Ugly Love (Hoover)/Chapter 38
from the Collection “Ugly Love”
Chapter Summary
Two weeks after moving into her own apartment, Tate still struggled with leaving Miles. Work and school kept her busy, but her evenings were painfully lonely. She also missed Cap, who had listened when she needed to vent.
Returning home, she found Miles asleep against her apartment door. He wore casual clothes, had stubble on his face, and had a fresh-looking bruise beneath his eye. She feared that admitting him would draw her back into a relationship that hurt her.
Miles woke and told her he had waited six hours and needed her bathroom. Tate let him inside, then sat on the couch trying to prepare herself to ask him to leave. When he returned, however, he looked unusually peaceful and happy.
He sat close to her and said he missed her. At her request, he repeated it and explained that he had missed her every day they were apart since meeting. Tate accepted his embrace and noticed that his usual emotional defenses were gone.
Miles revealed that he had a son who died six years earlier. He was not ready to discuss the details and asked to proceed at his own pace. Tate reassured him, and he promised eventually to tell her about his son, Rachel, and the rest of his past.
He shared details of his upbringing near San Francisco, his lifelong ambition to become a pilot, and his mother's death from cancer when he was seventeen. He also discussed his father's remarriage, his friendship with Tate's brother, and his relationship with Ian.
Miles explained that his son would have turned six on the night Tate first found him in the hallway. She hugged him. He admitted that falling for her had frightened him after six years of trying to protect himself from further emotional pain.
He said guilt and fear had repeatedly made him push her away. He believed he had taken happiness from the only two people he had loved and did not deserve it himself. He apologized, thanked Tate for her hope in their relationship, and offered her his past while asking for her future.
Tate cried with happiness, and they kissed. When she asked about his bruised eye, Miles explained that Corbin had hit him while he was trying to obtain her address. Corbin had apparently accepted their relationship after demanding, in three increasingly forceful ways, that Miles never break her heart.
They laughed together, and Tate said he looked as though he had fallen in love with her. Miles replied that he had flown rather than fallen. They reunited, and Tate felt that he had finally given her his heart.
Characters
Quotes
I would say my heart is broken, but it’s not. I don’t think it is. Actually, I wouldn’t know, because my heart hasn’t been in my chest since I left it lying in front of his apartment the day I told him good-bye.
Every time I began to feel that way, I would just push you farther away out of guilt and fear. I felt like I didn’t deserve you. I didn’t deserve happiness at all, because I’d taken it away
It may be a small piece at a time, but my past is yours now. All of it. Anything you want to know, I want to tell you. But only if you promise me I can also have your future.