The Blessings of the Animals: A Novel - By Katrina Kittle Page 0,9
word commitment made him mute.
Cami showed him her arm where that son-of-a-bitch horse had bitten her. He knew the blue and red welts should evoke something in him besides exasperation for her carelessness with her own body. He hated when she was hurt—it made him feel sick—and she hurt herself all the damn time. He knew he should get an ice pack or suggest they go get an X-ray—it really did look like her goddamn arm was broken. He almost took that as an out—a trip to the ER—but he knew she’d think the delay of this moment, once she knew what the moment held, was unforgivable.
“I need to tell you something important,” Bobby managed to say. There. He could do it. He could speak. The words were out there in the room. There was no turning back now.
Her face was curious. She leaned forward and grinned. “Is it what I think it is?”
Not likely. Christ. He didn’t want to humiliate her. He would cut off his damn arm not to have come to this point if he believed it would save them.
He opened his mouth and said the words he’d been dying to say for months: “I don’t want to be married anymore.”
This smile curled up her mouth like she wanted to laugh. Oh, shit. She didn’t believe him. But he watched it dawn in her face as she studied his. She was blindsided. But why wouldn’t she be blindsided after that pile of bullshit he’d told her yesterday? “Are we okay?” she’d asked him. He should’ve told her then. But he hadn’t been ready. He’d still been trying to convince himself, still believing, even yesterday, that maybe he could change his mind and stay.
He clung to his scripted words. “You know I’ve been unhappy for a long time, Cam. I know I’ve been hard to live with lately.”
She looked so . . . wounded. He’d never seen her look hurt. She got physically hurt all the time, but that didn’t stop her. He’d never seen her look like she actually felt a wound, like she did now. She wore no makeup, which is how he loved her face the most. Her hair and clothes were stuck to her with rain, and she probably didn’t know or care that blood was seeping through the left leg of her jeans. She’d smudged mud on the quilt Ma had made for them on their third anniversary.
“I think I should go away for a while,” he said, “and then we should talk.”
She shivered, fidgeting with a loose thread in the quilt.
He remembered them making love on this quilt when they first got it, this ugly quilt they’d relegated to the guest room. Ma had accidentally left a pin in the fabric that snagged a streak of red—like a cat scratch—on Cami’s left hip. He’d run his tongue over that scratch. Her warm skin, her vanilla smell, rose up in him. What am I doing? Why would I leave you?
She kept pulling on the damn thread. “We should see a counselor.”
For a second, he considered what she said—a reasonable request. But it took only a second to see what would happen: they’d cry, then they’d have sweet, careful sex and they’d tiptoe around each other and nothing would change. Bobby would still dream about drowning. “I don’t want to see a counselor. I don’t think there’s anything to do. It’s too late for us to—”
“Too late? But you just told me.”
He stood and picked up his gym bag. “I’ll call you in a few days.”
She sat up straight on the bed. “Whoa. Wait. You’re leaving right now?”
What the hell? Did she think he was going to sit here in this house after he’d told her this?
“Don’t go, Bobby. We can figure this out. We can make things better.”
This strangling sob came out of his throat. Then another. He hit the door frame with his fist; the pain felt good. “Shit. I’m sorry. Aw, fuck.” He was lost, crying big, back-shaking sobs. He knelt beside where she sat, hugging her shivering legs, burying his face in her knees.
She put her hands in his hair and said, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” as if she were talking to a crying Gabriella. Her comfort felt so familiar that he thought I’m crazy. Just stay. You can get by on this. But he knew it wasn’t true.
How could he tell her that for more than a year he’d dreamed about drowning? Terrifying scenes that had him dreading bed