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I sighed in frustration. “No, but this isn’t a breakup, Finch, this is divorce. My husband is divorcing me. I have to figure out a way to fix this. You have to help me! How do I fix this?”
“You can’t.”
I blinked, not expecting his answer. “What?”
He placed his hand on top of mine. “You can’t, honey.”
“Really? That’s what you’re going to say to me right now?” I asked, heartbroken.
“You haven’t known that side of love.” He stared off across the room, but he wasn’t looking at the books or walls or credenza. Finch was years away. “You give your heart to someone, hoping to Christ they take care of it, but you have no control. It doesn’t matter how much you love them, how much reassurance you give them, or how many promises they make you. Six months from now or an hour from now, they can leave. They can betray you, stomp all over that fragile thing you handed over to them, as many times as you let them, and convince you to forgive them just to hurt you again. They can look you straight in the eyes and tell you they love you, knowing damn well what they’re doing when you’re not around is anything but love.
“Or, like Travis, they can walk away because they think it’s best, and there’s not a thing you can do about it … except cry. You just cry until it doesn’t hurt anymore. That’s love. You give your heart away over and over to be bruised and shattered until one day you find someone who finally—finally—protects it.” He blinked and wiped a single tear from his cheek and then smiled. “Whew! Took me back!”
“I don’t want to cry,” I said, my bottom lip quivering.
Finch shrugged, empathy in his eyes. “No one does, baby.”
I broke down again. “Travis said he’d always protect me.”
Finch combed a few fallen strands of hair from my face. “Maybe that’s exactly what he’s doing.”
I sobbed, and then wailed, and never once did Finch shush me. I cried until I was exhausted, and then I lay in his lap while he ran his fingers through my hair and gently rocked his body from side to side.
And still, as I felt myself give way to the exhaustion, I knew this was just the first of twenty-thousand four-hundred and forty days I would cry for him, because there would never come a day when losing him didn’t hurt.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Savior
Travis
IPACED THE FLOOR FORan hour, checking my phone a hundred times, even though I knew it hadn’t rung because I’d been holding it.
Letting Abby go was the right thing to do but causing the kind of pain I saw in her eyes felt anything but right. She’d been mad at me before, but when she looked at me through the Camry’s window, it very closely resembled hate, and even though I’d prepared myself for it, Abby hating me forever terrified me.
Abby thought I’d been talking to Adam the whole time I was gone, but he’d been nervous so he said what he needed to say in thirty minutes and bounced. After that, I’d parked down the street from the apartment and sat there for hours, knowing I had a choice to make.
I thought about what prison would be like for her, that maybe she would end up hating me anyway and it would all be for nothing. Then I thought about letting her go, keeping her safe while I rotted in prison for a decade, hearing that she’d gotten married, had children, all but forgotten about us except for that one corner of her heart that couldn’t forgive me.
Just the thought of Abby falling in love with someone else after I was carted off to prison made me feel insane with rage, and it took everything I had not to down the pint of whiskey in the cupboard and go pick a fight. In the state I was in, I’d most definitely kill someone. There was no one I could talk to because I couldn’t tell anyone why I’d asked for a divorce.
Except for one person.
I said goodbye to Toto, grabbed my wallet and a jacket to stave off the rain, then locked the door behind me, hoping I’d either find Abby or she’d come home before me so I didn’t have to call maintenance to let me back in.
Walking the eleven or so miles to Finch’s apartment was going to take a few hours, so I zipped up my jacket and set out at a quick pace. Every mile or so I’d jogged to make up for lost time waiting at stop lights or dodging puddles and trucks splashing the sidewalk.
Two and a half hours in, I stopped at an all-night gas station for a bottle of water, chugged it, tossed it in the trash, then started again.
My conversation with Abby played over and over in my head as I walked. What I could’ve said different, better, but no matter how I changed it up, I knew it wouldn’t hurt her any less. I did what I promised I’d never do. Even if, one day, she understood, she’d never forgive me.
Still, it was better than knowing she was locked up somewhere during the best years of life, dealing with God-knows-what. Prison would change her, that light in her eyes would extinguish just like it did when she sat at a poker table in Vegas.
She’d get stuck in survival mode, and no one would ever get to see the side of her that hopes, that lets her poker face slip, that laughs a little too hard and smiles in her sleep. Abby deserved to keep the part of her that Vegas couldn’t touch, and the world deserved to experience it.
I sighed when I saw Finch’s apartment complex, but when I saw the Camry, I broke out into a sprint before I knew what I was doing. My eyes saw that all the lights were out, my brain knew it was nearly dawn, but my fist pounded on the door anyway.
As soon as the deep booms echoed against the adjacent buildings, I regretted it. The noise was alarmingly loud when everything else was quiet. Even the birds. Not even a fucking dog barked.
