He’s overme.
I know I’m only seconds away from sobbing hysterically, but I gather every ounce of my energy, and I shove a lid on my panic, my grief, that this is all happening again – same conversation, different location. I feel as if someone has hollowed out my insides with a spoon. A memory slices through my brain: my mother, sobbing against the closed front door after my father left, her howls equal amounts of rage and despair.
I want to scream at him, tell him how hard I’ve tried, how he was already one foot half out the door when I arrived in this day, how it’s his fault he didn’t love me hard enough, make me feel worthy enough, but I let the words pass through my head and fly free. As much as I want to blame him, I know where that leads. I also know that where we are now is just as much my fault, but I don’t know how to get out of this dead end I’ve driven myself into. I’m boxed in. Nowhere to go, except …
It’s as if a door opens in my head and light shines through it.
There is a way. Just one. And it might be insanity to take that path. At the very least, it will require every scrap of courage andstrength I’ve found within myself during the last thirteen days. I’m going to have to do the unthinkable.
‘Okay,’ I say. I walk over to the stone balustrade and rest against it, then gesture for him to join me. When he’s settled, I clasp my hands in front of me, look him in the eye, and I start to tell him what happened on our tenth anniversary – not this time, the last time – and then I tell him what happened in all the days afterwards.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
JESS
I finish speaking and Luke just stares at me, his jaw tight. ‘Really?’ he says, and the look of utter disgust on his features shreds my insides.
I try to speak but my throat is dry, and I have to cough before I can get a single word out: ‘Really.’
He shakes his head and stands up. ‘I thought things weren’t great between us but I wasn’t all the way there to thinking we were in a critical condition. I hadn’t given up hope on you, Jess.’
‘I—’
He holds a hand up. ‘Let me speak, please. I gave you your turn – for what it was.’
I nod and swallow down my plea, even though it feels as if words want to explode from inside me.
‘I thought we could find a way back to a good place. I thought we both wanted to make it work.’
‘I do!’
He presses his lips together and shakes his head again. ‘No, you don’t. Because if you hadanyamount of respect for me,you would not have concocted a bullshit story like that. I never thought you were cruel, Jess. I never saw that in you. But I see it now. And I feel as if I don’t even know you anymore.’
I begin to cry.
‘It was bad enough feeling like you’d erected a glass wall between us, that I was always standing with my nose pressed up against the window begging to be let in, but this … ? This is worse. How did you even think it was a good idea to make something like that up?’
I didn’t, I scream inside my head.It’s the most honest, the most open, I’ve been with you in all our years together. It’s the most truthful I’ve ever been in the whole of my life.
But it’s not enough.
I’m not enough.
‘Are … are you saying it’s over?’ I manage to stammer out.
He turns and paces round the room, rubbing his temple. ‘I don’t want to, but I can’t see any other option. I deserve someone who isn’t afraid to share the whole of themselves with me, Jess, who knows how to be authentic and honest. Someone I can trust. Someone who’s my teammate.’
I nod as the tears roll silently down my cheeks. ‘You do,’ I reply hoarsely.
He suddenly lunges towards me, ending up down on one knee in front of me as I perch on the balustrade. If it wasn’t some grotesque echo of the moment he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, it might even be funny. ‘Thenbethat person! Tell me the truth! Tell me what’s really going on with you – and then we can start trying to rebuild, even if it takes counselling or therapy or whatever. I just need one sign you’re in it as much as I am, Jess. One sign. Or you’re right, there’s no reason to stay.’
He stares deep into my eyes with such pain, such desperation. I know what I have to do to save my marriage.
I’ve got to lie. I’ve got to tell him I had a dissociative episode or something or just apologize for grasping at straws and making something up because I was so scared of losing him. He might not understand why I told that story, but he’ll understand that I’m drawing a line in the sand, saying we’re in it together. Forever.
But I can’t do that. If I lie and tell him what he wants to hear right now, I’ll be doing the exact opposite of what he’s asking.
I wrap my skinny fingers around his much larger, calloused ones, and look into his eyes. ‘I love you … so much. I will do anything for you. I know I haven’t always shown that in the past, that I’ve been so wrapped up in myself and my own hurts that I was conveniently blind to yours … ’
