Chapter Sixty-One

Katy

The road blurs in front of me as I do my best to get myself together before finally giving in and pulling over. Burying my face in my hands, I can’t escape the feel of him. Of how it felt to be loved by him, only to lose it. I’ve just left heaven and been drop-kicked into hell. The defeated look on Chris’s face when he walked out of that barn will haunt me for the rest of my life. It was selfish to go, even more so to stay. His kiss, his touch, the look in his eyes when he made love to me, I never could have imagined feeling so whole again.

I’m too raw to feel regret. Instead, all I feel is longing as I replay the way we fit. All I want is to turn around and live one more day in a place I felt safe and free, like I wasn’t a disappointment. Shaking with sobs in my seat, I turn the rearview toward me and swat at my tears with my fingers, assessing the damage. Staring long and hard at my reflection, I wonder if I’ll ever recognize who I’ve become. For the most part, I’ve acknowledged her. Validity, more than anything, seems to be my new goal, but my treacherous heart keeps fucking up my progress. I’ve been wrong about every move I’ve made since I’ve gotten back, but I refuse to believe I’m wrong about loving him.

Chris.

Images of the last few days flash through my scattered brain as my skin warms with remembrance. The feel of his hands, the thrust of his tongue, the whisper of a smile that tilts his lips before he kisses me.

Apologies fall from my lips as I clutch my chest feeling the burn, the undeniable loss as it shatters me over and over again.

Let me go.

“I can’t. I can’t. Please, God, I can’t,” I whisper into the void. Helpless to stop the bleeding, I do it freely until I’m too exhausted to move. I can’t live with the fact that he may hate me, not after what we’ve been through, after the way we’ve loved each other.

At some point, I’ll try to remind myself that it was his hurt lashing out. At some point, I’ll pray he’ll forgive me enough to remember us for what we were and not how we ended. At some point, I’ll be thankful for what he meant to me and feel less of the loss. Maybe when the cravings stop. When I stop wanting him, needing him. Maybe when I can lift my eyes to the night sky and not wonder where he is and if he’s thinking of me from that place, I’ll breathe easier.

Maybe time will give back what it took away, and I’ll be the wiser for it.

Maybe…eventually.

For now, my heart is the reckless navigator, and I, a reluctant passenger, unable to escape the way I love him.

Minutes later, I pull back onto the highway, the weight of the last few hours threatening to drag me down. I can’t go back there. I can’t go back to that lifeless place. Gripping the wheel like a lifeline, I try to focus on the one surety I have, the only thing in my world that isn’t complicated, the one love I’m capable of feeling that’s never let me down.

My purpose, my reason for being, is coming home.

Noah.

The act of living has become a chore, with everyone but him. Noah makes it simple. Before I left for the ranch, I’d finally found some footing. I can get it back, I just need my reason, and he’s en route.

Straightening my shoulders, I cough out another threatening sob as I make time back to my house. Pulling into the neighborhood, I allow myself some small comfort in the familiarity as the raw ache threatens to swallow me whole. Breathing a little easier, I make the last two turns to my street while making promises—to myself, to God, to the void—that I won’t be so reckless in following the whims of my heart. Dread courses through me as I weigh the implications of what it’s already cost me.

It’s only when I spot Gavin’s truck in the driveway that all the wind leaves my body.

Guilt consumes me whole as I put the car in park and run a hand through my hair.

From the outside, our home looks picturesque. I only wish the life inside resembled the surface. Every step toward that door has me falling further into hopelessness. Pausing at the porch, I see trays and trays full of unplanted flowers that I know he bought for me, as his own gesture, a sign of faith on his part. Something new, something I can watch grow, something we could have watched grow together. Now I know, the day I fled to the ranch was the night he finally accepted my dinner invitation.

It’s here on these steps, I let the rest of me suffocate under the heavy. It’s here that I know I lost the other half of my heart. It’s here that I accept my fate.

