“Lex, baby, tell me what happened,” I plead.
A few more seconds of silence, then an aloof, “Nothing.”
“Please talk to me, Lex.”
This time, he doesn’t reply, still stubbornly locked on some invisible target. I want to help him. I want to be here for him, but if he doesn’t get out of this withdrawal phase, there isn’t anything I can do for him.
“I just drove four hours to come here and had to battle and wait for an hour to get to see you. The least you can do is look at me,” I say, not hiding how vexing I find his attitude.
A muscle ticks in his jaw as his avoidant gaze hardens. When he finally spins to look at me, the small victory is immediately tainted by what the right half of his face looks like. My hand spontaneously flies to my mouth to muffle the shocked gasp that rips out.
What have they done to him?
It’s covered with blue, purple, and yellow bruises. His eyebrow is split, a few stitches still there, and his upper lip is busted. A large part of the white of his eye is a terrifying shade of red, bloodshot by whatever blows he endured. The worst of his healing black eye is on the inner part, toward his nose, the skin dark and bruised.
“Baby, what have they done to you?” I whisper, my hand still over my mouth.
“Nothing I didn’t do to them first.” Only then do I notice the cuts and bruises on his knuckles.
“They told me you started a fight. Why?”
“Because this is a prison, Andrea. I don’t know what it looks like from out there, but from in here… It’s ugly, and dangerous, and it brings out the worst in people.”
“I thought you were doing okay. You told me you were.”
“I thought I was, too. This is why you can’t see me after we’ve lost the trial,” he explains.
“How’s that relevant?”
“I’m going to change—I already am. I have to for my survival. With every passing day, the man you love disappears a little more. I don’t want you to be there by the time he’s entirely gone.”
“I’ll forever love you, no matter who you become,” I profess, probably naively.
He shakes his head. “I need you to remember me the way I used to be, not the way I’ll become.”
“I will forever remember that side of you. But I can also love whoever you’ll become. I know you, I know whatever happened there wasn’t some irrational act of violence. What did they say to you?”
He turns away again, staring to his left. “Lex, I’m not leaving until you tell me.”
Frustrated that I can’t let it go, he gives me an irked scowl. “One of them saw you in the visitation room. His friend is getting released soon, and either I wired them money, or that friend would pay you a visit once out.”
So, that’s what happened? He lost his temper over me, fought two guys because they were threateningme, not him. I don’t even know what to say, feeling guilty for being the reason he got into trouble.
“You’re my weakness, Andrea,” he gravely continues. “And I can’t have a weakness. It’s dangerous for you and for me. It gives people a point of entry, it gives them leverage. If I have nothing, then they can’t get to me, they can’t reach me.”
“But I want to be here for you. I want to help you get through it.”
“You can’t. No one can.”
His definitive tone breaks my shattered heart into tinier pieces. I’ll never change his mind, will I? And as much as I hate it, I understand his reasoning. What happened proves I’m dangerous for him.
His family will be fine. They have their money, their security details… Kev and Eva have the means to protect themselves, too. But me, I’m just Andy. I’m a random woman he’d do anything for, an average person anyone can use to threaten him. I’m a dangerous variable in his life, one he needs to cut loose, for both our sakes.
Being pregnant would have put him through even more danger. Even our child’s life could have been threatened, and the thought makes me sick to my stomach. Maybe the tests being negative wasn’t a bad thing, after all.
Fuck, he was right. We need to stop this after the trial. We need to part ways because our love can’t become a weapon against him.
“I can’t keep coming here if we lose the trial. You were right,” I admit, wiping away a couple of tears on my cheeks.
