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Not to mention that I will never again have to clean up after a man who would have let me run myself into the ground before he ever got off his ass to help me.

My life was a lie.

And I can’t even completely blame Owen for that.

I was lying to myself, too. Fabricating a story that made all my choices make sense, that made them all worth the sacrifices I was making. God, I can’t even remember the last time we went on a real date or acted like a couple. Even calling us roommates would be a stretch. I was his maid, his chef, his bank and an easy lay whenever the mood struck him but nothing more.

It’s fucking pathetic.

And I have no one to blame by myself.

Except for her, maybe.

The thought flits through my mind and I shake my head as I let out a sigh and drop into one of the kitchen chairs.

No.

It would be easy to blame my mother for this and God know she deserves some of the credit for the fucked-up ways I learned to survive.

But I’m an adult.

And it’s time to own my shit.

I focus on the phone in my hand again. There is a large part of me that just wants to delete everything and be done with it. I mean, nothing in these messages will convince me to come back.

But I’m also curious as hell what he found to talk about when I could barely get two fucking words out of the man.

“Fuck it,” I mutter as I press play on the first voicemail.

“Len…Lennon… You can’t… You can’t leave me like this.” His speech is slurred and disjointed.

Jesus.

He was drunk when I left last night but he wasn’t this drunk and this message was left shortly after I left. What did he do? Chug a few more beers to cope with me leaving him or did he bust out the hard stuff that he always said he was saving for a rough day?

“How could you… do…do this to me… Len? Af-after all the time we’ve been to…together…you’re just going to walk out on me?”

I grit my teeth and force myself to take a breath. How dare he insinuate that I’m doing something wrong by finally choosing me and walking away from him after everything he put me through.

W-we were gonna… get married, baby. And now w-what? I’m… I’m just supposed to…move on with m-my… life? It’s b-bullshit.”

I shake my head and whisper into my empty apartment, “No, it’s called consequences, Owen.”

“I ha-have the ring, L-Lennie,” he says and I swear I can feel my blood begin to boil. Oh, how he loves to dangle that carrot in front of me - the ring, the marriage, the babies, the life. But hearing it now, the thought repulses me.

“It’s here in… in my hand. I’m l-looking at it… a-and thinking about how good it’s gonna…gonna look on your finger, baby.” He makes a sound, something between a hiccup and a sob, and although I know it should strike a chord in me that someone I care about is hurting, I feel nothing.

Does that make me awful?

Do I really care anymore?

“We…we had a whole l-life planned… planned out, baby. We were gonna…g-get married and have babies… you are gonna be s-such a good mama…mama to our babies…”

Nope.

I’m done.

I pause the voicemail, refusing to let him say another goddamn word. There is nothing worse I can imagine than getting married to this man and procreating. There is a boulder of dread in my stomach at just the thought. Not only would I be responsible for him and whatever mess he made throughout the day but I would also have to figure out how to take care of our kids and still work enough to pay all the bills on top of that?