For the first time in six years, I'm looking forward to spending time with a woman who excites me in ways I thought were over for me.
Eleven
Paisley
We've spent the last week getting into a routine. We cook breakfast and dinner together, I go out with him to feed Blackjack, and check on the property, then we come in where we try to avoid touching one another.
But it's getting more difficult to keep my hands off of him and my thoughts away from what he looks like naked. Which is unusual for me. In the few months before I ended up in the field things weren't great. My life was going down a path that I never imagined it would go down, and I'm feeling guilt.
Guilt on opposite ends of the spectrum.
One because I haven't been honest with Chase, and he's been so good to me, and then the other where I'm living my life after what happened. Reaching over, I grab my phone. It's eleven at night, more than likely Chase is asleep, but I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep until I get this out.
Which is why I get up, and pad down the hallway to his room. When I knock, I truly don't expect him to answer, but he does before I'm even done.
"Paisley, are you okay?"
Opening the door, I'm surprised to see a soft light coming from the bathroom, illuminating where he lays on his bed. He's not wearing a shirt, and I can't help but look at his bare chest. It's strong and obvious that he's capable of hard work physically. I have to believe he's also capable of it mentally and emotionally, too. "I have to talk to you."
He sits up higher, pulling the blankets around his waist. "Okay, I'm listening."
"This is going to be hard." I walk into the room, and over to the window, looking out as I keep talking. "The last year has been the hardest in my life, but you lost someone close to you and you've survived. I have to think the same thing will happen for me too."
"Paisley," his deep voice reverberates through the room. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."
"I do," I answer. "I have to get this out or the guilt is going to eat me alive. There are so many things I want to do with you, and how I want to live my life, but I can't do that until I'm honest, and I get my past out in the open."
The silence stretches between us, and I can feel his eyes on my back. My reflection in the window reveals how tense I am. I recognize it because this is how I've lived my life since the incident. My shoulders are up near my ears, arms wrapped around myself like I'm trying to hold all the broken pieces together. When in reality that's how I've felt the entire time. Like a broken plate, and I'm loosely trying to keep it from completely falling apart.
"I'm married," I blurt out, watching his reflection in the glass. "Or I was. Technically still am, I guess. The divorce papers are filed, but nothing's final yet, and who knows what's going to happen since I'm out here."
To his credit, he doesn't say anything, and I force myself to continue.
"His name is Stanley." I hate even saying his name, as if it tastes bad. "We met in college, got married young because we thought we knew what we wanted." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. All the times he hurt me flow through my mind, and the laugh is as hollow as my chest ended up being when I was around him. "Things were good at first. Really good. But then life got in the way, you know? We both got so focused on everything else, on building our lives separately instead of together. Before I knew it, we were roommates more than anything else. Polite strangers living under the same roof. Neither one of us were close to our families, so it wasn't even the fact our families didn't really like each other that tore us apart."
I can see Chase shift on the bed, but I keep my eyes on the darkness outside.
"We talked about divorce. Multiple times. We both knew it was over, but neither of us wanted to be the one to pull the trigger. Then one night, about a year ago, we had this long conversation about everything. About how we'd failed, and how we just weren't attracted to each other anymore, how neither one of us could see the future with the other, about how we still cared about each other even if we weren't in love anymore." My voice cracks, and I have to stop to steady myself. "We slept together one last time. I don't know if it was supposed to be closure or just... I don't know what it was supposed to be." I shrug, because even now I can't answer that question.
"Paisley…" His voice is full of understanding.
"Let me finish," I whisper, hoping to keep going. "Please. If I stop now, I won't be able to start again, and I want to get this out."
He clamps his mouth, nodding his head, and I take a shaky breath.
"I got pregnant." The words feel heavy and they drop in the room like bricks. "We were on the verge of signing papers, and I found out I was pregnant. Stanley wanted to try again, wanted to make it work for the baby. His parents got divorced, and he'd always wanted to have a family. When we first got married, it was what he talked about all the time. But I couldn't do that. I couldn't stay in a marriage that was already dead just because of a child. My parents did that, and I don't talk to either one of them today," I admit, pushing my hair behind my ears. "So I moved out, got my own apartment, started building a life that didn't have him in it, even in the periphery."
My hands are shaking now, and I press them against the cold glass of the window as I watch the snow swirling outside.
"I was determined to do it by myself. To prove I could be a single mom, that I didn't need him or anyone else. But as the pregnancy went on, as I got more tired, and needed help, I started to lean on him more. He'd come over, help me clean the apartment, go to doctor's appointments with me. I tried to never keep him from the appointments…" I trail off, tilting my head back to look at the ceiling. "It all felt... safe. Like maybe we could figure out how to be good co-parents even if we couldn't be good spouses."
The next part is the hardest, and I have to close my eyes against the memory. The memory that put all of this into motion.
"At six months, I got sick at work. Nothing major, I thought, just feeling run down and exhausted. My boss sent me home early, I had puked once and she was worried that I was contagious. I didn't want to be alone in my apartment, so I went to Stanley's place. He'd told me I could come by anytime, that he wanted to be there for me. It was the first time I'd decided to take him up on the offer."
My voice drops to barely above a whisper. This sequence of events will haunt me for the rest of my life.
"When I got there, his car was in the parking lot. The door was unlocked. I yelled for him, but he didn't answer. So I walked back to the bedroom and..." I have to stop, the image burned into my brain like a bad dream. "He was in bed with Briar. His bitch of a best friend. The woman he'd always told me I didn't need to worry about, that there was nothing between them, that they were just friends." Even saying those words piss me off.
