“Don’t,” I said immediately. “Don’t do this. It’s insulting, and I can promise you the answer won’t be whatever you’re building in your head.”
His fingers wrapped around the box, but he didn’t open it.
“I didn’t bring it because I expected reconciliation,” he said. “It was made before any of this. I ordered it before I ever took you home. You are the love of my life. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You don’t even realize it,” I said, anger and heartbreak tangling so tightly together I could barely separate them. “But saying that makes it worse, not better.”
His lips had finally lost their bluish tint, which meant I was no longer morally obligated to keep him here.
“You seem warm enough now,” I said. “You should go.”
He stared at me. “So that’s it? You don’t love me anymore?”
I rolled my eyes, mostly because if I didn’t, I might cry. “Of course I still love you. That is very much not the problem.”
The words seemed to hit him harder than I intended, but I didn’t let that soften me.
“I love you,” I said more quietly, “and that changes absolutely nothing about the fact that I deserve better.”
He rocked back as if I had struck him.
“I won’t settle for less than I deserve,” I went on. “I learned that the hard way, and yes, some of that learning came from you. You showed me things I needed to see. You made me feel respected and chosen and equal. Then, at the first real hurdle, you broke the most important promise of all.”
His brow furrowed. “I always respected you.”
“No,” I said. “You respected me right up until respecting me became inconvenient.”
He opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him speak.
He looked genuinely stricken now, and still I kept going because if I stopped, I would lose the nerve.
“Worst of all,” I said, “you had already convinced yourself that you wanted forever. You ordered a ring, planned a future. Then a real crisis happened and suddenly you decided alone that I couldn’t handle the life, that I shouldn’t get to choose it, that I should just be grateful you were throwing me away for my own good.”
I shook my head slowly.
“Do you have any idea how little trust that shows? You didn’t trust me to choose you with full knowledge. That is not something I can build a life on.”
He closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again there was no defense left in them, only the kind of rawness I had wanted from him all along. I hated that it had taken this much damage to get there.
“It wasn’t trust I lacked,” he said hoarsely. “It was courage.”
I didn’t reply.
For once, he seemed to understand that silence did not mean the conversation was his to control.
“I was afraid,” he said. “Not only of losing you to my world, but of keeping you in it long enough for you to see that all the promises I made you were things I wanted to give, not things I could guarantee.”
He set the little blue box down on the counter as if he could no longer bear to hold it.
“I kept telling myself that if I let you go first, if I made the choice before the life did it for us, then maybe I could save you from hating me later.”
The words landed with quiet force.
“Hating you.”
“Yes.” His mouth twisted, the expression close to self-disgust. “I know what I am, Emily. I know the parts of me that fit too easily into the violence, the compromises I’ll make, the lies I’ll tell myself are necessary, the blood that will paint my hands again whether I want it or not. I was terrified that one day you would turn around, look at me, and realize that loving me cost you too much. That the man you thought you were choosing and the life attached to him were never things I could keep separate for long.”
He leaned forward on the counter, not enough to crowd me, just enough that I could see how earnest he was.
