The word “fatal” hangs in the air like a noose. A sharp pain serrates me, leaving uneven cuts and bleeding memories of just how bad things were at the end. If I listen closely enough, I can still hear echoes of the clashes we had in this very room, in this closet. Angry words trapped between these walls. Miserable, enraged, helpless. I was all of those things and so was she.
And yet.
Here we are again. Arguing in this house. Didn’t I learn my lesson? I can’t stop thinking about her. I want to be with her all the time. The stupid grin I wore when we were dating and I knew I would see her—it’s back, dammit. I haven’t tried to stop these feelings because I knew it could only go so far, but now she’s asking for more.
After everything we’ve been through, when it comes down to it, I’m still the idiot who wants to give Yasmen the world. But to trust her again, enough to come home? To hand her that much of me again? I’m not sure I can give her that.
She thinks she barely survived the first time? I’m not sure Idid. Am I intact? Or just a pieced-together version of myself fooling everyone?
“I know I said I couldn’t find the love,” she continues, fresh tears sliding from the corners of her eyes. “But I promise it’s still here. It wasn’t your love I couldn’t find under all that rubble. It wasmeI had to find. I had to dig myself out.”
You don’t love me anymore?
Her answer that night shattered me in a way nothing else ever has, and as emotionally obtuse as I am sometimes, even I recognize I never recovered from that conversation.
“I know it’s a lot,” she says, voice trembling. “But I’ve learned to be honest with myself. I love what we have, Si. You know that, and I thought I could live not knowing where this would lead, or if it would ever lead anywhere, but I don’t want that.”
“What are you saying?”
“I want it to lead you back to me. Back here. I want to earn your trust again. I want to talk openly and do it better this time. To do it right.”
She stands and crosses the space between us, stopping just short of touching, but her warmth and scent tempt me.
“I’m not saying we have to get married.” She licks her lips and stares down at the tennis shoes on the floor between us. “But I want us to build our lives together again, and not because it’s what’s best for the kids or because it makes sense for our business.”
She presses her hand to my chest, spreading her fingers over my breastbone, her eyes filled and brimming over with so much love, my throat catches fire. “I want you back.”
My heart stops when she says it, and I step away from her touch as if I’ve been burned. I’m torn between walking out that door and fucking her against a wall,lockingthe door so she can’t ever get away. Making her say it over and over again.
I want you back. I want you back. I want you back.
My emotions are rioting.
Confusion and frustration.
Hope.
Fear.
I don’t need Musa’s feelings wheel to know I’m scared shitless and angry as hell, but I’m not sure I fully understand why. Not the surface reasons, but the insidious ones that hide behind my traumas and settle into the cracks of my past.
I stare at her and bark out a laugh. “So you had a pregnancy scare with a side of epiphany and I’m supposed to believe that changes everything? That night when I asked if you loved me, when it mattered so damn much, you weren’t sure.”
“Here’s what I can’t do.” She counts them on her fingers. “I can’t go back to that night and change what I said, what I felt. I can’t undo the time we were apart. I can’t unbreak your heart.”
Tears roll down her cheeks, into the corners of her mouth.
“I can’t unbreak mine, either, because whether you believe it or not, as soon as you walked out that door, there was a part of me right here”—she bangs a fist over her heart—“that wanted you back, and I’ve been fighting it ever since.”
“And it had nothing to do with seeing me with Vashti?” I ask dryly, probing. “Rediscovering that you actually did want me?”
“Did it jar me to see you with her? Of course it did, but every time I was in a room with you, I wanted you. I’ve never not wanted you. I think I couldn’t imagine saying I wanted you back because I didn’t believe you’d forgive me.”
She twists her fingers together at her waist.
“How could you forgive me when I couldn’t forgive myself? I used to tell Dr. Abrams I just wanted to feel like myself again.”
“What did she say?”