“I have a fam—”
“You can’t, Teddy.” Falling to my knees, I wept with all the tears he’d helped me to hold back over the years. All the heartache, crumbling my resolve into fucking nothing. Everything I’d once bottled up was now seeping through the cracks in my glass exterior.
“Tess…” His sigh wasn't a change in mind or heart. He was still determined to step out that door and never come back. “My replacement will be—”
“What am I going to do?” I spoke to the floor as I hung my head, staring at my open palms that had several half moons dug into them, all purple and red, one nail nearly broke through the skin.
“You’ll do what you’ve always done. Be the bright, beaming actress we all know and love, Tess. I’ll still be here, but in the background, cheering you on from afar instead of by your—”
“Fuck you!” I sharply cut him off, my eyes burning alongside my words. “Quit trying to make this sound so casual, so fucking simple.Youare leaving me, abandoningme.” My voice splintered as I felt myself shattering into the white marble entryway, just like the crystal vase. “After all these years...” Pause, backpeddle. “No, I’m-I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that. I can’t do this without you, Teddy. I need you here. What if—What if I beg?”
I had turned from destructive to desperate in the blink of an eye.
“Tess…”
I needed him to stay.
“What if I beg, Teddy. I’ll do anything, just—please don’t leave me behind like he did. Don’t run away from me like my father. I’m so-so alone…”
“You’re never alone. You’ve got your fans and your entourage at your beck and call.”
“But they aren’tyou!” I screamed, my voice growing hoarse from my crying and labored breaths. All I could do was whisper, “They aren’t you…”
“Alex will take good care of you. Just breathe, Tess. It’ll all be fine. By tomorrow, you’ll forget all about me.”Fine… that word. Fine…
“How can you say that?”
“Becausehopefully you’ll be angry enough after I leave that you’ll force my existence from your memory and see me as nothing more than a bad dream.” My life was the bad fucking dream… Theodore was my wake-up call that kept me from the nightmare that chased me day after goddamn day. “I’ll miss you. I truly will. But my wife needs her husband back, and I can’t keep chasing you around this city at all hours of the day and night.”
“Just… Just fucking go…” My throat was raw as I continued to stare at the floor.
Giving up, giving in.
I didn’t lift my gaze once to see if he had turned to look back at me and the mess I’d become. The squeak of his sneakers leaving the marble and the door latch clicking into place were the final sounds I heard as Theodore exited my home and my life for good.
The last thing I remembered after he’d left was screaming violently into the void of nothingness as the bandages Theodore once wrapped me in began to unravel around my heart and soul, partially healed wounds breaking open all over again.
I found myself hemorrhaging on the floor of my foyer, every last drop of my sanity spilled across the floor.
