“We’re going to fix this,” I tell her.
“I’m already broken, AJ,” she seethes. “And what if you can’t fix this? I stay in foster care until I’m eighteen, and then I’m supposed to come running back to the two people who ruined my life?”
Cammy is in tears, crying her heart out on the couch, feeling the same type of guilt I’m feeling. I don’t know how to respond to Ever, and I don’t know how to make Cammy feel better, and Jesus…how did my life come to this in a matter of a week?
CHAPTER TWENTY
FEELING LIKE A shitty dad as it is, I brought Gavin home for the night so he can sleep in his own bed, now that he’s been shuttled around for the last couple of days. I asked Cammy to come back to my house with me, but she insisted it might feel weird for all of us, seeing as I’m still legally married to the woman I own this house with. The last thing I wanted to do tonight was be away from Cammy and Ever, knowing they’re leaving first thing in the morning. I told them I’d meet them at the hotel at seven to give them a ride to a car rental location so they can get going.
I’m lying in the bed I have shared with my wife for the last two years, replaying her few simple, but devastating, words in my head, telling me she needs to go away. Putting Cammy aside, even if Cammy never showed up this week, after today’s events with Tori, I don’t know if I could ever forgive her for what has happened over the last year. Tori’s words and her behavior this morning made me feel like I’m poison to her life. Like Gavin is the same. Now, I’m forced to consider his safety and well-being as much as, and maybe even more than, my own. Maybe I’ve pushed her to a place she doesn’t want to be, but I can’t come back from what happened today. Not ever. And I realize how long forever is, but having the shit beat out of me might have hurt less than the words she spewed from her lips so easily and almost without care. She may have been drugged up, but I don’t think there is any drug strong enough in this whole fucking world to make me regret either of my children.
The quiet air circulating through this room tonight is driving me to a deeper level of resentment. I want to think about Cammy and all the greatness she has brought to my life in such a short period of time, but it’s overshadowed by an opaque mask of darkness. I’m left lingering in marriage purgatory with no way in or out. How the hell am I supposed to cope with this? How can I resolve things with my wife when she is being restrained in a psych ward?
With my endless thoughts, sleep doesn’t come, and it’s well after three in the morning. Now I’m scared I won’t wake up in time to get Cammy and Ever to where they need to be. Exhausted and emotionally detached, I tear down all the photos of Tori and me. I toss her damn decorative pillows into the closet on top of the mess she left behind with her crumpled notes, and I pull every article of her clothing off the hangers, letting them all fall into a giant pile. I make my way through the rest of the house until I’ve eliminated any reminders of my marriage, which I’m realizing isn’t much. Was nothing between us ever normal? How could I have been stupid enough to think it was?
Starting a relationship built on lies or hidden truths is never a normal thing. I should have known that. I should have taken my head out of my ass long enough to realize what mistake I was getting myself into. This is my fault. It was my fault that Ever had to be removed from her birth parents, and it’s my fault that Gavin might never have a mother in his life. Who the fuck trusted me with my own life? What the hell is wrong with me?
Everything is wrong with me. Everything. I have screwed up so badly, and I have hurt so many people, yet I’m the one still standing. I’m disgusted with myself.
Now, sitting against the far wall in the living room, having not taken my eyes off of the dark window in hours, the sun is starting to illuminate some of what I have been unknowingly staring at…freedom. It’s all freedom outside of this house. Inside, though, there’s a bathroom I can’t walk into without seeing bottles of pills lying everywhere, or a half-filled bathtub ready for drowning in. My bedroom is filled with memories of making love to a woman who was using me as a shield from her past, and Gavin’s room—all I can see is Tori sprawled out on the floor, trying to change his diaper while she was thinking of the next way to end her life. I have been living in this dark house with Tori and her demons for so long that I have forgotten what the fucking sun looks like, and today is the first damn day I have really seen it in so long. Even knowing Cammy and Ever are leaving me today, I still feel like I’m allowed to step outside of this house and start a new chapter for me and Gavin.
I never wanted to be Hunter—widowed or alone. I despised his life enough for him. I never wanted this. Now it seems like the only option for surviving this mess.