Page 7 of Follow Me
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Kel could barely breathe, couldn’t process this. “Honey—”
“Ineedthis,” she said. “Maybe it is the wrong thing, but they’ve said my meds are as stable as they’re going to be, for now. They have done all they can do for me at this point. It’s up tome. I need to behome. If I screw up, then I screw up. But it’smyscrew-up to make, not yours. I don’t need you holding on to any more guilt than I know you already feel. This is me, all mine. That’s why I think it’d be better for you to live at the apartment for a while.”
There was something different about her tone today.
Calm, but firm.
Her mind was made up.
He didn’t want to pick up the bracelet, didn’t want to put his hand on it and feel it still warm from where’d it’d been on her wrist, know that it was really there in his lap, and that this slow-motion horror his life had slid into seemed to have no bottom.
“We can’t negotiate this?” he asked, already knowing the answer to that.
She slowly shook her head. “Not this time.”
“Will youpleaselook at me?”
She hadn’t been dying her hair, and it was all brown now, a sweet brown he loved that had reddish and warm chestnut tones when she sat in the sun, a little grey here and there despite her not even being thirty yet, but hell, he had grey now, too.
Stress would do that to a person.
She’d been keeping it trimmed shorter than she used to, just below her shoulders. It hung like curtains around her face today, because she hadn’t pulled it back into a ponytail. When she finally raised her head, her blue eyes looked like bottomless wells of grief and sorrow when she finally forced herself to meet his gaze.
“Has someone asked you to do this? Talked you into it?” He needed to know the truth.
She sadly smiled and shook her head. “No. That first therapist was full of shit,” she added. “I know that. But there was one thing shewasright about. I’ve bounced around reacting instead of taking control of my life. I used unhealthy coping skills when I was a teenager, and I never learned healthy ones.
“Now, I know the healthy skills, but I’m too busy leaning on you and worried about what this is doing to you to actually work onme. If I spend my life keeping myself alive only because you’re ordering me to, that’s putting unfair responsibility on you formyhealth, and it’s taking accountability away fromme.”
“But it’s myjobto take care of you! I love you!”
“I love you, too. Before I realized how broken parts of me are, I would have totally agreed with you about it being your job.” She took a deep breath. “I refuse to turn you into Kaden, Kel,” she said. “I refuse to have you be Seth, worried about every breath I’m taking, hyper-vigilant and with your life completely on hold and every ounce of energy you have devoted to me. That’s not a healthy relationship. Maybe it worked for them, but it doesn’t work for me. I can’t handle that guilt.”
“That’s not your—”
“Yes, itis, Kel.” She blew her nose. “Itismy decision to make. Igetit, what Leah went through in her life is totally different than what I went through. I don’t fault her or Kaden or Seth. What they have works forthem, and more power to them. ButIcan’t live like this anymore. Either I need to make it, or…” She shrugged. “I’m done.”
It felt like he’d stepped off a cliff over a bottomless, black abyss and just hadn’t started the fatal plunge yet. “No,” he said. “Idon’tagree to this. I won’t leave you.”
Her sad smile gutted him. “I’m still your wife. I still love you. But I’m killing both of us at this rate, and that’s guilt I cannot bear. I need to try something different. If I can’t do it on my own, you trying to manage everything I do will kill not only your soul, but our marriage. I want to be your wife and your slave, and I want to figure out how to live. But I’ve let you carry this weight for too long and it’s time for me to do this.”
Susan looked rattled, and that scared Kel even more. “Mallory, I don’t agree with this plan. I think it’s a mistake to check yourself out at this time.”
She motioned at Susan. “I’m pretty sure a lot of you aren’t going to agree with this. You can keep monitoring my case through Niall, Doyle, and Doug. I’ll set up a series of appointments with you and my medical team, if I need to. I’ll drive up, and—”
“You can barelywalk!” Kel said, beyond desperate now. “How are you supposed todrive?”
She steadily met his gaze. “Then I guess I’ll need to get my act together, won’t I?” Her quiet, calm tone terrified him.
It almost felt like the more he tried to protest, the stronger her resolve grew.
“Can we at leasttalkabout this? Or, okay, you want to come home? Then come home for another visit, or start coming home on weekends, and let’s see how it goes, and we try working on thingstogether, huh?”
“Have you talked to Ted or anyone since I lost the baby?” she asked. “I mean, more than just once or twice? Outside of our joint therapy sessions. Have youreallyworked on processing losing her?”
Heat filled his face. “This isn’t aboutme.”
