“I love you, too.” He reaches out, brushing a thumb against my cheek. I fight leaning into it, but I fail. I find comfort in his caress. “You can tell me anything, Tate. You know that, right?”
“You deserve to be a dad, Fletch. You deserve it more than anyone in the world. I mean, seeing you last weekend, you’re a natural. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that happy.”
His brows pinch together, and his hand falls from my face.
“Tate, we’ve talked about this, okay? I want to be withyou. And I’d never make you have a family if you didn’t want one. I was happy for my brother, but—”
“It wasn’t just that.” My eyes soften. “I saw it in your eyes. It was quick; if I hadn’t been paying such close attention, I would’ve missed it, but there was a moment when I saw the shift. I saw you look at me and then at that baby, and you realized that’s something you were never going to have if you stayed with me. And it was such a blink-and-you-miss-it moment, but I think I saw it for a reason. Because you deserve that, Fletch, and I’m preventing you from having that.”
He stands up and shakes his head. “Tate, you’re not preventing me from having anything. Ichoseto stay. Ichoseour relationship, knowing that you didn’t want to have kids.I—”
“You chose our relationship on the off chance that I might change my mind,” I argue, jumping to my feet. “And what if I don’t? I don’t want you to constantly wonder what your life would have been like if you had let me go. If you had chosen a family over me.”
“Youaremy family, Tate.”
I take a step toward him, reaching for his hands.
“And you’re mine. Which is why I can’t let you give up the one thing you want. I don’t want you to resent me in ten years or twenty when I’ve gotten everything I want, and there’s a piece of you missing where kids should be.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “No. This isn’t fair. You don’t get to make this decision, okay? I won’t let you. Yes, I’ve always wanted kids. I’ve always wanted a big family because that’s all that I knew, but I always wanted that withyou. So, if we don’t have kids, we don’t have kids. Fuck, it’s not the end of the world. Our family will still be a family, just a little bit smaller than I always imagined.”
I lift my hands to clasp his face, brushing the tears off his cheeks that are slowly sliding down. I press my lips to his.
“Can you promise me you won’t resent me if I don’t change my mind?” I whisper. “Can you promise me that our relationship won’t fall apart over this in the future?”
He doesn’t respond.
He knows he can’t promise me that.
And I don’t want him to promise me that. I want him to get everything he wants in life. I want him to have the house, the picket fence, and the kids filling the backyard.
I want him to have everything he has always dreamed of because he deserves it. He deserves it more than anyone I know.
His head falls, and now the tears are really beginning to fall. I lift his head up to look at me and force a smile.
“It’s okay, Fletcher, it’s okay. You aren’t losing me. I’m not going anywhere. You’ll always be my best friend. You’re always going to be the person who gets me better than anyone. The first boy I ever loved. The first person who ever made me feel truly seen. The boy who will forever have a piece of my heart. We don’t lose each other just because we aren’t together.”
He sniffles, using his middle finger and thumb to brush the tears out of his eyes.
“Where do we go from here?” His voice cracks. “Like, what does this mean?”
His eyes are red, already becoming puffy from the tears he’s no longer able to hold back. He’s looking at me in a way I’ve never seen him look at me. Like every emotion in his body is fighting for control. He wants to be angry with me for ending it, but he’s sad about what this could mean for us. But he also understands that I’m doing this for him just as much as I’m doing it for me.
“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Maybe, one day, if we’re lucky, we’ll find our way back to this. Maybe one day our timing will finally be right.”
I roll my bottom lip into my mouth so he can’t see it tremble.
I’ve been fighting this for days because I don’t want this to be over. I don’t want to lose the love of my life, but it’s not fair to him if I hold on just for me. If I let him give up something so important to him because it’s not something I want.
I could’ve brushed this under the rug. I could’ve left that conversation for the future, but then all I’d be doing is wasting his time.
I know I won’t change my mind.
I know where my priorities lie, and I won’t have a kid knowing I won’t be any different than my mother if I were to have one.
It’s not fair to them.
Maybe they’d be lucky and find a family like I did, but I would never put a child through the pain of not feeling worthy of love. Of not feeling good enough.
