Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116708 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I’d long since tucked my wedding band into the darkest depths of my closet. And even still, that was sometimes too close.
“Talk to me,” she urged.
I pulled my hand away. I couldn’t speak, my throat raw from the screams that had woken me out of a fitful sleep every night that week.
Besides, there wasn’t anything left to say.
Not a single word that left my lips would change the facts of how gravely I’d failed her.
I kept my gaze down, the seconds stretching into minutes.
She needed comfort, to be held, to be reassured she’d find a way to mend her broken heart. But I was broken too—past the point of repair—so I didn’t have those promises to offer her.
Her pain eventually turned to frustration, or anger, or…I don’t know, everything in between.
“Say something, dammit!” she roared, pushing to her feet.
My head snapped up on instinct, and just as I’d feared, tears poured from her eyes, igniting my soul like a match to a pool of gasoline.
She carried a pain so heavy it distorted her face as she leveled me with a glare. “You’re not doing this to me. Not today. Get your ass up, go get dressed, and let’s fucking go.”
“No.” My voice was hoarse, the word barely more than a croak, but the way she flinched, I might as well have screamed.
“What do you mean, no? This isn’t optional. Get up.”
I shook my head.
“Get. Up.”
I scrubbed a hand over my face but made no effort to stand.
“You know what? Fine. Just like always, I’ll do it my-fucking-self.” With mumbled curses, she stomped down the hall into a bedroom that had once been ours. Reappearing a few seconds later with my suit in her hand, she threw it onto the couch beside me. “Put it on.”
I had no intention of wearing that death suit, but she didn’t give me a chance to refuse before she started tearing my T-shirt over my head. Her hands were rough as she struggled to shove my arms into the sleeves of the white dress shirt.
I didn’t fight her, but I didn’t cooperate, either. “Gwen, stop,” I rumbled.
Using her body, she tried to wrestle it around my shoulders. “You’re not fucking doing this to me. Not today. Put the Goddamn shirt on!”
“Gwen, stop,” I repeated, attempting to catch her frenzied hands, but she was a swirling cyclone of grief.
“You can walk away from me. Abandon me. Feed me to the wolves during the most difficult time of my life. I don’t care anymore. But you are going to this funeral even if I have to drag your ass there myself.” Giving up on my shirt, she snatched up my slacks and then went for the waistband on my sweatpants.
Losing all patience, I shot to my feet. “Stop!”
“I can’t!” she screamed back, only inches from my face. Dissolving into a fit of sobs, she collapsed to the floor, wedged between my couch and coffee table. Wails tore from her throat, her shoulders rolling with gags.
And all I could do was stand there staring at her, knowing it was all my fault.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out, tears streaming down my face.
“Bullshit. You wouldn’t do this to me if you were sorry.”
“Gwen…”
Sobs racked her shoulders. “I hate you. I hate you so fucking much. I wish this was your funeral instead.”
“I do too!” I exploded.
Her head popped up and she stared at me for a long second, her chest heaving, her bloodshot eyes swimming with tears. “You coward.”
I jerked from the verbal blow, but she wasn’t wrong. “You think I don’t know that! You think I don’t live with that knowledge every fucking day of my life?”
“I don’t know anything anymore, Truett. Least of all you.” With that, she drew in a shaky breath and climbed to her feet. Her hands shook as she reached down to her wedding rings, sliding them off with a finality that crushed me. Holding my stare with a disdain I would never forget, she dropped them, one by one, onto the floor at my feet. “I would have loved you for the rest of my life. But, now I will hate you for the rest of yours.”
She turned on a toe, walking the long way around the coffee table so she didn’t have to pass me.
My body screamed for me to stop her, to beg her to make this nightmare end as only she could, but my feet never budged.
The door swung inward, and from my spot in front of that godforsaken couch, I watched as she stepped into the sunshine, her head held high in false bravado, taking every happy memory this home had ever held with her.
I told myself to open my mouth and say something, any fucking thing before I lost her forever.
Don’t go.
I need you.
I’m so fucking sorry.
But, much like myself from that point forward, those words stayed locked inside.