PART 2 – My Parents’ Warnings Followed Me Home Until I Mistook My Own Fear for Proof That Something Was Wrong

My mother was one of the people who made the doubt harder to ignore.

She had never been particularly comfortable with the difference between Skyla's circumstances and mine.

She didn't need to insult Skyla directly to make her opinion clear.

She only had to remind me that money could change the way people behaved.

One conversation stayed with me.

She warned me to be careful about trusting someone whose life might become much easier by staying close to a wealthy man.

She said it as though she were offering practical advice.

She believed she was protecting me.

Perhaps she was.

But protecting someone and teaching them to distrust the person they love are not always the same thing.

At the time, I didn't make that distinction.

I heard my mother's concern and treated it like another piece of evidence.

My father was more direct.

He didn't spend much time softening his opinions.

He believed Skyla knew what my family had and that I needed to be careful not to let anyone take advantage of me.

I knew what he meant.

I also knew that Skyla had never behaved the way he seemed to imagine she would.

She hadn't asked me to pay her tuition.

She hadn't demanded expensive gifts.

She hadn't tried to turn my money into a solution for every difficulty in her life.

If anything, she had gone out of her way to avoid depending on me.

Still, my father's words stayed in my head.

I began to think that perhaps her refusal to accept help wasn't proof of anything.

Perhaps, I told myself, she was simply being patient.

Perhaps she was waiting until the relationship became more serious.

Perhaps I had mistaken restraint for honesty.

There was no real evidence for those thoughts.

But once suspicion takes hold, it doesn't always require evidence.

Sometimes it only requires another possibility.

And I had plenty of possibilities to imagine.

I started looking at our relationship from the outside.

I pictured what my friends saw when they looked at us.

A man with a successful business.

A woman struggling through college.

A man who could pay for things without thinking twice.

A woman who had to decide whether a car repair could wait until the next paycheck.

I knew those differences existed.

What I failed to understand was that they didn't automatically mean our feelings were unequal.

Skyla had never asked me to become someone else for her.

She had never demanded that I abandon my life or pretend I had less than I did.

She simply lived her own life and made room for me in it.

That should have been enough.

Instead, I began to resent the uncertainty that came with loving someone I couldn't completely understand.

I wanted a clear answer to a question that had no simple answer.

Would she stay if my money disappeared?

Would she care for me if I had nothing to offer?

Would she choose me if loving me meant sacrifice rather than comfort?

I could have spoken to her about those fears.

I could have told her what my parents had said and explained how their opinions were affecting me.

I could have asked her how she saw our future.

She might have been hurt by the questions.

She might have been angry that I doubted her.

But at least she would have been given the chance to answer honestly.

I didn't give her that chance.

I decided that a real conversation would not be enough.

I wanted to see what she would do under pressure.

That was the excuse I used.

I began thinking about a situation serious enough to make money matter, something that would force a decision instead of allowing her to give me a reassuring answer.

The idea I settled on was cruel.

I would tell Skyla I was seriously ill.

I would tell her that I needed treatment and couldn't afford it.

I would make the financial problem so large that she couldn't simply solve it herself.

I knew she didn't have the resources I did.

I knew she was already struggling to cover her own expenses.

I also knew that if I asked her to help with a sum far beyond her means, she would have to confront a problem she couldn't easily fix.

That knowledge should have stopped me.

Instead, I used it to make the test more convincing.

I told myself I wasn't trying to hurt her.

I told myself I only wanted to learn the truth before I committed more of my life to the relationship.

The lie became easier to justify each time I repeated that explanation to myself.

I didn't think about how it would feel to hear that someone you loved might be dying.

I didn't think about the nights she might spend worrying.

I didn't think about the helplessness of being told that money stood between a person and the treatment they needed.

I thought about the answer.

I imagined two possibilities.

In one, Skyla would panic about what she might lose.

She would ask questions, become overwhelmed, and eventually leave because she couldn't handle the situation.

In the other, she would find a way to stand beside me, even if she couldn't pay for everything.

I thought that second possibility would settle my doubts.

I never considered how unfair it was to make her prove her love through a crisis I had invented.

I never considered that a person could love someone deeply and still be unable to rescue them financially.

I had reduced love to a question with two possible answers.

Stay or leave.

I was so determined to find out which answer Skyla would choose that I failed to see how much I was willing to risk.

The truth was that I wanted to believe she loved me.

But I wanted to be protected from the possibility that she didn't.

And I was willing to make her suffer so I wouldn't have to sit with that uncertainty.

Looking back, I can barely recognize the man who thought that was a reasonable thing to do.

I knew how to manage my business.

I knew how to make decisions when money was involved.

But when it came to the person who mattered most to me, I chose dishonesty over courage.

I mistook control for security.

And I prepared to put Skyla through a nightmare simply because I was afraid of being fooled.

Click here to continue reading: PART 3: I Told the Woman Who Loved Me That I Was Seriously Ill, Then Watched Her Face Change as I Named the Price