Page 139 of Say My Name

“I know.”

The quiet answer makes this worse.

She knows I’m nothing like the man who taught her to expect those things. He broke something in her I don’t know how to fix.

She still can’t imagine a future where I stay.

My hand scrubs at my jaw. I look toward the table. The laptop sits between our chairs with an entire life mapped out inside it. Leave schedules. Custody plans. Two addresses.

She has accounted for every practical variable while leaving our relationship out of the future.

“I can’t keep doing this,” I say.

Her arms fall to her sides. “Doing what?”

“Being useful enough to fill every place in a relationship while you refuse to admit you want the man who fills them.”

Her lips part.

“I come when you call. I stay when you ask. I sit beside you at appointments and ask questions about a child we’re trying to create together. I have dinner here without a reason. I wake up with you in my arms and spend the next day pretending it doesn’t change anything because you’re scared of naming it.”

“You said you understood.”

“I do understand.”

“Then you know I need time.”

The old answer is on my tongue. Okay. I swallow it down. “Take as much time as you need. I’m done giving you pieces of myself to fill it.”

She flinches, and I hate that I put that look on her face. It doesn’t change what I have to do.

“I accepted that you weren’t ready last month,” I continue. “I never agreed to become temporary while you worked out how to remove me from the rest of your life.”

“I’m not removing you. We would be raising a child together.”

“In separate homes.”

“That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t matter.”

“I don’t want to matter as the man who arrives with an overnight bag and leaves according to your schedule.”

“I never said that’s all you would be.”

“You won’t tell me what else I am.”

Her eyes shine, but she blinks before the tears can fall.

I’ve seen Elena angry. I’ve seen her defensive, embarrassed, aroused, terrified, and so open beneath me that she had nowhere left to hide.

I watch her understand that she might lose me. The realization dawns in her eyes, and the sight of it nearly breaks me.

Every instinct I have tells me to cross the room and erase that look from her face. I want to postpone this, give her another month, another excuse to choose silence while I keep hoping.

That is how I ended up here.

By wanting enough for both of us, I’ve let her call me useful and pretend she wants nothing at all.

“So what happens now?” she asks.