“How long, William?” Catherine shouts, shoving his chest. He stumbles back a step.
“Three years,” he says, lifting his hands like that might soften it.
Her breath catches. “So you fucked her while I was in the hospital.” She pushes him again, harder now, her hands shaking. “While I was trying to stay alive.”
He just stands there, jaw locked so tight it looks like it might crack. “I didn’t plan it.”
A laugh rips out of her. “You never do. That’s always the excuse, isn’t it?”
“I thought I was going to lose you,” he says. “You were gone. You wouldn’t look at me. You wouldn’t talk to me.”
“I was depressed,” she fires back. “I had just tried to kill myself.”
His throat moves. Once. “I know.”
“No.” Catherine steps closer, her finger pressing into his chest. “You don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have climbed into someone else’s bed while I was being watched, so I wouldn’t do it again.”
“She listened,” he snaps suddenly. “She talked to me. She took care of me. I didn’t live in fear that I’d come home and find her dead the next day.”
Catherine freezes.
Her voice drops to a whisper. “Do you hear yourself?”
She shakes her head slowly. “Poor William. Always thinking about himself.”
“I didn’t go looking for it,” he says, dragging a hand through his hair.
“Three years,” she screams. “You kept me here for three years, distracting me with shiny things so I wouldn’t feel lonely, when all I needed was for you to fucking love me, William.” Her voice breaks. “Do you?”
“I stayed,” he says.
“That wasn’t the fucking question,” she shouts. “Do you love me, William?”
He says nothing.
She pushes him again. They are too close to the edge of the staircase now.
“Well,” she whispers, “that answers it.” Her voice shakes. “And yes, you stayed. And you betrayed me every single day.”
Her shoulders slump, the fight draining out of her.
“I almost died,” she says quietly. “And you found someone else to make you feel better about it.”
“I don’t love you anymore,” he shouts, the words finally tearing loose. “I don’t loveusanymore. I don’t love who I am with you. We bring out the worst in each other. We force perfection so hard that everything else around us is breaking.”
Tears spill down her face as she turns away from him, her back stiff, shaking.
“Just go,” she screams.
“That’s the thing,” he yells back. “If I fucking do, I know you will do something stupid and ruin everything all over again. I am so fucking afraid of losing you that I am destroying this home.”
“Home?” she shouts, spinning around.
Judas wraps his arms around me, holding me in place.
His hands are trying to ground him, keeping him standing. These are his parents. This is the house he grew up in. And somehow I am standing in the middle of it, my chest hurting for Catherine because I know that feeling.
The one where your mind turns against you, where the voices get so loud they push you toward the edge and whisper that the world would be quieter without you in it.
