Page 37 of Before Broken Vows

I'm going to get answers. I don't care if it turns into another fight. I'll take anything over this fog of uncertainty. Because this limbo, this hollow purgatory she's dragged me into, is killing me faster than any bullet ever could, and it's making me let my family down.

And I have every right to demand answers.

Four fucking years. Not a word. Not a goddamn text or call.

And now she's walking around my house, sleeping under my roof, making coffee in my kitchen like she hasn't been gone at all.

For a second, I wonder if she's awake. Then I scoff to myself.

Of course she is. I just saw her light on.

And she never slept much either—especially when something was bothering her. Like when she thought I wasn't going back to Chicago with her when we first started dating. She didn't tell me, she just didn't sleep for two days, worried. I thought she was crazy when she finally told me. I told her I'd follow her to the ends of the earth. Cliché thinking back, but it was the truth.

Now?

I force myself to stop thinking, afraid of the answer.

I reach her door and stop.

I raise my hand, ready to knock. Ready to demand every answer she's buried, and then, I hear her voice from inside.

"Hey," she whispers.

Who the fuck is she talking to at this hour?

I freeze, my knuckles an inch from the wood. I shouldn't listen. This isn't who I am.

But with her, I'm not myself. I never was.

"I know," she continues, her voice soft. Tender. "I miss you too. I'll be home soon, don't worry."

Something cold and vicious wraps around me.

Home? Home?

I miss you too.

My hand drops to my side like it's made of stone and the air leaves my lungs.

She disappears from my life and she builds a home somewhere else. With someone else. Someone she misses. Who misses her.

Someone who isn't me.

I lean closer, listening because I have to.

"I just need a few more days. I promise. You know I love you."

My chest constricts, rage rising like a tide behind my ribs.

She used to say that to me, too.

In the morning. At night. Once, in a traffic jam on Lake Shore Drive when I was about to lose it, she just leaned over and said it like it was an anchor.

I love you.

And I calmed down. Like an idiot. Like a man who believed her.

There's a long pause, and then, "Yeah. I just need a few more days. No, he doesn't suspect anything yet."