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SAVE YOU FROM ME
ABRAHAM
PRESENT
Idon’t think life offers very many second chances, let alone third ones. It hasn’t been kind to me in that respect.
I sit in my car outside of Sabrina’s house. It’s a house a rational person would choose if they were raising children. The neighborhood is quiet, the front yard is spacious, and it’s large without appearing obnoxiously so.
Although, I would likely have gone with a larger home.
I remain in my car, staring at the house I’ve seen in a picture, back when I hired a private investigator to find her. Back when I was too afraid to break up her family with my presence.
Back when I was a fucking coward who didn’t think I was good enough to be around Sabrina, let alone be a father to the child we’d created.
I still don’t think I’m good enough, but the moment I found out she’d filed for divorce, I couldn’t stay away. I had to see if my memory of her was so potent because we belonged together, or if I was just reliving a much easier time. A time where I wasn’t a complete piece of shit.
I glance up in time to see her front door open and she emerges, as beautiful as always. It’s still a shock to see her dark brown hair, to see the way time has shaped her, the way motherhood has filled her.
Her face is bare, her hair piled on top of her head, and she’s wearing shorts and a tank top. Her feet are bare.
In another lifetime, she’d be welcoming me home instead of inviting me inside the home she shared with another man. I turn the key, listening as the engine dies and I take a deep breath before I open the car door.
“You can’t sit outside forever,” she reminds me. “The neighbors will talk.”
I glance around the perfect homes surrounding hers and I shrug.
“I know, I know. You don’t give a shit.”
As I approach, I see her nose is pink, her eyes still a little watery. Her hands shake when she reaches up to tuck a lose strand of hair behind her ear.
“You’ve been crying,” I assess, wanting to reach out and comfort her, knowing that isn’t where we are right now. “Talk to me.”
She steps aside and waits for me to cross the threshold before she speaks, shutting the door behind her.
“How am I supposed to live with myself, knowing I broke him?”
The cream walls aren’t at all what I expect, having experienced a much more vibrant version of the woman who wants me to help her through leaving her husband.
“Why did you file for divorce?” I ask her, turning to look at her, to witness the truth in her eyes as she purges her past to me.
Merda,she’s perfect. She’s everything.
“I felt like a ghost in my home. He could hear me, could acknowledge my existence. But it was like he couldn’t see me.”
I want to call him a fool. I want to promise her that I’ll always see her. To tell her that I’ve been searching for pieces of her in any woman I’ve met since the moment she left. But this isn’t the time for grand words that she likely won’t believe. And I don’t blame her.
“If the price you pay for wanting to be seen is hurting him, it seems like a fair trade. After all, you aren’t asking for much,” I reassure her, trying not to overthink the fact that we’re discussing the man who had her for so long. Who got to raise the child I never let myself know.
She nods, wrapping herself in her arms. I want to hold her, to pull her arms from her body and wrap them around my waist. To kiss her forehead before bending to taste her lips. To see her every day and try my hardest to never make her look the way she does now.
I thought that pretending I wasn’t dreaming of her was the best for everyone. And perhaps the daughter Sabrina gave birth to had a better life with a stable set of parents rather than with one who traveled the world and lacked the courage to know her.
“I feel so broken,” she whispers, her eyes on the ground. “How can I raise my girls to be strong if being strong means good people get hurt?”
“Being weak hurts people even more,” I assure her, looking her in her eyes, wishing she could see the apology in my eyes. “But all this time, I thought you were the one woman who could never be broken.”
“Is that why you handled me so carelessly?”
