I also wasn’t sorry about it.
I loved this fucking woman and if she would let me scream it from the roof tops I would.
“Don’t. Don’t say my name.” She gathered herself up again and this time, I realized what the emotion was. Indifference. “We can’t do this, Jack.”
“Wait.” I tried to process her words as she stepped away from me. “What?”
“We can’t do this anymore.”
“Do what exactly?” I pried, taking another step toward Melanie who was slowly making her way toward the front door. I needed to know exactly what she meant because my mind was jumbled with all of the possibilities.
“Us. Me and you. We can’t be together anymore.”
“Hell no.” I stopped in my tracks as she reached for her purse. “Where the fuck are you going?”
She slipped on her sandals next and then grabbed for her cardigan, slipping in her arms and adjusting her purse on her shoulder. She was ready to walk out at any moment.
“I’m going home. To my daughter, where I belong.”
“You can belong here, both of you.”
“Don’t do that, Jack. I’m trying to have mercy on you, letting you get out of this the easy way.”
“How in the hell is this the easy way?”
She wouldn’t look at me. Her fingers thumbed with the strap on her purse. She looked almost at peace with herself, like the conversation we had hadn’t just wrecked both of us.
“When I walk out that door, I’m not coming back.” She reached for the door handle, opening the door, where she lingered.
“Don’t you dare leave like this.”
“You don’t control me, Jack. I’m leaving.” I moved toward her and as much as I wanted to slam the door shut and glue the deadbolt so that she could never leave, I knew that wasn’t an option her. She was confident in every word she was speaking to me. She had made up her mind that this was it. I was standing there numb, not understand exactly what was happening.
The love of my life was walking out the door, telling me that everything I felt for her wasn’t worth it. That her fears were what was going to control this relationship, even so that she no longer wanted to be with me.
“And Jack?”
I looked up from the floor that I hadn’t realized I was staring at.
“Don’t think about contacting Amelia. Just like you said, we’re a package deal.”
Those were the last words she spoke before she opened the door and slammed it shut behind her, sealing the deal on what she wanted our future to hold.
I wanted to cave and give in to the thunder of my heartbeat that was urging the tears to release from my system. I wanted to fall to the ground and grieve over a love I would never get to fully experience. A love that Melanie had ripped from my hands when I was so willing to give it to her.
Instead, I walked back to the kitchen and looked around at the half-made dinner. A dinner that had held so many promises moments ago. Now all it showed was the aftermath of a failing relationship that I couldn’t save.
One that I wanted so much to save but was doomed from the beginning.
I pulled the ring box out of my pant pocket, opening it to stare at the ring I thought I was going to get to put on Melanie’s finger one day. The urge to throw it moved through my hand but I didn’t.
I held it in.
The pain.
The tears.
The anger.
