Page 57 of One More Kiss

His voice trailed off, and the room filled with what he didn’t say. With her failure.

“Go ahead and say it,” she murmured.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters,” she said quietly. “They matter. And I mattered. Somewhere along the line, you seemed to have forgotten that.”

“I haven’t forgotten a single minute,” he said, frustration and heat filling his voice. “I just don’t see the point in making the pain my purgatory for the rest of my time. Look around you Meg. Life went on. The sun rises and sets. The leaves change, fall to the ground, and are reborn again. I’m doing my damndest to not waste a minute if for no other reason than it’s a slap in the face to the children we lost who never had a chance to live it. I thought if I gave you enough time to work through everything, you might just pull yourself out of isolation and join me again, but you can’t can you? It’s too damn much to ask that you love me enough to turn back to me and away from the pain.”

Every word turned into hot barbs that pierced her aching, frozen heart. The thought of moving on robbed her of the ability to breathe. What if she forgot them? What if she forgot their faces and what it felt like to hold their bodies the one and only time she did?

How could she just move on as though they never existed? Was it too much to ask him to stay with his family? “You left me alone while you waited.”

His shoulders sagged and his eyes grew glassy with unshed tears, something she’d only seen a handful of times over the years.

“Do you remember after we lost Ellie? I couldn’t get close to you. Distraught would have been a gift, but you were like a caged, abused animal lashing out whenever I came near. You were in anguish and my reaching for you made it worse. I couldn’t make you suffer like that. I thought if I gave you enough space…” he scrubbed a hand over his face and let out a rough, tortured laugh, “I guess the joke is on me. Look at what all that space has done to us.”

“Jack—”

His chin wobbled and he shook his head cutting off her words. “Come on, Tucker. You want to go swimming boy?” he asked heading for the deck.

Tucker scrambled over skidding to a stop right before the door. He stared at her with a long look, as though he were waiting for her to come along.

As much as she loved him, Jack needed time, she needed time. Both too raw to spend another minute in the same room, they needed space so they could breathe again.

Her gut churned thinking about how little time she had with Tucker, but she forced herself to turn away.

It’s not like he would be alone. He had Jack.

The door clanked closed leaving her alone in a heavy silence. The heat that pumped through her only minutes before cooled slowly numbing her again to the pain that threatened to suffocate her.

In that silence, with no one to bear witness, not even Tucker, she acknowledged, even if only for a second, that she wished she had Jack too.

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