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“I’ve faced colder conditions, Caleb. I spent months in the thick of winter with no clothes or blankets. I’m not going to break. I’m not a china doll. I’m not the innocent girl you once knew!”
I hold my hands up to surrender. I know she isn’t the same girl that left here, but it’s hard to treat her differently. I don’t want to treat her differently. She’ll always be my Aria.
“He wants me, Caleb. Me. He isn’t going to stop until he gets me. Walk away while you still can. Do you think I can’t see what this is doing to you? It’s only going to get worse. I can’t watch you crumble with me. I lo…” She shakes her head and wipes tears away from her face. “I love you too much to let this hurt you anymore than it has. I walked away from us. I walked away from everything familiar to me. I did that to us. I did this.”
“No!” I take her shoulders in my hands and make her face me. “You did not do this. You can’t think like that, babe. I won’t let you take the blame for any of this. You were a kid back then. You wanted to see the world. I didn’t blame you then, and I don’t blame you now. We made our own decisions. I wanted to stay here and work for the CPD. I did that. That was my decision. The same way that this is my decision now. I want to be here for you. I want you in my life. I can’t walk away, Aria. Not now. I won’t do that to us again.”
Aria is sobbing now. Her tears are flowing freely down her cheeks, and the wind is blowing strands of hair across her face.
“There can never be an us when I’m broken, Caleb. I see the love in your eyes. I feel it when you hold me. I imagined that every day I was away from you, but now it’s selfish of me to expect anything from you. Until this bastard is caught, or he catches me, I need to concentrate on our safety.” She rubs her swollen stomach.
I take in a deep breath. “I’ll get Clay to take you back to my house. I’ll stay with Clay for the time being. I’ll give you the space you need, but I’ll never give up on you, Aria.”
“I can’t put you out of your own home, Caleb.”
“Without you it isn’t a home. Please. I’ll know you’re safe there.”
She looks down at her tummy. “I’ll go and pack.”
I nod. I wait until she’s only a few feet away from the cabin before I turn back to the water. The calmness of the water used to be soothing for my soul, but now the pain and anger radiates through my heart, body, and soul.
“How do you want to do this, Caleb?”
I shrug. “Do whatever you want, Clay. Take Aria back to my house. Either you or Chris will have a roommate for the time being.”
“So, that’s it. You’re just going to give up on her?”
I shake my head. “I’ll never give up until I find that bastard. You heard Aria. You heard what she wants. She isn’t a child. I can’t force her to do something she doesn’t want to do.”
“I’ll see you at home then.”
When Clay walks away from me, I feel like breaking down and crying. I feel alone for the first time in my life. When I was a child, I used to wish I was an adult, but now it’s the complete opposite. I wish I could go back to my childhood, because we worried about nothing. Now, the weight of the universe is on my shoulders, and I don’t know how to remove it. I’m suffocating more and more each day.
Hearing Aria’s words has crushed my heart to smithereens. I don’t know how I’ll come back from this.
