I dart my tongue out to wet my dry lips, and when my tongue brushes against her lips, she moans. I have to pull back because I can’t let another kiss like before consume us again. This is too important.
“I know it’s going to be hard,” I continue. “Know it’s going to be a huge adjustment, but I want you by my side along the rough road. I want to adjust with you. I want to make this work.” A shuddered breath. “I need those kids in my life though. I need to give them the childhood they deserve. I have to make up to them what I took away.” A quick kiss. “And I want to do that all with you. More than anything in the world, that’s what I want. But if you say no, then I’m sorry, I have to walk away. It’s going to hurt, going to feel like my heart is being ripped out with rusty barbed wire, but it’s what I’ll have to do. For them. For me. For us.”
When she doesn’t say anything, I lean in to kiss her again, only she turns her head.
I inch back and open my eyes. “What?”
She peeks up. “You stupid, stupid asshole.” I stumble away as she shoves at me. “I cannot believe you would even—” She balls her hand up and punches the air. “You would eventhinkfor a second I wouldn’t want that with you.Of courseI want that with you!”
“But you said—”
“No!” she shouts. “Ineversaid I didn’t want them. I said the apartment wasn’t big enough. I said I was nervous raising four children, especially four childrenI just met.Never once did ‘no’ come out of my mouth. Never once did ‘I can’t do this’ come out of my mouth. And never—not one motherfucking time—did I say we were over. I was there, I was talking to you. I was wanting to make this work.” She gulps in a huge breath of air. “Yougave up.”
“You walked away.”
“I wasn’t going to stand there when you wouldn’t even respond to me.”
Hanging my head until my chin almost meets my chest, I say, “How in the hell did this happen? How did we get here?”
“You didn’t talk to me.”
“I was in shock. I—”
“No,” she interrupts. “No. Before all that. You didn’t talk to me about your siblings. You didn’t tell me about wanting guardianship. You kept it all to yourself. Before we were even married, you kept secrets, and I forgave those—or I thought I did. To learn that after we were married, after we made our vows, you werestillhiding things from me? Dammit, Gaige. Ithurt. You want to talk about carving someone’s heart out.” Her eyes churn with ire. “You have no fucking clue.”
What’s that saying?If looks could kill.If they could, I’d be dead man right now. She’s hurting, aching with pain. Her eyes tell me that much. The way her chest is rapidly heaving up and down and up and down, I see she’s struggling, not just to breathe, but to be. I’ve fucked it all up—again.
I have no idea how to fix it this time. No idea where to begin.
“How?”
“What?”
I clear my throat in an attempt to hold back the tears threatening to fall. “How can I fix this?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice comes out broken and defeated. She takes a small, timid step toward me. She reaches out and I have half a mind to step away from her touch, but I can’t move. The moment her palm rests on my barely beating chest, I break.
Every wall I’ve built inside me, every single defense mechanism I’ve developed over the years collapses. I feel it all. The crumbling of the shield around the memories of my childhood, my parents. The disintegration of the shreds of hate I hold for them and for myself. The dissipation of the guilt I feel for what I’ve done vibrates through me.
Or maybe the tremor is from Haley’s touch. Either way, she feels it too. I know she does. The darkness crowding around her begins to creep away the same as mine does.
“I love you,” she says quietly. “Nothing has changed that fact.” She takes another step into me, and I still don’t move. “Nothingwillchange that fact, and if you’re for one second thinking I regret marrying you or wishing we’d done anything in our relationship differently, you’re wrong.”
“Hales…” It’s barely audible, but I know she hears it from the way she sucks in her breath as I physically say her name for the first time in over a week. “All of that. Take all of that and say it back to yourself. From me.” I smirk at her. “But make it more romantic and shit.”
With a husky laugh, she falls into my arms and I catch her. We stand there, silently wrapped together, trying to find something to hold us together.
“What are we going to do?” she asks, her voice muffled yet still filled with tears.
“Fight, Hales. We’re going to fight.”
“Do you want to…” Haley gestures at the door, and I realize I’m being invited into my own home.
“Oh. Uh, yeah. If that’s okay,” I rush out.
She tucks her hair behind her ear. “It’s your home too, Gaige. That’s never changed either.”
“It didn’t feel like I was allowed here anymore.”
