Worth the Wait (McKinney_Walker #1)(51)
“If you think I’d suggest this as a way to make my life easier, then you don’t know me at all. It was a suggestion,” she said. “Something I think could be good for her, nothing more.”
Roughly, he gathered up his papers. “I’m not talking to you about this.”
“You’re not talking to me about anything. This is hard for me, too,” she added more softly. “I was late picking her up.”
He didn’t look up.
“I was late and it’s my fault. That’s what you want to say, isn’t it?” She finally said it, that thing that was like black mold growing all around them.
“I didn’t say it.”
“But you think it. I know you do. I can see it in your eyes.”
“If you see something in my eyes, it’s the memories of walking into that basement and finding…”
He scrubbed his hands over his face again, and again she regretted saying anything. There were just times she felt like she couldn’t breathe in their world of never saying anything. When was the last time they’d really talked? She couldn’t even remember.
“What do you want from me, Mia? What? I’ve got Hannah. Work. You.”
“Me? I shouldn’t be something you have to deal with, Nick. I should be someone that takes some of that load. I don’t want to make things harder for you.”
“Then don’t,” he said evenly, looking right at her.
He wasn’t emotional, wasn’t yelling, didn’t blurt it out like someone did without thinking. And another piece of her heart broke off and fell at his feet.
What was happening to them? What could she say to make it better? She tried to breathe, willing herself to hold on, give him time to apologize or at least reassure. He did neither.
She wondered if Nick had divided his life into before Hannah was taken and after. If there was a stark demarcation line and if she sat solidly in his before. When she was finally able to speak, her own words sounded hollow and far away. Sad and weak, two things she’d never been with Nick. “I’m not even sure you want me here anymore.”
“Of course I want you here.”
He spit the words at her, like the suggestion was just one more annoying problem. “No. I don’t think you do, and I don’t know how much longer I can be here feeling like you don’t.”
His dark head was bowed, a pen still in his hand, but he wasn’t writing. She wanted to cradle him against her. Wished he would let it all out and let her hold him, let her love him. And that was another pain. Not just that she didn’t feel like he loved her, but like he no longer wanted the love she would give him.
Seconds passed, and he stood, grabbed his travel mug, his keys. He was leaving.
“No.” She held up one shaking hand. “Don’t go. Not this time.” It crossed her mind that all this time, maybe he hadn’t been running to work to keep his mind busy but to get away from her. “You don’t have to leave your own house. I’ll go.”
She turned and set the knife and cutting board in the sink. Her heart was pounding so hard, she laid a hand over her chest. For a minute, no one moved and she was certain he’d come to her, say, “I’m sorry, don’t go, I haven’t been myself, you know I love you, you know I need you.”
He didn’t. With a slow and shaking hand, she reached for her keys on the counter. The blood rushed in her ears. And still she waited, her feet refusing to move. The wall had been there, growing taller, thicker, higher. Then in the biting silence she heard the door in that wall close, the bolt slide through the lock with a reverberating finality.
She wanted to scream against it, fight it. It wouldn’t end like this. It wouldn’t, couldn’t end at all.
When she couldn’t stand it any longer, she walked out the door lightheaded, heartsick, ears straining to hear him coming after her. All the way to her car telling herself this wasn’t the end.
Chapter 18
Present day…
THREE WEEKS AFTER THE fateful morning at Nick’s, Mia walked into Norfolk’s favorite pizza joint for a girls’ lunch. She’d cried more over Nick Walker in the past three weeks than she had in the past nine years. Nothing could catch up to the amount she’d done that first year without him.
Heartbroken all over again, she lay in bed at night, reliving all the years they were together, slipping right back into the past like it was yesterday. All the time and energy she’d poured into getting over him now seemed worthless. That made her cry even harder. Would she never get over the man?
What had she been thinking going over there? That she would get some kind of closure? That things were different? Had she been so desperate to see him, to touch him, that she had no damn sense of self-preservation?