembered there were times I acted like my father and I was trying not to do that. I would have apologized. I would have made it right. But I didn’t. And I convinced myself that I made the right decision. That it wasn’t meant to be for us.”

“You had no right to make that decision for us,” she said, sitting up. She was actually angry right now when she often wasn’t. “It’s no better than what your father said to you. That your father tried to put it on you or your mother to get you to see things his way.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. You needed to know this. You needed to know why it happened the way it did.”

“Why tell me now though?” she asked. “You could have said it at any point before now.”

“I could have, but I didn’t. I haven’t wanted to rush you. I didn’t want to say or do anything without thinking it through so I didn’t have regrets again. But when I got that letter on Saturday, I was drained. I knew what I needed. I needed you and the words tumbled out.”

“Then I told you I was scared,” she said.

“You did. It cut me hard and quick, but I told myself I still had to make this right. We both have demons in our past. I know I caused yours and I’m going to make it right. I need to do that. I don’t think you can move on with me if you can’t understand what a stupid thing I did and how much I regret every minute of it.”

She was not sure she’d ever seen Ren cry before, but he had tears in his eyes and the anger she felt was spilling out of her.