Page 103 of Coming Home Country
“When?” I pressed.
Her gaze dipped to her lap, where her wringing hands rested. “I don’t know.”
Those three words were all it took for the revived dream of a life together to go up in smoke.
No. Fuck that. I wasn’t giving up on us without a fight. I’d made that mistake once before, and I refused to make it again.
Sitting up, I grabbed her trembling hands. “Bex, baby. Tell me what it’s going to take to get you to stay. Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
A tear crested her lashes before carving a path down her cheek. “Tuck, this is already hard enough.”
The admission that she was struggling to leave only strengthened my resolve. “Aren’t you happy here with me?”
Bex squeezed her eyes shut. “It’s been a dream come true.”
“This could be our life, Bex,” I pressed. “Let me give that to you.”
“It’s not that easy,” she choked out around a sob.
“But it can be,” I vowed. “Let me love you. Let me take care of you. Let me make up for all the time we lost.” My voice grew thick as emotion rose to the surface. “Just please don’t leave.” I sucked in a shaky breath before I begged again, “Please.”
The word came out broken, the same way my heart would be if she walked out that door.
Pulling her hands from my hold, Bex stood. I was off the bed in a flash, and she didn’t make it all of two steps before I was on my knees with my arms hugging her waist. I didn’t care if it looked pathetic; I was in desperation mode.
“Don’t go.” I was full-on crying now. The pain of losing her a second time crashed over me.
With my face pressed to her belly, I could feel the silent, full-body sobs rolling through her. This was killing her just as much as it was killing me.
There was only one card left to play.
“Bex, I love you.”
I wanted that to be enough for her to end this torture she was putting us through, but I had a sinking feeling it wasn’t. Then, the ugly part at the back of my brain suggested that maybeIwasn’t enough for her to want to stay.
“Tucker, I have to go.” Sniffling, she peeled my arms away and took a step back.
In a state of shock, I was still on my knees when I heard the front door close behind her.
Bex was gone. Really gone. And I was a fucking mess.
I hadn’t slept a wink in the day and a half since she’d left. My chest was concave; each breath a struggle. There was a dull pounding in my skull, and my eyes felt gritty after running out of tears. But most painful of all was the ache beneath my sternum, the likes of which no doctor could fix.
Was this some kind of karmic retribution where I was forced to step into her shoes and feel the agony of having the person who owned my heart walk away?
I’d lived through hell these past ten years, but if this was what it had been like for her, I could understand why she ran, why she couldn’t bear the mere mention of my name.
I called off work yesterday and again today. Felicity was ready to strangle me after being out of the office all of last week, but I couldn’t be around people right now, couldn’t see past anything other than the vision of Bex walking out of my bedroom without a backward glance playing on a loop in my mind.
Drowning my sorrows in a bottle of scotch was a bad idea. Instead of dulling the pain, making it so I could forget, even if only for a brief time, it served to make me more depressed.
Bex had said she was coming back, but the absence of a firm return date might as well have been the final nail in the coffin of our relationship—if that’s what you could even call it at this point.
I could envision what the rest of my life would look like, waiting around like an eager puppy, praying she dropped me a few scraps of affection when she passed through town in hopes that it would be enough to sustain me until her next visit.
That wasn’t any way to live, but what other option did I have? There was no moving on from Bex. She was my endgame, even if I wasn’t hers anymore.
A knock sounded at the front door, and hope lit up my insides. Bolting off the couch, I swung it open, exclaiming, “You came back!”
