I wanted to reassure him that nothing had been wrong, but he held up his hand. "Please let me finish," he said quietly. I nodded. He told me he had driven to his parents' house after leaving my apartment because he did not trust himself to go home alone. Arthur had opened the door, seen his son's face, and brought him into the kitchen without asking questions until he was ready to speak.
"My dad made tea," Donovan said with a faint, surprised smile. "He always makes coffee. He was so rattled he made tea." The smile disappeared. "I told them you had ended it. Mom asked whether I'd asked why, and I said you were the one who told me you wanted to leave. She said I could ask for an explanation when I was ready, but I didn't have to argue you out of your own words."
I asked whether he had told them about the test. He nodded. "Not that night. A few days later, when I could say it without feeling sick." I lowered my gaze and apologized for putting him in the position of explaining my cruelty to his family. He told me he had cried in his parents' kitchen, something he had not done in front of anyone for years. He said the pain had embarrassed him, though it should not have.
"I didn't walk away because I wasn't hurt," he said. "I walked away because you told me you wanted out, and I believed you had the right to choose that." He paused, searching my face. "When you told me I was supposed to fight for you, it felt like you wanted me to prove love by ignoring a boundary. I don't know how to live that way. I never want you to be afraid that saying no won't be enough for me."
I thought about the way I had demanded a scene that would have looked romantic in a thirty-second video. Sitting across from the man who had lived through my manufactured rejection, I finally understood how disturbing that scene would have felt from his side. He would have been begging a person who was pretending to reject him, while she silently evaluated the severity of his pain. I told him I saw that now and did not expect him to be grateful that I had finally understood it.
"I was wrong," I said. "Not just because it backfired. I was wrong before you answered. I chose to make you believe I didn't want you, and I was prepared to call your suffering proof that you did." He listened with his gaze steady on mine. I told him about therapy and the work I had begun, careful not to present my appointments as receipts entitling me to his forgiveness.