“You left me, Cal. You. You lied to me. I waited for you for almost two years. I had Caylen alone. You abandoned me without any inkling of what was going on with you and still I never gave up on us. EVER!” I shout at him and I can see his hardened expression soften a little but I don’t care. I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the feelings that shoot through my body at his glance. My anger’s turned into an overwhelming sadness. I close my, eyes remembering how it felt to lose it.
“You almost broke me,” I mutter, not trying to hide my emotions. I’m tired of hiding them. I hid them from everyone else, even Chris. Cal, he’s the one who needs to see them.
He lowers his gaze to mine, like he’s thinking, absorbing my words. He leans down closer to my face and my entire body is on edge. His lips near mine. It’s been so long. So long since we were like this in this position. But it hurts. His eyes look into mine, almost like Chris did a few hours ago. His hands loosen their grip. Finally he sits up, freeing me from the confinement his body created as he pinned me down. I scold the part of me that wants to be in the position we were just in. The tension is the only thing in the room thicker than the silence.
“When I left you, I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says, his eyes finding mine. They’re no longer the light green I’ve grown accustomed to over the past few weeks, but deep, dark, and menacing, like the sky before a storm.
“I left you because I knew I’d fucked up. I’d waited too long to tell you the truth and then I found out the medication I thought would fix me could actually kill me,” he says, his eyes leaving mine and finding the floor.
“What medicine?” I ask and he looks up at me.
“It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work,” he says, his voice quiet but stern. I think about what he means by the medication not working.
“You were trying to get rid of Chris?” I ask hesitantly.
“Trust me, he’d do the same thing in a second if he had the chance,” he says. A statement I know for a fact is true, which makes this situation even more messed up.
“The day I left you…” Cal pauses as if trying to gather his thoughts. “It was the first unselfish thing I’d ever done. I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know you were pregnant. I never would have left if I knew that.”
I look into the eyes I fell in love with a thousand times over and, as mad as I am, those same feelings are all still there. I sit up and move closer to him on the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not trust me?” Out of everything that happened that’s what hurts the most. He didn’t trust me to love him, to not give up on him, on us.
“Because I was trying to let you go,” he says, bluntly, his voice stern and unwavering. He lifts his head, his eyes leave mine and sweep over me, drinking me up as if he’s been dying of thirst.
“You deserved better than this,” he says, letting out a long sigh.
“Do you think I would have left you if you told me?” His eyes cast downward.
“You should have given me a choice!”
“There wasn’t a choice.”
“You’re right! I loved you. There wouldn’t have been a choice other than being with you!”
“Tell me this is what you wanted. A dude so fucked up he can’t even be the same person? That’s what you dreamed of for your husband?” He chuckles bitterly.
“It doesn’t matter. I love you. There isn’t a choice for me,” I say, standing and meeting him where he is.
“There’s a choice now,” he says, closing the space between us.
“What’s the choice?”
“Me or Chris?” he says and the words cause every nerve in my body to wake. My mouth immediately becomes dry and I can’t speak. That isn’t a choice. There is no choice.
“I can’t do that.”
“You can’t?!” He looks up briefly before his eyes narrow in on mine. “You chose him yesterday,” he says, dangerously quiet.
“That was different. He needed to hear that,” I say, feeling tears in my eyes.
“I don’t give a shit what he needed to hear. You fell in love with me. Caylen is my daughter. This shouldn’t be a hard decision!” He’s yelling now.
“You’re the same person, Cal,” I say, grabbing his hand, pleading with him. He steps away from me and snatches his hand away.
“If anyone knows that isn’t true, it should be you,” he says quietly and my eyes leave his. He is the same man. Making some arbitrary choice won’t even matter, it would just hurt…one of them…both of them. Oh my God, this is insane!