Would it be a bitch getting them to the car? Yes.
Was I in danger of slipping and cracking my head open on the concrete? Also yes.
But I preferred to bleed out in the snow than have Beau closer to me. Helping me. Playing the gentleman after he’d wrecked me completely.
I wanted to be the one who had a parting line, either one that was utterly petty and biting or wistful, likeyour girl is lovely, Hubble. But I didn’t have either of those things in me.
The ending to relationships, to great loves wasn’t something beautiful or cinematic. It was immensely painful, never doing justice to how long it took to create. Fracturing it was much easier.
My boots made a low thump as I walked past him into the entryway.
“You need to take the coat.”
His words were harsh, cold, stopping me in my tracks.
I turned around to where Beau’s eyes were zeroed in on the coats hanging by the door. I didn’t need to look to see them. Clara’s tiny one, mine, then Beau’s.
As if we were a family.
I stared at Beau. Then the coat. “You bought that.”
“For you,” he ground out. “I bought that coat foryou, Hannah. There are no strings. I bought that coat for you to be warm. I’m not letting you walk out that door into the fucking freezing weather without it.”
I choked out a sound that was a mix between a laugh and a sob. “You won’tletme walk out the door?” The spite in my words was ugly and tasted wrong, yet I spat them all the same. “Youare the reason I’m walking out this door, Beau. You and your emotional wounds and your misplaced sense of nobility.That’s why I’m walking out this door. At your request. You don’t get to dictate what I’m wearing or what I take when I do it.”
I was proud of that speech, at the fact that I didn’t fall to my knees while I said it. My throat, while feeling dangerously narrow, did not close up until the end. Only one tear fell which I angrily swiped away.
The words had been hurled at Beau. Full of rage, resentment, and most of all, hurt. But you couldn’t see the hurt when it was layered underneath all the anger.
Beau taught me that.
He looked utterly defeated. But he leaned forward and opened the door. It might’ve been one of the most painful gestures he’d ever made.
I didn’t let it show as I walked out. Didn’t let myself look at him.
Don’t trip, don’t trip, I chanted as I tentatively walked to my car. I knew Beau was still watching my every move, poised and waiting to come catch me if I fell.
I’d thought the late snow was some kind of gift, one last opportunity to make snowmen with Clara. Huddle inside and drink hot chocolate together before we welcomed spring.
Now it only served to ensure that the outside temperature matched my insides. Cold. Frozen. Lifeless.
There was no triumph in making it to my car without falling. None while putting all the bags in the trunk without help.
There were no winners here.
I’d lost everything that was never truly mine to begin with.
BEAU
I fucked up.
I knew it the second I saw her face when she walked out of Clara’s room. The pain that had spread across every one of her features. It had speared me to the core.
Fuck, it had damned me to hell.
And what was worse? I’d stuck to my guns. Because I thought I was… what? Giving her the opportunity to live her life, makeher own decisions. She was right. I was belittling her choices, her intelligence.
But fuck, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Her childhood. Jumping from that to a marriage to a much older man who treated her like shit.
