Tears streamed down my face, not only at the grave sincerity of his words, but because of how they echoed my own thoughts. I hadn’t realized how badly I’d secretly wished that Bill would tear me open and teach me what it meant to love. He might still one day, but had he waited too long?
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked again.
He brushed a piece of my hair from my forehead. “With everything I am. But even more, I want you towantto leave him. I want you to realize that he’s not right for you and that you deserve to be loved fiercely. And if I’m lucky, you’ll choose me to do it. You said you were mine earlier. And I know you meant it.”
My face screwed up as more tears fell. Even if I left Bill, could I let myself love David the way he needed? Did he deserve someone as cold as me? Would just loving me be enough for him? I searched his face. His eyes had always been my refuge. They seemed to know things that I didn’t.
My heart jumped in my chest when I realized that Icouldlove him the way he needed. Without boundaries. Without control. Andthatscared me more than anything, even more than leaving my life behind. I could fall into those heavenly brown eyes and never find my way out.
Once I was his, I’d be at his mercy.
He wiped my face of the tears before leaning in to kiss my closed lips. “Talk to me. This won’t work if you’re not honest.”
I hated myself when I said, “I need time to think this through.”
He froze, then dropped his hands to his hips, his eyes narrowed. “I don’t deserve to be strung along any longer. I want you, but I’ve asked, pleaded, and begged for you to open up to me. To trust me. I can’t keep doing this to myself, and yet I do. Because this isn’t something we can just walk away from.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I cried. “Don’t you know that I felt it from the beginning? What do you want to hear? That I’m yours, that you’re the one who has my heart? You know you do. But I can’t just leave without knowing what will happen. I made a commitment!”
“Fuck your commitment,” he roared. “You know it’s not about that. You’re too scared to take a chance, and it’s not fair to me, you, or Bill. This last month has been a glimpse of how life will be for all of us. Is that what you want?”
I shook my head hard.
“So then make the decision.”
“Nobody would understand.”
“Is that what this is about? Other people?”
“No.” I sniffled. “And yes. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s right anymore.”
“I won’t let anybody hurt you,” he said. “You make this decision, and we’re in it together. I will be your shield.”
“David, I can’t—how can I? How can I leave him after what I’ve done? And after he stood by me anyway?”
“What we have is stronger than all of it.”
David didn’t know that. He was counting on love to be enough, but he’d never been married. In fact, he was trying tobreak upa marriage. How could he know that we’d be stronger than what I had now? That it would carry us into forever?
But he was right in that I’d not ever experienced this with Bill or with anyone else. It was alwaysallof my strength to fight our magnetic pull to each other. I didn’t know what to do. “What we have is strong,” I agreed. “But you can’t ask me to leave on a whim. I need time to—”
“No. There’s no more time.”
I clasped an arm over my stomach. “What?”
“I cannot do this anymore. It’s killing me. I love you, and you either love me or you don’t. But please, put me out of my misery,” he pleaded. His hands ran over his face and dove into his hair. “You have to decide.” The bass of his voice bounced off the walls. Veins pulsed from his neck, and his face flushed with rage. “Can’t you see that this is it? It’s me or him. End this. Now. Leave with me. Tonight. If you’re mine, you aren’t spending another night in this apartment.”
Panic gripped me. Now? Tonight? Bill’s presence was all around me. I pictured him coming home to an empty apartment, calling for me, finding my things gone. David expected me to walk out the door, leave it all behind, and go . . . where? He was being idealistic, ignoring the gritty details. I could spend tonight with him—but what about tomorrow and the next day? I couldn’t move from one life to another overnight.
David took an easy stride and grasped my face in his hands. “I love you,” he said earnestly, “but this is destroying both of us. End this. If you don’t, then I will. And once I walk out that door, it’s truly over.” I whimpered as he stared into my eyes. “My sweet,” he murmured, between soft kisses. “Say the word, and I will give you everything.”
My chin quivered viciously in his hands. My eyelids blinked fresh tears onto my cheeks.Everything?But there was only one thing I wanted. I wanted him, wholly and completely. Somehow, inexplicably—incomprehensibly—he was the only thing that had ever felt absolute in my life.
But I’d also seen just now how easily I could slip into a role I’d fought against. Irrational jealousy lived in me, a madness that only a love like David’s could trigger.
I wasn’t choosing between Bill and David. I was choosing between a life I’d planned and still wanted in some ways, and one where I’d be putting all my faith into two things I’d been taught to fear since thirteen years old: trust and love.
David expected me to dive from solid ground into murky, choppy waters, kept afloat by two abstract concepts that had failed me before.
