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43
KALEB
Ioriginally wanted to keep a cool head in the best interest of getting Luna to listen to me, but now that seeing her is finally imminent, my eagerness is getting away from me.
As opposed to Luna’s downtown studio, Cassidy lives in a more traditional apartment complex in a quieter part of town across from a nice, tree-shaded park.
After giving me the address, Cassidy only agreed to give me a ten-minute head start before she came back to intervene, and hopefully I don’t have to spend too much of that looking for the right building.
As luck would have it, the sound of some kind of heel clacking on the sidewalk draws my attention to one of the buildings on the far right, and when I look, I see a leggy brunette in ripped jeans, ankle boots, and a loose white t-shirt with paint splatters. Luna pulls the strap of her bag higher up on her shoulder as she walks briskly and deliberately toward the street, and I waste no precious time. Once my brain confirms it’s her, I bolt.
“Lu!” I call out to her, and when her head turns in my direction, the look on her face is an iron fist to the gut. Her beautiful features darken, pulling together in a blended collage of heartbreak, anger, and pain. Her body starts with the shock of seeing me, and her lips squeeze together as if she’s just walked into a nightmare.
I did this, but I can rectify it.
“Kaleb,” her voice is low and broken before she sucks in a fortifying breath. Her shoulders rise and fall with several more of them as she slowly walks towards me. She shakes her head, her body stiff, as if she’s warding off some kind of force that’s trying to take over her.
“Hi, baby,” I breathe out, so relieved to find her, yet so anxious to fix what I broke.
She pauses, staring up at me before asking, “Why?”
The deep tone of her voice is cold, and pierces through to my heart.
She could be referring to a number of different things here, so I just cut to the chase. “I don’t want a divorce,” I spew out quickly, and it does make her eyes squint slightly.
“Wh… what?” She tilts her head. “You filed papers, Kaleb,” she reminds me.
“I didn’t file them, I just had them drawn up. They were never supposed to get filed or sent to you.”
Blinking, she shakes her head incredulously. “You know, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but it doesn’t matter. You sought out divorce, Kaleb, because you didn’t want to be married to me anymore. You didn’t want me any-”
“No!” I shake my head, desperate for her to believe me. “I know this is a convenient argument to make, but I swear to God, that wasn’t me. That wasn’t your Kaleb. I was so fucking messed up Luna–”
“No, don’t you dare pull the pity card, Kaleb!” She cuts me off, her voice thick with pain. “You don’t get to use your pain as an excuse to cause it for someone else!”
“You’re right, but that’s the truth, Luna.” I reach to touch her arm and she slaps me away. The action drives the ice pick deeper into my gut but I press on, holding my hand away to show her I won’t touch her again. “Between the scary as fuck eight months I went through and the damn drugs, I was all kinds of fucked up. And when I came home, things didn’t feel the same between us. It scared the shit out of me and pulled me further down into that hell I was already living.”
“Kaleb… I was there. Things were different because you were different, but I was there! I was there loving you every second, trying to help you heal and trying to bring you back!”
“I know, baby, I know. I was feeling sorry for myself like a pathetic bastard while you were doing all the heroism. It was a vile mistake. After everything I went through overseas, you were the one thing I was clinging to. I was holding onto the idea that I’d come home to the Luna I always remembered and we’d be that blissfully happy couple of friends that fell flat on our asses in love with each other. I lost my grip on that when I got blown up and expected our marriage to be the magic cure. When I came back, we were different and I hated it. We went from best friends in love to helpless loser and his caretaker, and I couldn’t take it.” I feel my throat getting choked up as I press on. “I thought I wanted it to end, but I didn’t want to feel that way… so I had the papers drawn up to see how that would make me feel. I wanted to see if having the prospect staring me in the face would tell me whether what I was feeling was real or not.”
“And you didn’t care what it would do to me, just so long as you wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore.” She juts her chin up at me, her eyes narrowed.
There she is.
“Luna, you’re the fucking toughest woman I’ve ever known – you’re tougher than I am. I knew you’d be unhappy, but I didn’t think it was possible to hurt you, not deeply, but once I realized I could, I never, ever wanted to again.”
“That worked out just great, didn’t it?” Luna’s voice is steady again as she raises an eyebrow and turns, walking in the direction of the park.
“Where are you going?” I ask rhetorically, trying to keep up with her furious pace.
“You don’t get to know that anymore,” she snipes.
Ouch… but I’ll take it.
“I deserve that, baby, have at it,” I tell her encouragingly as we venture across the street. The sidewalk then leads into the park, and I follow Luna under a canopy of deciduous trees. I take only half a second to marvel at the irony of how angrily she’s walking through such a pretty and peaceful place.
“Come on, Luna, lay it on me,” I stoke further, wanting her to unleash that fire that I know lies within. If she can just rain that hellfire down on me, we can get back to where we were. I’ll even let her smack me for making such a stupid mistake.
