and I don’t even want it back, I just…please, don’t make me out to be the bad guy here. I’m not.”
“You’re not fighting for us,” I tell her. “Where is the fight?”
“The fight!” she cries out. “I’ve been fighting for us but there is a time when your hands are tied and you can’t fight anymore. There’s nowhere for this, for us, to go. It has to end. Doesn’t mean I want it to end, doesn’t mean it’s not destroying me from the inside out. I love you, Alejo.”
“Then don’t do this.”
“I have to. One of us has to.”
“Then this is a choice you’re making. Not me.”
“Fine,” she says, getting up and walking to the middle of the room, her hands in her hair, shaking her head. “Fine. Fine, make me the bad guy. Make me the villain in this if you need to. I don’t care. I’ll take on that role.”
I spring to my feet. “You’re breaking up with me!” I cry, voice shattering along with my heart. “You’re ending this. Not me. Just so we’re clear on where we stand!”
She stares at me, her lower lip trembling and I want to rush over to her and hold her and tell her I’m sorry. But I’m also so fucking hurt, so devastated, like she’s taken a rusty spoon and gutted me, until everything inside me that lives for her is exposed and laid bare.
“I think it would be best if you left,” she says quietly, looking at the floor.
Stunned. I am stunned. I stare at her, mouth agape, trying to understand.
“So it’s over, just like this?” I manage to say.
She closes her eyes and nods. “Yes,” she whispers. “Just like this.”
She’s actually telling me to leave? Not just that she’s breaking up with me, but that she wants me to leave.
“Please,” she adds. “Go.”
I don’t even say anything. I’m too angry and whatever I say will be hurtful beyond words. So I keep my mouth shut, go into her bedroom to grab my stuff and then I’m out of there, slamming the door behind me.
Halfway down the dark staircase to the front door, I pause, nearly falling to my knees.
The reality of what just happened hits me like a wrecking ball, plastering me against the wall, breaking me apart.
It takes everything I have left in me, my heart that still beats for her, to pull myself together and make it outside to my car.
I’ll fall apart later.
But there will be no one there to help me pick up the pieces.
Chapter 27
Thalia
Have you ever felt a loss so powerful, so overwhelming, that it literally brings you to your knees? A loss that filets you, hollows you out until there’s nothing but a gaping, black void inside, the kind of emptiness that has your hands pressed to your stomach, to your chest, trying to stop the hole from spreading?
But it doesn’t stop.
There’s nothing you can do to make it stop.
I’ve felt that loss twice before.
When I lost Grace.
When I realized my marriage to Stewart was over.
And now there’s a third time.
The third time might be the worst.
I’ve lost Alejo and the pain is so deep, so raw, so cold, I would give anything to stop feeling it.
But telling your heart not to feel is like spitting into the wind. It just comes back at you, tenfold.
I hadn’t realized, until now, just how hard I had fallen for Alejo, how much of my soul I handed over to him, hoping he would keep it safe. And the irony is, he did keep it safe. He loved me and protected my love for him. His devotion to me is pure and honest and raw. I know he would have given up his beloved team for me.
He would have given up everything.
I couldn’t let him do that.
What makes this pain that much worse is that I didn’t stop loving him and he didn’t stop loving me. I just had to make a choice because if it were up to him, the wrong choice would have been made. For better or for worse, I had to think about both of our careers.
Though now, now after I’ve been at work for a week, I realize that maybe I made the wrong choice.
Losing my job would have been devastating. Being fired would have been humiliating. Had word gotten out about us, the media would have hounded me like they did over Stewart, but a million times worse. A woman my age with a man like him? That’s