I sat with Skyla for a while before I asked another question.
I didn't want to turn the moment into an interrogation.
I had already done enough of that without her knowledge.
But I needed to understand what had happened.
"What did you do while you were gone?"
She took another sip of water.
"I tried to find a way to help you."
The answer was simple.
It didn't explain the exhaustion in her face or why she had needed five days.
But it told me something I should have understood earlier.
She hadn't left because she had stopped caring.
She had left because she was trying to deal with the problem I had placed in front of her.
I looked away.
The shame came back.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
She let out a small breath.
"You told me not to worry about how much it would cost, and then you told me you couldn't pay for it."
I said nothing.
"I didn't know what else to do."
She wasn't accusing me.
That almost made it unbearable.
I had expected her to return angry.
I had expected her to demand that I explain why she had been left to worry alone.
Instead, she was telling me what she had tried to do.
She had taken my words seriously.
She had believed there was a real problem.
And because she couldn't solve it in the ordinary way, she had gone away to work out what she could do.
I wanted to know every detail.
I wanted to understand what had kept her away for so long.
But I also feared what the details would reveal about the cost of my lie.
I had given her a number I knew was beyond her reach.
I had chosen that number precisely because I thought it would expose her limits.
Now I was beginning to understand that she had never treated those limits as a reason to stop caring.
She had simply tried to find another way.
I stared at my hands.
They were clean.
My life had remained comfortable while hers had been turned upside down by news that wasn't even true.
I had slept in my own bed.
I had eaten whenever I wanted.
I had spent those days thinking about how disappointed I was in her.
She had spent them trying to help me.
The difference was so plain that I wondered how I had managed not to see it.
"I thought you were leaving me," I admitted.
Skyla's expression changed.
Not dramatically.
Just enough for me to notice that my words had hurt her.
"Why would you think that?"
I opened my mouth.
Then I closed it again.
I couldn't tell her the real reason without admitting what I had done.
I couldn't explain that my friends had made me suspicious, that my parents had warned me, and that I had allowed their opinions to become more important than the evidence of our own relationship.
I couldn't explain that I had deliberately created the crisis because I wanted to know whether she would stay.
I had spent so much time thinking about whether Skyla was trustworthy that I had ignored the question of whether I was behaving like someone she could trust.
"I didn't understand why you left," I said.
That was true, but it wasn't the truth she deserved.
She looked down at the table.
"I didn't know what else to do."
Again, those words.
No excuses.
No grand speech.
Just a tired woman explaining that she had been trying to help someone she loved.
I felt tears gathering again.
I turned my face away, hoping she wouldn't notice.
She noticed.
Of course she did.
"Are you in pain?" she asked.
The question landed like a blow.
She was still worried about me.
Even after five days of uncertainty.
Even after returning to find me questioning her.
She was still asking whether I was all right.
I shook my head.
"No."
She waited.
I swallowed.
"I just don't know what to say."
"Then don't say anything yet."
She said it gently.
I sat there and tried to understand how she could offer me that kind of patience.
I hadn't earned it.
I knew that much.
The object on the table remained between us.
I kept glancing at it, trying to understand how she had managed to bring it home after everything she had been facing.
I knew how little spare money she had.
I knew what she had refused from me.
I knew that she had been unwilling to let me pay her tuition because she wanted to stand on her own.
Yet I had convinced myself that those same qualities might conceal a plan to use me.
I had treated her independence as suspicious whenever it suited my fears.
I had treated her concern as a performance whenever I needed another reason to doubt her.
I had found a way to turn almost everything she did into evidence against her.
That was the ugliest part.
It wasn't just that I had lied about being ill.
It was that I had used the lie to justify a judgment I had already begun making.
I wanted to believe I was a good man who had made one bad decision.
But I knew the truth was more complicated.
I had made many small decisions before the lie.
I had listened to people who questioned her.
I had let their opinions settle into my thinking.
I had chosen not to speak openly with her.
I had decided that she needed to prove herself to me.
And finally, I had chosen a cruel way to force that proof.
The lie had not appeared out of nowhere.
It had grown from all those earlier choices.
Skyla reached for the glass again.
Her hands were steady now, but she still looked tired.
"Have you been able to rest?" I asked.
"A little."
I nodded.
I didn't ask her to explain more.
For the first time, I was willing to let her speak when she was ready instead of demanding the answer I wanted.
We sat quietly.
The room felt different from the way it had felt during the previous five days.
Nothing had been resolved.
I still didn't understand everything she had done.
She still didn't know the full truth about why I had told her I was ill.
But the silence no longer felt like evidence against her.
It felt like a space in which I had to decide whether I was going to keep lying.
I looked at her.
She was the same person who had refused my offers to pay her tuition.
The same person who worked long hours and worried about her old car.
The same person who had asked me what I needed when she believed I was facing a serious illness.
I had spent nearly two years watching her live with honesty and independence.
Then I had ignored all of it because I wanted certainty.
I couldn't change the five days that had passed.
I couldn't give her back the hours she had spent worrying.
But I could stop making the situation worse.
I drew a breath.
"Skyla, there's something I need to tell you."
She looked up.
For the first time that evening, I saw uncertainty in her face that had nothing to do with the illness I had described.
I understood why.
I had been asking her for honesty while keeping the most important fact from her.
I had been demanding trust without offering any.
And now, sitting across from her, I finally had to decide whether I was willing to tell the truth even if it cost me the relationship.
Click here to continue reading: PART 7: I Had Wanted Skyla to Prove Her Love, But I Was the One Who Had to Face What My Lie Revealed
I Had Everything Money Could Buy, Yet I Was Afraid the One Person I Loved Might Only Want What I Owned
Part 6 of 8
One Comment on “PART 6 – The More I Learned About Those Five Days, the Harder It Became to Defend the Man I Had Been”