I’m nowhere near ready for this. I was always going to come clean, but I’ve barely had a chance to think past amber eyes and the hole in my heart that leaving him has caused.

I have to think that this is what I deserve for what I’ve done, and maybe life is tired of waiting on me to make the decision to hurt everyone I love. In the seconds before I open the door, a river of memories floods me, reminding me that I’ve lost it all.

Stepping through the front door, I allow them in as I scan the living room and close it behind me. Gavin’s on the edge of our couch, his eyes cast down on a piece of paper.

Several bags are packed next to where he sits, his eyes roving over the page as silent tears stream down his cheeks. Swallowing hard, I take a step into the room to see my unpacked duffle a few feet away. It was delivered from Baghdad a few months after I got home, and I’d never gotten around to unpacking it. It’s been thoroughly picked through, my clothes scattered into piles on the floor. I don’t have to ask him what he was searching for—it’s written all over his face. A face that twists in unrelenting pain as he reads the declaration of a faithful wife, of the wife who left him. The woman he still searches for when he looks at me. The woman that exists inside me in pieces and is dying to stifle his ache, not just for him but for us both.

My chest caves in as a glimmer of something familiar resting on the tip of his thumb catches my eye—my wedding ring.

I never put it back on.

It slides down the page he holds, the devotional letter I wrote the night before the ambush. I sink where I stand, my limbs filling with dread.

When his red-rimmed eyes finally find mine, his voice is filled with everything his eyes convey—betrayal, confusion, devastation. “Did you mean it?”

“Every word.”

Gavin chokes on a guttural cry as he lets the letter fall from his fingertips before burying his head in his hands.

“What did you do, baby? What did you do?” He begs me for a truth I can’t give as I sink further into the void and refuse myself any reprieve from laying witness to what I’ve just done.

“You ran to him, didn’t you?” Endless evidence of my deceit trickles down his cheeks before pooling at his lips. “You didn’t even give me a chance to win your heart back.”

I stand there, speechless, because I’ll never have the right words. There are no words to make this right.

“What did you fucking do?” In a blink, he’s on his feet, the crack of splintering wood filling the room between us as he flips the coffee table. Rage-filled eyes scour me across the room as his accusations fly.

“I couldn’t have made it any easier, could I?”

“It had nothing to do with you leaving.”

“Was it good?” Glass shatters in a blur as he rages, deconstructing the life we built together.

“Gavin—” I object hoarsely.

“Fuck you, Katy! Fuck you!” There’s nothing about him that I recognize as he comes apart and shreds the remnants of our history, and the possibility of our beginning. Helpless and guilty, I watch as he smashes his way through my wrongs before crumbling with exhaustion, his body trembling as he shakes his head repeatedly.

I can’t fight back. I won’t. Anything I say will feel empty, will be empty, because I let myself love him.

It just happened? I wasn’t thinking?

None of it is true. It didn’t just happen. I wanted it to happen. And the truth is, I only saw Chris when it did. Words fail me at my every attempt to try and break through. The truth is so simple and so damning, but it’s all I have.

“I meant every word of that letter when I wrote it. I meant forever when I said it. I meant I love you the day you left me, and every day since.”

Disgust mars his features as he takes quick strides between us, ripping my ring from his thumb and tossing it at my feet.

“At least you didn’t have this getting in your way.”

The look in his eyes paralyzes me where I stand. I no longer deserve his love, respect, or patience, so I don’t ask for it. And in some fucked-up way, his fight makes him all the more beautiful, more alluring, and I can’t help but wish I’d seen any part of this side sooner. At least then it would have taken the place of the concern and expectation that ripped us apart.

But I don’t voice it, because more than anything else, I see the revulsion, and it reigns over him as he takes a step back from me and runs his hands through his hair.

Shame cloaks me. I would give anything to escape the cavity I’m locked inside of, to escape my own skin.

