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Tears leak out of my closed eyes. I don’t like myself very much right now. My heart feels like it’s breaking all over again.
“Rae?”
I flash my eyes open as Aaron’s hands wrap around my arms. I meet his eyes for half a second before sniffing back my tears and pushing out of his grasp. I feel like I don’t deserve his touch.
Frantically, I move across the room.
Is it my fault? If I hadn’t walked out that day, if I hadn’t pushed him away, if I’d forced him to sit down and talk it all out and not allow him to break us up over something like that… would we still be together?
He wouldn’t have slept with someone else. He wouldn’t have continued down that dark path. I know I couldn’t have controlled his choices, but I was supposed to be in it with him. I accused him of walking away when one hard thing hit us. But isn’t that what I did too?
I’m going to puke.
I drop onto the couch and put my head in my hands, rocking back and forth, trying to calm myself, because I feel like I’m about to have a meltdown of epic proportions. And the last thing I need is Aaron seeing that when it’s my own damn fault.
What is freaking wrong with me?
The couch shifts next to me. “Rae, talk to me.”
Those words make something inside me snap, and the tears come hard and fast. Tears of hurt. Tears of anger. Anger at myself for letting him go. Anger at him for not being honest with me, for not talking to me even when I begged.
His warm hand finds my back and it makes everything simultaneously better and worse. He always makes me feel better. But right now, the closeness hurts. It’s a reminder of how broken we were and still are.
I stand up suddenly. Again, I want to get away from him. To melt down. To get it all out and then talk to him. I don’t want to do it when I’m a giant emotional wreck.
Oh, who the hell am I kidding? I’m always a giant emotional wreck.
Aaron’s arm wraps around my waist and pulls me back onto the couch. He grabs my face in his hands. “Tell me what’s happening right now.”
I meet his gaze quickly before looking down. “You’re right. I let you go. You needed me and I let you go. Again. You’ve always stood by me in my worst moments. You’ve always pushed me and fought for me. What the hell did I do when you were at your worst? Run the fuck away? I was so terrified of getting my heart broken again that I tried to pull it out of your hands. Then it dropped on the floor and shattered, anyway. Self-fulfilling prophecy that hurt us both. I kind of hate myself right now.”
His finger tucks beneath my chin and slowly raises it up so our eyes meet. He keeps it there, not allowing me to look away again. “Don’t hate yourself. It wasn’t like it was just you. It takes two people to fuck up a relationship.” We said that a lot in the aftermath of our big fight last year. I thought we learned from that. Now I’m realizing we didn’t do a good enough job learning from our mistakes or fixing things. Clearly, we cheaped out on materials and did a patch job, and now it’s all crumbling again. “Rae, it’s not like I made it clear I needed that. I withdrew. I hid inside myself. I stopped talking. I was lying every time anyone asked me anything. And yes, I wanted you to hold on, but I couldn’t put that into words then, and my actions sure as hell didn’t show it. Even so, you never gave up on me. You were still there for me. You’re still here for me. Like I’m here for you. I know it’s complicated. I know it’s hard. I know it frickin’ sucks. But don’t blame yourself. It won’t change anything. And it wouldn’t be true.”
I choke back tears. “You could blame me so easily, why don’t you?”
“Because I spent enough time feeling the weight of that blame myself. I don’t want you to carry that. Especially because it wasn’t just on you. The way I treated you…” He sighs and shakes his head. “We both made mistakes. We both have things to figure out. In some ways, we both need to grow up a little more. Things might not be the way we want them to be, but we haven’t lost each other.”
He wraps his arms tightly around me as tears flow like rivers down my cheeks.
“I got mad at you when you said this at the Christmas party, but not because it wasn’t true, because it’s a truth I’ve always known, one I couldn’t explain, one I felt like it wasn’t okay to feel with us not together. But I feel it anyway and I know I always will. You’re my home, Aaron.”
His lips find my ear. “Always have been. Always will be.”
“Even if the house is falling apart?”
He squeezes his arm around my side and kisses my head. “No matter what.”
I breathe out a few shaky breaths.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say.
“Me too,” he says softly.
He breathes out slowly and pulls away slightly, keeping his hand resting on my low back.
“We both have a lot to figure out, don’t we?” I ask quietly.
He rubs his hand down my back. “Yeah. But we will. And when we do, we’ll fix everything—the right way this time.”
