So Close (a James Hetfield story)

Chapter 40

Apologies for the long wait. Life has a tendency of getting in the way at the most inconvenient times. 

"What did you do?" I repeated my question, though I was half afraid to hear his answer.

His hands gripped my face as he kept his eyes locked with mine. "What you saw that day, what you walked into...it was a lie. We weren't havin' sex Leila."

My body stiffened in shock. "What?" I wasn't sure I'd heard him right, it seemed too impossible to be true. "But...but I saw you, you were—"

He shook his head firmly. "We were only pretending...to have sex." His jaw tightened. "I...I wanted you to think we were."

"Pretending?"

"I knew you'd find us"—his voice dropped to almost a whisper—"and...and I knew what it'd do to you."

My breath hitched painfully in my throat. "You...you wanted me to find you? Why? To hurt me?"

I saw his eyes darken with emotion and he let go of me and sat back on his heels. Rubbing a hand over his face, he let out a long breath before answering. "Yes."

My chest spasmed with grief and I jumped up, side stepping around James before he could stop me. Taking a couple steps, I could hear him scrambling to his feet behind me and I forced myself to come to a halt. Wasn't this what I'd been waiting to hear for six years; how could I run now?

Slowly, I turned back around to face him. "You wanted to hurt me?"

"I wanted"—his voice sounded choked, and he stopped and cleared his throat before continuing—"no, I never wanted it...I needed...I needed you to leave me."

"Why would y—?"

"Because I couldn't leave you!" He said the words forcefully, like it physically hurt him to say it. "I couldn't leave you, even though I knew...I knew it was the right thing to do. I couldn't get myself to leave, so I made—"

"You made me leave," I finished for him. "You did the one thing you knew you couldn't come back from, so I...I would leave you."

He nodded his head slowly and the air left my lungs in a sharp whoosh. Suddenly, I felt a little lightheaded and James quickly steered me back over to the bench. Sinking down next to me, his eyes never left my face as I tried to comprehend the atom bomb he'd just dropped into the middle of all my preconceived notions.

Was it really possible that he'd never cheated?

My brain was working overtime trying to make sense of all the pieces and moving parts. We sat in silence for a few minutes, my mind a swirl of questions and more questions.

"Why?" It was the one question I kept coming back to.

He sighed then and gazed off into the distance. "It's complicated."

But I knew. I knew exactly why he'd pushed me away, why he'd always pushed me away; but I never imagined he'd go so far as to destroy us.

"Bullshit James, it's not complicated! You've been running from love the moment we met. You wanted me, you needed me, but it scared you to death to feel that vulnerable and you never wanted to believe that you deserved to be loved. I did everything I could to show you that you were everything I wanted"—my voice broke then with pain—"you were everything I wanted. Just you. Not the music, or the money, or the fame...just you."

Tears blurred my vision and I wiped at them vainly.

"I know Leila, I know."

"No, you don't know!" I was angry now, angry that he'd let his insecurities ruin everything. "If you knew all that, then you wouldn't have doubted me, you wouldn't have doubted what we had to the point of making sure I'd leave you and never come back!"