He reached for me again, pleading with his eyes.
I looked away.
“Kat, don’t make me leave. Please talk to me.”
I closed my eyes when I spoke to keep from losing it more. “I won’t ask you to leave. Your mother and our daughter are here.”
When I opened my eyes he nodded, but looked down. “You just need time. That’s what this is, right? We’ll get through this?”
“Maybe. It’s too much right now, Brooks. I’m not trying to hurt you and this isn’t about our love. There will never be anyone but you. I know that. I need to sort things in my head before I can do anything.”
He nodded again. “So what am I supposed to do? Do I come here every day and pretend that it’s okay to not be able to touch you? Do I avoid eye contact, because looking at you is like shards of glass being driven into my eyes? I’ve waited for you, Kat. I’ve been so God damn patient. If I could take the pain away from you I would. I do anything to keep you from hurting, but I can’t accept that we can’t be together. I won’t let you push me away this time. Do you hear me?”
He grabbed both of my arms. “Look at me, Kat. Look me in the eyes and swear to me that we’re going to get through this.”
I closed my eyes and opened them slowly, feeling warm tears falling down my cheeks, one after the other. “What if we don’t?”
He shook me, not violently, but more as if he were trying to wake me from a sleep. “Don’t do this, again.”
“Brooks, what if I can’t move forward? Look at my house. A man is dead. Our love is like poison and everyone around us ends up getting hurt. How much more has to happen before you see that?”
His reddened eyes looked away, like looking at me made it all so much worse. Then, without another word, he left the room.
I heard the front door slam and a vehicle starting. It was obvious that I’d hurt him. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. That was the point. I couldn’t be responsible for what happened when Brooks and I were together. It wasn’t fair.
I fell down on the floor and began sobbing. My house was a disaster and I couldn’t even call the police to report it, because the person responsible had already met his fate. Everything was out of control and I felt like I was being sucked into a vicious black-hole with no way to escape.
Danica gave me a little while alone before she came in to help me up off the floor. Maybe she knew I didn’t want her opinions. It was especially hard for her considering that she treated me like I was her daughter. Picking sides wasn’t ever something she could do with a good conscience.
“What am I going to do?”
She helped me up and got me standing. When I went out into the living room, she helped me get seated comfortably on the couch and propped up my feet. “About what, Katy? If it’s about this house, we’ll clean it up. If you’re asking about Brooks, that’s something you need to decide. Just keep in mind that he can only handle so much rejection. Maybe instead of shutting him out, you should let him be there for you. Brooks knows you, probably better than you know yourself, right now. No matter what you’re going through, he’ll understand, as long as you don’t push him away.”
“Bobby’s dead because of me,” I said in a whisper.
“That man is dead because he made poor choices.”
I shook my head, unable to accept that she knew anything about the situation. “You don’t understand. All he ever wanted was for me to love him. I tried, and for a while I thought I did. Obviously, it wasn’t anything like I feel for Brooks, but it was becoming something to build off of. The moment I found out Brooks was alive --”
“Alive? Katy, you thought he was dead?”
I nodded and started to sob, covering my face with both of my hands. “His letters stopped. I called Melissa and hung up before they could tell me that he’d just been injured. I didn’t know they were sending him home. I didn’t have a clue that he was coming home to be with me.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and started rubbing it. “My God, I can’t imagine what that must have been like for you.”
“I felt like I couldn’t breathe. If it wasn’t for Bobby, I’d still be lying in my bed, without the will to go on. He understood how much I loved Brooks and still wanted to be with me. Granted, it was the reason that he started drinking and eventually hitting me.”
“What? He hit you?”
I nodded and cried harder. “Brooks came here to be with me, and when he pulled up at the house and saw that I was with another man and had a child, he gave up on me. I never knew he’d been here. I swear to you that I didn’t know.”