Page 114 of The Truth About Love

Her hand raises to cup my cheek. I don’t even think she realises how easy she finds it to touch me, but every time we see each other, we somehow always find a way to physically connect. It feels unnatural to be together and not touch.

“You’re grieving too,” she goes on, her voice rich with sorrowful compassion. “Your needs matter too. You can’t always live your life for others, Auden.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do.” Her thumb strokes softly over my cheekbone. “You stayed with me even when I made you miserable. After my suicide attempt, you dropped everything to come and look after me. You were going to choose your college major based on what would help your mother the most, you married a woman you didn’t love because you got her pregnant and now, you’re staying with her because you’re scared of adding to her pain even though being with her clearly makes you miserable. When will you start making decisions based on whatyouwant?”

At some point during her speech, she’d began to cry. She stops, heaving in a breath and then asks the question I know she really wants the answer to, “Why won’t you leave her and be with me?”

“Please don’t ask me that.”

“Why?” Her hand falls away from my face. “Why not?”

“Because I can’t!”

“Yes, you can.” Tears fall freely down her face, violent and relentless. “You just don’t want to.”

“That’s not fair.” I stand and clutch her by the shoulders, looking straight into her devastated eyes as I speak. “I can’t do that to her, Summer-Raine. I can’t hurt her like that.”

“But you’re hurtingme,” she yells, her voice echoing around us as powerful as the tide washing waves up on the shore below us.

“I can’t win, can I? If I file for divorce, I’ll hurt Cara and if I don’t, I’ll hurt you. There’s no situation that I can win here, so what exactly do you want me to do?”

“I want you to choose me.”

God, I can’t bear this. The pain in her voice, the questions she’s asking, the answers she’s demanding from me. It’s too much.

“I can’t.” I close my eyes, wishing there was something I could do to make this end somehow. “Christ, you think I don’t want to? But I made her a promise when I married her.”

“You made me a promise too, Auden. Or did you forget?”

I collapse back into the chair with my head in my hands.

“I don’t know what to do, Summer-Raine. This is so hard. Why does everything have to be so fucking hard?” I slam the heel of my hand into my forehead.

I hear the scraping of chair legs across the wooden floorboards as she drags her seat closer to mine and flops down into it.

She’s calmed down a little, it seems. The tears have dried on her cheeks, which are still flushed from her frustration but slowly starting to regain their usual colour. She sits beside me in silence and stares out at the sea beyond us.

My God, does she have to be so beautiful?

Sadness pours from her, so visceral I can almost see it. And when the wind rolls over the ocean, it catches in her hair and blows the strands around her face like a glowing halo of gold. She’s a weeping angel. Breathtaking, despondent and divine.

“I think of you every day,” I find myself saying, though the words flow freely and without thought. “The moment I wake up until the moment I fall asleep, it’s you who plagues my every thought. I wonder what you’re doing, if you’re okay, if you’re withhim.” I growl that last word, jealousy overwhelming me as I remember watching Max kiss her.

I’d been so furious in that moment, so broken by what I’d witnessed, that I’d immediately turned away. And then I’d gone back up to the apartment and gotten myself so blindingly drunk that I’d done something unforgiveable.

I don’t remember it. I don’t know how it started or how I even let it happen at all.

All I know is that I woke up the next morning with Cara naked and victorious beside me.

“I get lost in memories of your touch on my skin and the way you felt beneath my hands. I remember the sunsets and the poetry, the brightness of your smile and the way you used to look at me like I was the only good thing left in the world. You don’t look at me like that anymore. I even still carry that piece of lavender I had frozen into glass around in my wallet. I still take it out and touch it every time I watch the sun setting.”

I can feel her looking at me, but I don’t turn to meet her eyes. I keep talking though, just staring straight ahead into the darkness.

“It hurts me, you know? To have you so near and not be able to touch you the way I ache to. You probably don’t think it does, but it destroys me knowing how close we came to finally being together. My heart broke that day too, it really did. And yet, I can’t allow myself to wish that things were different. Because if that accident hadn’t happened two years ago, my son would never have been born. And I can’t wish for that, no matter how much pain it caused me to lose him. But that doesn’t stop me loving you, Summer-Raine. It doesn’t stop me hoping that one day, we’ll have our chance again.”

“I don’t understand,” she whispers. “Why not now?”

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