“Don’t.” I stare hard at her, shaking my head. “Don’t you ever say that, Roxanne. Don’t you ever wish that away. Not that.”
She slowly sits up beside me, her hair falling into her face.
“I break things, Cole,” she says, quiet but steady. “I break things because I’m broken inside and it’s all I know how to do.”
She seems to slump under the weight of what she’s about to say next, and when she finally gets it out, I feel like it’s pressing down on me too.
“I don’t want to be broken anymore.”
We just sit there in silence for a few moments. She wraps her arms around her torso and eventually shifts herself to the edge of the mattress, away from me.
“Kay said I should talk to someone—like, professionally. I’ve been thinking about it.” She swallows. “I think maybe I need to leave Montreal. I can’t think straight when I’m there. Everything is so tied to the past. I’ve built my whole life on that place, and I think I might need to le—”
“Don’t leave.”
Please don’t leave me.
I hear that old irritation slip into her tone, the one that always seems to creep up between us.
“Cole, can we justtalkabout—”
But we can’t talk about this.Ican’t talk about this. The thought of her disappearing again fills me with a rush of panic, and I need to shut it down.
“One week,” I interrupt, blurting out the first intelligible thing that surfaces in my mind.
“What?”
“Give us this week. For real.” The idea forms as I speak. I have to keep talking. I have to keep her close. “I hate not being able to touch you when you’re hurting like this. I hate not being able to be there for you, and if you’re really”—I have to pause to swallow—“if you’re really going to go, don’t you want to be sure about it?”
She doesn’t say no when I shift closer, but she doesn’t move towards me either.
“You said you wouldn’t be my regret,” she whispers.
“So choose not to regret it. Let us have this—even if it’s onlythis.”
It hurts me to say it. I want to ask for so much more, but I’d be risking everything if I did. A week is something I know she can give, and I need somethingright now. I need some kind of assurance that this isn’t the end.
Her eyes search my face. I inch forwards across the bed until I can reach my hand out to stroke the flower petals on her thigh.
“Let me touch you again, Roxy.” We both watch my finger as it traces the thin lines, my dark knuckles a contrast to the milky white of her skin. “Let me make you feel better. Let me make you feel good.”