“The first night I was here, I sat on our swing, praying for the second you pulled up. I just wanted to erase the space,” he says in a whisper. “At first, I couldn’t accept that you still wanted us. I knew how hard you were trying, but I didn’t believe you, I couldn’t, not after what I saw. It hurt so fucking much.”

“Gavin—”

“What?” he says, taking an aggressive step forward.

I shake my head.

“When you didn’t show up the second night,” his voice begins to quake with an anger that’s now familiar, “do you have any idea what that did to me?”

I lower my head, only to see the evidence of my failure sparkling just past my boot.

“Look at me!”

Lifting my chin, I see defiance. “You think I haven’t had a dozen or more chances to stray since we’ve been married?”

I have zero doubts he has, but it has never been an issue, and it never would’ve been. Panic rips through me as I see a small amount of satisfaction in his eyes from my hypocritical reaction to his threat. But I’m not the one who gets to ask the questions. Whatever he’s done, I have no right to know.

“We both made promises, Katy, but I kept mine. Two wrongs don’t make a right, and you can both fucking go to hell,” he spits before turning his back on me to grab his first bag.

“I—we—aren’t together.”

“Yeah, he’s going back, isn’t he? Looks like he’s got different priorities.”

All the blood leaves my face when I realize just how far Gavin could go to make life hell on Chris. But the truth is, Gavin would never stoop so low. A sick smile covers his face, and it’s everything I can do not to lash out.

“That’s not you,” I say with confidence. “You aren’t that man.”

“Ah, but he’s the type to fuck my wife.”

Cringing, I clutch my chest. “Please stop.”

“Please stop?” He shakes his head and wipes his nose. “Stop what? Jesus,” his face twists in disgust, “I can fucking smell him on you!”

Panic rises, and I flinch as he takes a step toward me. When he sees it, he stops in his tracks.

“What? You afraid of me now? That’s rich.” He picks up two of his packed bags and tosses them on the porch.

It takes me a full minute to speak. “What will we tell Noah?”

“You’ve become quite the fucking liar. I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” he snaps as he discards another in the growing stack.

“Are you divorcing me?” The words feel weak, pathetic, coming out of my mouth, but panic is winning at this point.

Gavin keeps his back to me. “You didn’t even put your fucking wedding ring back on. That should’ve been the first sign. I’m picking Noah up from your parents.”

This time I step up. “The hell you are! You aren’t taking my son away from me!”

He looks back at me with clear anguish in his features. “I would never do that. Ever. Despite how badly I want to punish you, I’ll never use him. Get yourself together, Katy.”

“Please, please, don’t take him.” I fall to my knees as my heart bottoms out. I’m in hysterics as Gavin hauls more bags to the porch. The house goes silent with his footfalls in the hallway, and it’s only then that I realize he’s standing in front of me, feet away, staring down at me, his tears falling rapidly.

“I wish”—he licks a tear off his lips—“I just wish you could have trusted me.”

“I’m sorry,” I whisper through shuddered breaths.

“I’ll bring him home the day after tomorrow.”

Relieved cries leave me as I push the tears away with my fingers. “Thank you.”

“I’m not taking him away, Katy.”

Slowly I rise to my feet and lift my eyes to his. “Y-you’ll never know how s-s-sorry I a-am for hurting you the way I have. You’ll never know how much seeing you this way hurts m-me.”

“But I wasn’t enough, was I?” he says with a tear-filled rasp.

We’re both sobbing a foot away from the other, inconsolable, with no pain greater than the vast space I just put between us.

“Gavin?” My chest rises and falls with shuddered breaths.

I don’t ask the first question because I know I’ve destroyed it. My selfish need to know the answer to the second outweighs all else, but I can’t bring myself to ask.

In my heart, I still feel it from my husband—my lover, my teacher, and my best friend—and I can’t deny myself this one comfort because I know without it, I won’t ever come back.

His answer echoes out in the memories we hold between us just before he closes the door.

“Forever.”