Part of me will always wish for this, I think, Connection or no.
But the rest of me knows the truth. Knows that I’m better off with Jonah, that Jonah’s the one who completes me. Not because of our Connection, not because we’d met as kids, but because he is the one I choose to spend my life with. The one I choose to love. I’d tried to live without him and failed miserably. Tried to live without both of them, actually. And while the pain of Kellan’s absence tore through me like the ulcers that once festered within, it was never anything like that of Jonah’s.
I don’t want to live life without my husband.
We’ve walked away from each other so many times, Kellan and I. Now I just need to let him walk away one last time so he can fly free toward his happiness. I need to finally let go.
Jonah eventually comes home that night, crawling into bed next to me without any words. I don’t say anything, either. He just wraps his arms around me, pressing his face into the back of my neck, and we lie there together in the soft silence of night, two halves fitting together seamlessly as our hearts break at the same time.
Now that light spills out across the sheets, Jonah says to me, “I can’t change his mind.”
Dark smudges ring his eyes; his sleep was just as poor as my own last night. “I listened in,” I admit.
A hint of a smile surfaces for the tiniest of moments. “I figured you would.”
“I’m so sorry, Jonah,” I whisper, leaning over to press a gentle kiss against his shoulder.
“Will you talk to him?”
Regret and oh-so-much sadness fills me. He wants me to change Kellan’s mind when in reality, to do so, the only thing I can think of would be to leave Jonah behind. And that’s a choice I won’t make—can’t make, not if I stay true to my heart.
“I’ll talk to him,” I tell the love of my life, “but I have the feeling it won’t do any good.”
I think Jonah knows this, but I promise him I’ll give it my best anyway.
I don’t have to track Kellan down; he finds me about an hour after Jonah leaves for a brief mission that ought to take him right up until dinner. He’s immediately on the defensive, sweet-talking me with, “I’ve been jonesing for hot dogs. Wanna go hit up our favorite cart?”
While Jonah easily guessed that I would snoop on their conversation, it seems Kellan remains unaware. But maybe that’s not fair—maybe Jonah’s ability to read my emotions so easily always gives me away. Kellan used to be able to do that, too, but now ... Now he has to trust me solely on how I act. And right now? I’m deserving of golden awards, because I have a smile on my face and I’ve forced ease into my muscles.
All night, I considered what it would be like saying goodbye to a person whose existence feels so crucial to my own. How does somebody let part of their heart go without a fight? How do you move on?
But then I realized he must be asking himself the same questions. So I decided I wasn’t going to come into our goodbye all teary and resistant. I’m going to give Kellan exactly what he needs from me. If he wants me to let go, then I will let go. I love him too much to do anything else.
“Hot dogs would be great,” I tell him.
A half hour later, we’re sitting on a bench so very familiar to us, one we’ve sat on dozens and dozens of times before in the past, eating hot dogs then as we do now. The sun is warm on our arms, and when I turn to look at this man I adore, it spills out across his shiny hair, forming a halo. I’m dazzled by the sight.
“You look like an angel right now.” I motion toward his head with the last third of my hot dog, and then trace a circle above my own crown.
He chuckles. “I’m no angel.”
Neither am I. None of us are. And that’s the thing, how everyone’s lives are built on a series of good and bad decisions—we try so hard to do the right thing, but every so often, we fail. Despite our lineages, we’re only human after all.
I tell him, “Is there anything I can say to change your mind?”
The easy smile he’d been favoring me with slides off his face. “What did he tell you?”
I fudge at the truth. “That you feel the need to leave.”
A hard, long breath leaves him; half of his hot dog now rests on a napkin between us. But I wait for him to make the next move, because he does not deserve the hysterics threatening at my gates right now.
“It’s for the best,” is what he finally says.