Page 91 of Kings Fear No One
“Babe, where are you… wait for me!”
I catch up to him as he’s wrenching the driver’s side door open. “Teysha, go back to the bike show.”
“We should talk. I promise I can explain.”
“Who says I want to hear that explanation?” he snaps.
“I really did think… I was hoping…”
“You thought wrong. You hoped wrong. I trusted that you were telling the truth. But apparently it was bullshit.”
“Logan, can we please talk about it?”
Stragglers wandering the parking lot take notice. I fumble with the door handle on the passenger side, desperate to climb inside before he takes off. I make it just as the truck engine roars to life.
But my hope we’ll talk fades away.
Logan glares out the windshield, his focus on the road. The truck swings around the street corner in a wild turn that burns rubber and makes a nearby car honk its horn. My pleas fall on deaf ears the entire drive home.
He’s retreated into silence, shutting me out. It’s like I don’t exist. I’m invisible to him.
I can’t take a breath. When I go to try, my lungs fail me. I’m fractured on the inside as heartbreak finally bursts free. It cuts deep, rocking me to my core, leaving me breathless and aching.
How do I begin explaining myself? How can I make him understand all I wanted was a chance?
I wasn’t trying to deceive him to hurt him. I just wanted to love him…
For him to love me in return.
I’m a wreck by the time we reach the apartment.
Logan spares me no second glance. The driver’s side door slams shut as he jumps out and heads up the staircase to an apartment I’d started to think of as home.
I trail behind him, feeling even sicker than before. Once inside, he finally addresses me. His tone is cold and hollow, like I’m a stranger, not his wife.
“I made it clear from the beginning this wasn’t permanent. You disrespected that by lying to me,” he says from over his shoulder. He’s gone straight for the fridge in the kitchen. “I’m guessing you thought I’d never find out.”
“You have to understand. It wasn’t malicious?—”
“I don’t have to understand a damn thing. You lied to me. For weeks!”
I flinch at the volume of his voice, feeling dazed and unprepared for this moment. The moment where I’m forced to face reality.
“Did you think I’d fall in love with you? That what you were hoping for? That we’d live happily ever after like some fucking storybook?” He’s opened the fridge to reach for a can of beer, popping the tab as he casts me a look that’s so honest and brutal, what’s left of my heart shatters. “I’ve got news for you, Teysha. Storybooks ain’t real. What’s real is what I told you from the start—this was never gonna last.”
There it is, right there.
The truth of the matter summed up in a single withering look. In five simple words.
The disappointing reality can no longer be bathed in the rosy tint of hopes and dreams. My fantasy was just that—a fantasy where we beat the odds and made this forced arrangement work. We’d fall in love like a real husband and wife love each other, like I’ve dreamed of since I was a little girl.
We’d give meaning to the vows we took even if they were empty the day we married.
But I’ve run away with these delusions. I’ve let them rule me.
I ignored the inescapable reality that my husband wanted the opposite. He wants nothing to do with me.
“I’m… sorry…” I stammer out.
