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I’m so angry that now, after all this time, he expects me to just open up because he wants to talk. And in the back of my mind, I know it’s only because of Journal, and I can’t really blame him for it. I started this by throwing it at him. “That’s where you’re wrong.” Rain pelts the side of my face, wind whipping around us. We’re caught in a stare, neither of us backing down. “I know you did but how can you say I blamed you for it? I didn’t blame you. I wanted you to be there for me and you couldn’t. You avoided it altogether and acted like it didn’t happen. Nothing is ever a big deal to you.”
He blinks quickly, his brow scrunches as he swallows hard, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows what I’m talking about.
The rain intensifies, and Noah yanks my wrist to pull me inside the barn out of the lightning. For a moment, neither of us say a word because this barn holds so many memories for us. It’s the same barn he kissed me in when I was eleven. Same barn I lost my virginity in five years later. The barn where I drove his truck through the side because we couldn’t agree on where to go to dinner. And the same barn I told him I was pregnant in.
Looking around, nothing has changed inside these wooden walls when you look around, yet everything between us feels different. I twist around, toward him, tears rolling down heated cheeks.
Noah bows his head, the weight of every memory weighing heavy on him as he shifts his stance. Placing his hands inside the pockets of his slacks, he takes a careful breath. “Kelly….”
When his eyes slide to mine, his face is contorted like he has thought about this moment so often that it consumed every minute of the last year. You can only avoid something for so long before finally, it has to be dealt with. Reality has no choice but to show its ugly face and creep through the cracks.
Anticipating his words, his reasons, I draw in an unsteady breath, pushing forward to break through the cycle. He’s right; we need to do this. At some point the argument is going to happen, and we both know it’s going to be ugly.
He holds me close, refusing to let go, his arms tight and controlling like his moods. “Let me go,” I plead, my resolve threatening to wither away. If he doesn’t let me go, I won’t be able to force myself away from him. I breathe in, missing his touch before it’s gone.
“I can’t,” he replies, his breath catching. “Don’t you see? I can’t let you go.”
Tears spill from the corners of my eyes, the arm around my waist, pressing me closer. “Maybe you should. It’d be easier on everyone.” Once I say the words, I regret them.
“Are we not worth it anymore?” he asks, eyes pleading and broken, dark and desperate for something more.
I don’t answer, and it’s not because I don’t want to, it’s because I can’t take this pain again. I can handle heartache, but this hurt we cause one another, this over and over again, I can’t do that anymore. I’ve reached a breaking point. I know love isn’t always happy and shitting rainbows and flowers, it’s messy and tear-soaked pillows at three in the morning. It’s watching the sunrise after a sleepless night of words screamed at the top of your lungs. It’s a love that claws at your chest and needs nothing more than a promise.
It’s Noah.
It’s me.
It’s this feeling right now and the look in his eyes, begging me to fight for more. He’s showing me what he has left to give. He breathes in, quick and low; his palm pressed to my cheek. “Don’t tell me to leave,” he begs, lips a featherlight movement. “Don’t tell me this isn’t worth fighting for.”
His words linger, they sink in down deep until they fester and I’m left with annoyance. “What are we doing?” I back away from him, pacing the barn, trying to control myself, but I have so much going through me, I want to scream. I wrap my arms around myself, continuing to cry as I sit against the side of the barn leaning on a bale of hay. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are… or who I am,” I mumble, hoping he hears me over the passing storm. “I don’t want to be like this anymore. I don’t want to be mad all the time.”
“We don’t have to be.” His voice comes out shattered, and his appearance isn’t any better.
“Why? Because suddenly you’ve decided it’s time to be present in our marriage instead of a ghost?”
His scowl is quick. “I don’t know what else you want me to say to you because you don’t want to hear what I have to say.”
My eyes snap to his. Had he hit his head? Maybe I threw that journal too hard. “What are you talking about?”
Noah turns and watches me, and for a moment, he lets me see just how truly tired he is of this. How completely beaten down he has become by this one thing he knows destroyed us. I want to help him and ease the burden, letting him know he doesn’t have to deal with it alone, even though for the last year, I’ve dealt with this myself, without him.
He frowns and stares at me like he wants to say something. I wait. Nothing. He swallows, his eyes intense, maybe too intense. “Will you actually listen to what I have to say this time?” I nod. I know this is our last chance—our final opportunity to salvage some good from the train wreck that has been our relationship. Noah shifts his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable, his head hung low. “Those memories I read… they hurt. No, they fuckingguttedme to know you felt that way about me and how alone you felt. And reliving everything with Mara—” His words cut off abruptly and when I look up at him, he’s crying, silent tears brought on by the one memory both of us try to ignore, but can’t. I wrote about Mara’s death, in detail, and even though he was there that night, reading it through a mother’s eyes is completely different from what a father goes through. “I didn’t see it then, and I don’t think you’ve ever seen it, but my struggle is different than yours. I’m her father, Kelly. Her protector. I was supposed to be the guy who took care of her but no matter how much money I made, or how hard I worked, I couldn’t take her cancer away and I couldn’t bring her back. I couldn’t take away your pain or mine, so I just avoided it. And I’m sorry I did that.”
I knew it had to be brutal for him to read my words but looking at his face now, the one of agony and destruction, I hadn’t realized that not only had he read my version of her dying, but he had to relive it.
“I’m sorry I threw it at you.” He flinches at my apology. “I didn’t think about it. I just did it because I couldn’t do this anymore.”
“No, I’m glad you did. It hurts that you felt alone when I was right there with you experiencing all of it too. Reading all that again, it fucking hurts.”
“But you weren’t there, Noah. Not for all of it.” He knows there’s truth there. For the months that Mara and I lived at the hospital fighting for her life, Noah was working. He had to because one of us had to be working. He wasn’t there when she was begging me to make the pain stop, or the parts when I would hold her at night and beg God to take her so she wasn’t in pain anymore. But… he’d read it. All of it, and it’s evident on his face that he had.
“What was I supposed to do? Quit my job? We wouldn’t have been able to pay for her treatments or take care of our other kids. I know you think I deserted you in all this, but I did the only thing I knew to do, and that was support my family by working. You can’t fault me for that just like I can’t fault you for blaming me. We did this together. I avoided, but you acted like it was my fault she was gone because I didn’t want to take her to the doctor.”
Immediately I’m angry. How could he say that? “I am angry, Noah. I still am. I can’t change that.”
Growling out a rushed breath, he punches the side of the barn. The old wood buckling and splintering, cracking on impact with the force of his right-handed jab, dust floating around. “I’M FUCKING SORRY!” he shouts. “I wish every fucking day it was me who was taken and you wouldn’t have to deal with the bullshit.”
“I don’t wish for that, Noah,” I assure, actually feeling worse. “I don’t want you to feel that way either.”