This is almost like déjà vu. Being left on the floor crying, desperate, broken because of this man and he’s done it again. I crawl off the floor and onto the large sofa, curl up into myself, and close my eyes. I’m emotionally drained, mentally and physically exhausted like I’ve run a marathon.
Chris wanted me to love him. Cal apparently doesn’t want me to love Chris. It’s all too much to think about—how I ended up in a tug of war with one man. The man who is my daughter’s father, who has a shitload of emotional baggage. The depths of which I don’t think I ever fully understood until now. They’re the same person but neither of them see the other as who they are. Cal really looked at me as if I cheated on him.
How can he not understand it’s him I love—whoever he decides to call himself. I hate feeling like this and really I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t just lie here and cry. That’s not the type of woman I want Caylen to be. I may have hurt him, but it wasn’t intentional and what he’s done to me is much worse. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t even be in this situation.
If anyone should be hurt it should be me. How can he have the audacity to say those things to me? Like I didn’t wait for him for two years. Like he didn’t leave me alone to raise a child. I basically forgave him for having a freakin’ fiancée and the fact that he lied to me about his condition. I sit up and clutch my chest, the hollowness there quickly incinerating as my anger washes over and through me. Why should I lie here and cry and worry? I’ve forgiven him a thousand times over. He can forgive me once, even though I’m not even sure that I need to be forgiven.
He may be furious with me but he still loves me or he’d be gone. I head up the stairs, anger my new source of energy. I swing the door open. It’s completely dark aside from a small sliver of light peeking into the room from the window but I can see that he’s lying on the bed with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. The sight of him makes me pause, my once seething anger disappearing in seconds. This man. This man could easily be the death of me.
“You’re still here?” he says. His tone suggests it’s a joke and my dissipating anger starts to grow again. “I thought you’d have ran off and tattled to Chris’s mommy and daddy.”
“You have a lot of nerve,” I say as I plant my feet on the floor.
He glances over at me. “Oh, that’s a nice welcome. You fuck Chris and want to argue with me?” He laughs bitterly. He’s switched, the emotion pouring off him earlier has been replaced with this indifferent, arrogant sarcasm. That will make this a whole lot easier.
I walk over to him and stare him directly in the eye. “This isn’t about Chris. This is about you,” I say venomously.
“It wasn’t yesterday,” he says sarcastically as if this is a big joke.
“You’re still the same selfish jerk you always were,” I say and he begins to laugh. “You think this is funny?!” I yell at him and push his chest. He sits there, firmly planted as if it my hits have absolutely no effect on him, and I completely lose it. “How dare you!” I yell at him, pulling at him with all my might, swinging my arms as hard as I can, trying to make him feel a fraction of my pain. “How could you do that to me?” I shout at him as we begin to tussle.
“Calm the fuck down!” he says, trying to contain me. I’ve gone from helpless fool to crazy woman in the span of ten seconds.
“What is wrong with you?!” he says, covering up a laugh that makes me even more furious.
“You’re what’s wrong with me” I say, throwing fist after fist at him.
“Lauren, stop!” he says, finally grabbing me and throwing me on the bed. A second later he’s on top of me, pinning me down. I hate that he’s stronger than me, that he can contain me.
“I hate you!” I say, catching my breath, tears filling my eyes again. This man drives me insane, pulls my spirit out from the inside. For him to doubt that I love him for even a second hurts, especially when he pretends to not give a flying fuck.
“You left me Cal. You. You lied to me. I waited for you for almost two years. I had Caylen alone. You abandoned me, I didn’t have an inkling of an idea of what was going on with you and still I never gave up on us. EVER!” I shout at him and I can see his hardened expression soften but I don’t care. I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the feelings that shoot through my body at his glance. My anger’s turned into an overwhelming sadness. I close my eyes remembering how it felt to lose him.
“You almost broke me,” I mutter, not trying to hide my emotions. I’m tired of hiding them. I hid them from everyone else, even Chris. Cal, he’s the one who needs to see them.
He lowers his gaze to mine, like he’s thinking, absorbing my words. He leans down closer to my face and my entire body is on edge. His lips near mine. It’s been so long. So long since we were like this in this position. But it hurts. His eyes look into mine, almost like Chris did a few hours ago. His hands loosen their grip. Finally he sits up, freeing me from the confinement his body created as he pinned me down. I scold the part of me that wants to stay in this position. The tension is the only thing in the room thicker than the silence.
“When I left you, I thought I was doing the right thing,” he says, his eyes finding mine. They’re no longer the light green I’ve grown accustomed to over the past few weeks, but deep, dark, and menacing, like the sky before a storm.
“I left you because I knew I’d fucked up. I’d waited too long to tell you the truth and then I found out the medication I thought would fix me could actually kill me,” he says, his eyes leaving mine and finding the floor.
“What medicine?” I ask and he looks up at me.
“It doesn’t matter. It didn’t work,” he says, his voice quiet but stern. I think about what he means by the medication not working.
“You were trying to get rid of Chris?” I ask hesitantly.
“Trust me, he’d do the same thing in a second if he had the chance,” he says. A statement I know for a fact is true, which makes this situation even more messed up.
“The day I left you…” Cal pauses as if trying to gather his thoughts. “It was the first unselfish thing I’d ever done. I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know you were pregnant. I never would have left if I knew that.”
I look into the eyes I fell in love with a thousand times over and, as mad as I am, those same feelings are all still there. I sit up and move closer to him on the bed.
“Why didn’t you tell me? How could you not trust me?” After everything that happened that’s what hurts the most. He didn’t trust me to love him, to not give up on him, on us.
“Because I was trying to let you go,” he says, bluntly, his voice stern and unwavering. He lifts his head, his eyes leave mine and sweep over me, drinking me up as if he’s been dying of thirst.
“You deserved better than this,” he says, letting out a long sigh.
“Do you think I would have left you if you told me? You should have given me a choice!”
“There wasn’t a choice.”
“You’re right! I loved you. There wouldn’t have been a choice other than being with you!”