Total pages in book: 30
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 28781 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 144(@200wpm)___ 115(@250wpm)___ 96(@300wpm)
I touched my dark hair self-consciously, then immediately dropped my hand to my side. My body was itchy all over, my nerves a live wire as I tried to fake confidence I didn’t feel finally standing in front of the one that got away. No, the one I pushed away. “I needed a change.”
“Wow.” He laughed and covered his face with his hands. “Wow.”
“What?” I snapped.
He ran a hand through his long hair and clenched his sharp jaw until I swear his cheek twitched. “Nothing. Good to see you after a year, good to know you’re alive, maybe in order to survive this game show, you don’t block my number, abandon me, or just walk out of my life, might be smart if you want to pay off the student loans.”
Tears burned the back of my eyes. So he was going for the jugular right away, and he had every reason to. “If you knew—“
“—if? If?” He slammed his hands onto the boardroom table, sending papers scattering. In another life, this would have been a great fantasy if he didn’t hate me as much as he did. He was beautiful when he was angry, his black wavy hair fell over his eyebrows, his shirt had come unbuttoned near his sharp collarbone and his jaw was still so rigid I was afraid I’d hear his molars crack in a few seconds. He finally made true eye contact and rasped out. “If?”
“You said that three times.”
“You left.”
“I had reasons.” I shifted nervously from one foot to the other. Reasons I didn’t want to go over on day one of my first really good job.
His green eyes narrowed in disgust. “You. Left. I had no way to contact you, no way to know if you were okay, could you have at least written me a note?”
I’d panicked. People who didn’t have anxiety with a heavy dose of self-loathing didn’t get it, how could they? I’d been stuck in my own head, fight or flight, and stupidly I thought he’d found something better and that I was the failure, it was better off this way—he was better off, I was doing him a favor, I could make a list longer than Santa’s, check it twice, and still add more reasons for why I did what I did—yet none of them were actual reasons, they were excuses.
“Don’t you want kids someday, though?” He tossed me onto my back, but he didn’t understand the trauma of my upbringing, of what that would mean, of how afraid I was, so I lied.
“Yes.” I licked my lips and leaned up to kiss him. “Of course.”
And then just months later.
I was pregnant.
At nineteen.
With twins.
After nearly having a nervous breakdown, moving in with him, and being six figures in debt while both of us worked two jobs.
“Good.” His grin was easy, like life was easy, but I knew how hard it was and I could barely take care of myself, let alone two children. I’d shook through the entire appointment, all I’d wanted was to be with him, stay with him.
Afterward, I grabbed some counseling pamphlets, I was like okay, I can do this, I could tell him, right? He’d wanted kids, we could figure things out.
I’d thought all of those things until I started cramping, until they became so intense I knew something was wrong.
After accepting, I’d failed yet again at something that in my mind would have been a gift to him despite the stress I had laid in the bathroom all night while he thought I was sick with the flu.
The next day he told me straight to my face it was probably a good thing we weren’t pregnant just yet, despite our conversation about having kids, because maybe it’s better to not have the burden while we were still so young.
The very burden I took over in the last twelve hours.
One I didn’t share with him, and then… couldn’t.
He smiled, kissed me on the forehead and went to work, a week later the conversation came up again and again until finally I couldn’t stomach it, I couldn’t look at him because every time I did I felt desperate to open my mouth but I had no words, but I did have the tragic ability to panic and run away and in one instant did the worst thing I could have done to him, while he did the worst of what he could have done to me.
Chased.
“Hey,” I needed to shake out my legs before I locked up my knees and passed out. “Let’s just get this over with and try to win, okay?”
I tried to soften my tone, I even smiled a bit, he wasn’t having it, he always saw through me no matter how hard I tried to give him the best version of myself. It was exhausting and the worst part was that he never even asked that of me, I did it all on my own.