Page 59 of When You're Gone
She gulped down her frustration. If he’d just come to her… if she could just hold him and make him feel her love… all of this would be so much easier.
She had spent all day trying to figure out what to say. How to explain what happened. How to make him understand her intentions, her clear hesitation, and how that all fit into the timeline of what Jake witnessed. But now that he was here, sitting before her, asking for her truth: she couldn’t bring herself to be defensive or try to spin it.
“I don’t know. I… wasn’t thinking, and I pushed things too far. Fielding kept trying to warn me to back off, but I just kept pushing.”
She watched as her confession landed. For his part, Rhett sat quietly, absorbing her words without reacting. When he didn’t say anything for several minutes, she continued.
“I realized where things were headed, and I started to pull back. My reaction time was just slower than normal. I know it’s going to sound like an excuse, and I know you might not believe me… but I swear, what Jake saw? That was the extent of what happened. Nothing more. And nothing else would have happened, whether he had showed up right then or not.”
She watched as Rhett bit down on the inside of his cheek, an old tell she knew meant he was frustrated, lost in thought, or both. She traced the hem of the duvet, desperate for him to say something, to say anything, but knowing he deserved time to process without being pushed.
When he finally spoke, his words shocked her to tears.
“Did you get him out of your system?”
She sucked in a shallow breath as a fresh wave of agony erupted inside her. His words cut into her and ground her nerves raw. She wasn’t just feeling her pain anymore. She had hurt him. She had hurtthem. She had been desperate for months to feel something—and now it all felt like too much.
When she didn’t answer, he pushed harder.
“Do you still need to get him out of your system?”
“Everhett!” she sobbed. “What the hell? Why would you say that to me?”
“Why would you do this to us?” he countered. He turned his torso to face her, but didn’t attempt to close the space between them. “What did you think was going to happen when I came home? How did you think I would react to getting a call that my wife was straddling another a man—a man I hate, a man I know for a fact is in love with her? You’ve been playing with fire. Tempting fate. It all stops right here, right now.”
“Ev,” she cried as her defensiveness deflated. She didn’t know what she had expected to happen when he came home. But she never expected him to react like this. His usual calm, cool demeanor was nowhere to be found. A scolding from Jake? Fine. She could handle it. She even expected it. But from Rhett? From the one person who had tolerated every bit of push and pull between them over the last ten years? She never expected this kind of response from him.
“Please come here,” she begged, desperate to feel his embrace. The weight of her outstretched arms—the weight of everything she had done—fatigued her muscles as he made no move to join her.
“No. This isn’t something we can solve that way. We need to talk, not fuck. If you don’t want to talk, then I’ll talk, and you can listen.”
He sat up straighter on the edge of the bed and hooked his ankle over his knee. He met her gaze, and in that moment, she knew he was all business. Something in his demeanor, in his body language, made her feel like this could be the beginning of the end. She sucked in a jagged breath as she prepared for the worst. Whatever came next might very well destroy her.
“I love you. I love you more than anything in this world.”
She closed her eyes and willed him to stop. She’d do anything—change anything—give up anything—if he’d just pump the brakes and give her a chance to make this right. Before she could even formulate a response, he continued.
“I’ve tried. I’ve tried so fucking hard. I’ve tried to support you. To give you time. To love you through this, whatever this is. At first, I thought it was my drinking. Then I thought it was the surgeries. But I think it’s bigger than that—I think it’s bigger than us. This destructive cycle we’re in… it ends now. We’re not doing this anymore.”
“We’re not doingwhatanymore?” she demanded in a whisper.
“Whatever this is. This version of us, where I try with everything I am to be enough for you, and you put in no effort at all.” His tone wasn’t angry. He wasn’t trying to be cruel. But his words sliced into her like shrapnel.
“Everhett, that’s not fair! I’ve come to Virginia twice this month…”
He held up a hand to stop her before she could gain any momentum. “And you couldn’t get away fast enough either time.” He shrugged, his expression not accusing, just honest. “I know you’re unhappy. I know you’re struggling. I don’t know what to do. I don’tthinkit’s because of me…”
“It’s not,” she sniffled as she tried to inch closer to him.
“But what if it is? I’ve been so singularly focused on the only thing I ever wanted for myself—you—that I never stopped to question whether the feeling was mutual.”
“Everhett. Please. Don’t do this,” she begged. He needed to stop. He needed to pause, to listen, to think about what he was saying. But he just kept talking.
“People grow. People change. Every version of me has only ever wanted to be with you, and I know I’ll be steadfast in that desire for my entire life. There’s no happiness for me without you. But if you need something else—someoneelse—to be happy, then that’s what I want for you. My desire to see you happy outweighs my desire to get what I want.”
She couldn’t believe what he was saying. He glanced down at his hands, the only tell that he was affected by any of the words spilling from his mouth.
“Rhett, he’s nothing. A friend, but nothing more. Nothing happened. I didn’t do—”
