worth it. I’m a mess. I’m irritable and impatient. I’m bossy and demanding. And I have all these health issues. I can’t give you babies. I’m not worth it, Josh. I’m not. Another woman would be so much easier.”
“I don’t want an easy woman. I want you.” I shook my head. “Don’t you get it? You are perfect to me. I feel like a better man just knowing that I can do anything for you—make you lunch, make you laugh, take you dancing. These things feel like a privilege to me. All those things that you think are flaws are what I love about you. Look at me.” I tipped her chin up. “I’m miserable. I’m so fucking miserable without you.”
She started to cry again, and I pulled her back in and held her.
This was the longest talk we’d had about this. I don’t know if she was just too tired and sick to shut me down, or if she just didn’t have anywhere to run to, stuck in my truck like she was, but it made me feel hopeful that she was at least talking to me about it.
I nuzzled into her hair, breathed her in. “I don’t want any of it without you.”
She shook her head against my chest. “I wish I could love you less. Maybe if I did, I could stomach taking this dream from you. But I don’t know how to even begin letting someone give up something like that for me. I would feel like apologizing every day of my life.”
I took a deep breath. “You have no idea how much I wish I could go back and never put that shit in your head.”
Her fingers opened and closed on my chest. I felt happy. Just sitting there in my truck in a Burger King parking lot, I felt more peace than I’d felt in weeks just because she was there with me, touching me, talking to me, telling me she loved me. And then that joy drained away when I remembered that this wasn’t going to last. She was going to leave again, and Brandon was still gone. But it was this temporary reprieve that told me that with her by my side, I could get through anything. I could navigate the worst days of my life as long as she stayed by me.
If only she’d let me get her through the worst days of hers.
She spoke against my chest. “You know you’re the only man I’ve ever cried over?”
I laughed a little. “I saw you cry over Tyler. More than once.”
She shook her head. “No. That was always about you. Because I was so in love with you and I knew I couldn’t be with you. You turned me into some sort of crazy person.”
She lifted her head and looked at me. “I’m so proud to know you, Josh. And I feel so lucky to have been loved by someone like you.”
She was crying, and I couldn’t keep my own eyes dry anymore. I just couldn’t. And I didn’t care if she saw me cry. I’d lost the two people I needed most in this life, and I’d never be ashamed for grieving over either one of them. I let the tears well, and she leaned in and kissed me. The gasp when she touched me and the tightness of her lips told me she was trying not to break down. She held my cheeks in her hands, and we kissed and held each other like we were saying goodbye—lovers about to be separated by an ocean or a war, desperate, and too grieved to let go.
But she didn’t have to let me go.
And she would anyway.
She broke away from me, her chin shaking. “You deserve to give all that you are to your children one day. To have a little boy who looks like you who you can raise to be the same kind of man you are. You have to move on, okay? You have to.”
We were back at the stalemate. I held her forehead to mine by the back of her neck, and I was desperate to know what to say to change her mind. But there was nothing I could do. She was so deep in this mind-set. And how could I even chip away at her when most days she wouldn’t let me anywhere near her?
“Kristen, I’m never going to give you up. I’m just not. And you’re hurting me. Please stop hurting me. I need you