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I'm not strong enough.
Taking a seat on the couch,Adam comes in the room with a glass of wine in each hand. I want to laugh, but my sense of humor is dead right now.
"Are you ready to talk?" he asks, choosing his words carefully by the sound of his voice.
"I'll never be ready to talk about this, but I think you deserve to know."
"Before you start, can I ask you something?"
As long as he doesn't ask me to marry him again until I'm done, he can ask me anything. I can't say that, so instead, I nod.
"Do you love me?"
"More than you know," I reply, reaching for my wine glass out of habit. The second the sweet red touches my lips, I remember why I can't drink it.
Spitting it back into the glass as gracefully as possible, Adam's forehead wrinkles at my odd behavior.
"Too sweet?"
"No, it's fine."
"But you spit it out."
"I want a clear head right now, that's all." Lies. All lies. I really need to stop lying to him. The truth is on the tip of my tongue, yet the lies continue to spew from my mouth. Hopefully, once I tell him everything, I can stop lying.
Adam doesn't say anything, taking a sip of the wine himself. I take that as an opening to start.
"Long before I met you, when I was still in college, I was with a man named Liam. We dated for about three years. We even lived together for a while. He was there for me when my father died and my mother started dating again. Still, our relationship was a roller coaster at the end. It went up, down, and sideways most days.
"We were both scared and confused and angry. At each other and at life in general. We held onto that anger and let it tear up apart. Looking back now, we never would have made it, but until today, I had always blamed myself for our demise. I wasn't strong enough to fight for us.
"We allowed our circumstances to tear us apart, and I don't want that for us. I want us to be able to lean on each other in times of need. To be able to depend on each other. To support each other in everything we do, separate or together as a couple."
"So you do want to marry me?" he asks, sliding to the edge of the couch, ready to drop to one knee again. Placing my hand on his leg, I shake my head.
"Wait. Please. Let me finish telling you this and then you can decide if you still want to marry me."
"Nothing you tell me will change the way I feel about you, Addison. You have to know that."
"I do, and I want to believe it. Just let me finish."
Adam relaxes back into the couch, my cue to continue down the dark path that was my life.
"I used to run outside. It was my favorite thing to do first thing in the morning. I loved watching the sun rise over the houses in our neighborhood. It was like the world came alive as I ran. I haven't felt the breeze against my face as sweat trickles down my back in a while. Not since right before I left California.
"Before you ask why, I want you to know that what happened was no one’s fault. It couldn't have been prevented or avoided."
Adam's eyes find mine and he refuses to look away. Good. I need his strength right now. It might be the last time I feel it.
"I was attacked one morning while running. Two men assaulted me, not sexually, but they beat me up pretty good and stole my mother's wedding ring. She wanted me to have it after my father died, and I wore it every day. It reminded me of my father and the love he had for my mother and me.
"The men who attacked me stole the ring and were never caught. When I made it back to the house, I was emotionally upset about the ring and bleeding pretty badly, so Liam took me to the hospital. I had a bruised jaw and they had kicked me in the stomach a few times. They did an ultrasound and found out I was pregnant."
He tries to hide it, but I hear Adam suck in a deep breath.
I hope he saved some oxygen because here comes the kicker.
"Things moved pretty fast after that. Liam proposed, but I said no. His timing was horrible. I assumed he only wanted me to marry him because we were having a baby. I wasn't okay with that. Then we lost the baby. There was trauma to my abdomen and cervix from the assault, and I had a miscarriage.
"That was when I saw the end coming. I moved out a month later and back in with my mother until I finished school. That's how I ended up in Denver. I wanted to get as far away from that place, those memories as possible. I only applied for jobs in other states and haven't been back since I drove away from my mother's house."
