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My eyes narrow. “I’m not in a cooperating mood.”
“I can see that.”
He loses the battle with his smile then. His deep-set dimples taunt me.
“So you’re upset about how I acted back there at the gallery? Should I tell you that’s absurd, or would that only piss you off more?”
My hands reach up toward his chest so I can push him away, but instead I fist the fabric of his shirt, using it to tug him toward me.
“Leave me alone.”
“Elizabeth.”
“What? What do you want me to tell you? The truth is I’m just so frustrated and I can’t tell you why. So leave.”
“Why can’t you tell me?”
“Because everything is a jumbled mess inside my head.”
One of his hands leaves my waist so he can brush my hair off my face. His hand slides back over my scalp so that my head naturally tips toward him. When he has a grasp on the nape of my neck, he stares down at me, his eyes flitting back and forth between mine.
“What are we arguing about here, Elizabeth? Do you think I liked finding you in that room all alone with Olivier? Do you think I didn’t see red when he flirted with you right in front of me? Just because I didn’t act jealous, doesn’t mean I didn’t feel it.”
My heart clutches his confession like it’s some grand romantic gesture of love, pounding in my chest as I stare up at him. I adore you, I want to say. I find you so utterly captivating. Infuriating. Handsome. The epitome of everything I want in a husband.
My lips part and those words are on the tip of my tongue, but they never leave it. They’re never voiced. Fear is quite a toxin. Once it poisons the blood, it lays claim to every action. Fear keeps me from telling Walt the truth. Fear has me pushing him out of my room, telling him good night, and shutting the door to keep him out.
Fear is a defense mechanism I can’t seem to part with. It’s a relic of my early childhood. As the second oldest in a family with nine children, I’ve never felt particularly needed or valued. My mom gave birth to my brother only eleven months after I was born. With Charlotte as the oldest daughter and Jacob as the firstborn son, I fell into a deep chasm between them. From there, it only got worse, sibling after sibling joining the ranks. Nanny after nanny was added to the repertoire of people coming in and out of my life. I felt alone in my full house the same way someone feels alone in a crowded room. It was so easy to be overlooked and forgotten because I didn’t carry any superlatives that caught my parents’ attention. I was never the loudest or the meanest or the nicest or the smartest. I didn’t go out of my way to seek affection, and in return, they gave me space.
My tendency to distance myself from the world around me meant that even in school, I was never the person with the most friends. It’s relatively easy to be a ghost. In fact, it’s much harder to shirk off that tendency once it becomes second nature.
But I thought that might all change when my mom called me out of the blue, pleading for my help and asking me to marry Walt. The small child inside of me, the one so desperate for her mom’s love, leapt at the chance to be vital. Here, I thought, this is the way she and I will finally connect. Our bond will strengthen now. Unfortunately, that childlike hope was dashed when she and my sister came to town to shop. At dinner that night, I realized I was no more important to my mom than I’d ever been even with my new last name. To her, I was a means to an end.
Something else happened that night though. Unexpectedly, Walt was by my side, comforting me. When I cried and told him about my family, he stayed and listened, and my heart stupidly decided there was still the possibility that maybe he, out of everyone on this earth, understood that I needed someone to want me unconditionally, to love me without cause.
On one hand, I didn’t even realize how much I’d become attached to him because it happened so gradually. And on the other hand, I’m not surprised in the least to find myself in this position: in love with a man with whom I’ve been playing house. Of course I’ve looked to him as my savior because he’s been one in so many ways.
It’s the culmination of all these underlying issues, love mingling with hope mingling with despair, that made it significantly more difficult to hear him speak about our divorce to Matthew in the library so flippantly. The casual way in which he discussed dealing with me—as if I was another item on his checklist—left me feeling like that small child again, completely alone.
