He tilted his head arrogantly and clenched his jaw. “Would it have mattered?”
“Yes!” I couldn’t put enough conviction in the word, though, so I amended to, “Maybe.” I took a step back, gripping the huge plastic bowl of candy to my chest. “You could have tried! You could have at least tried!”
His words were soft, but not gentle. The hard tone buzzed over my skin, pulling at the hair on the back of my neck. “I did try.”
I barely heard him. “What difference does it make now? Why quit now? For seven years, it was the most important thing in your life and now it’s… it’s not?” I sounded more than hysterical. I screeched at him like a lunatic, unable to control the volume of my voice or my crazed emotions.
“No. It’s not. There are more important things than the band.”
“But why did you wait to figure that out now? God, seriously! I can’t believe this. I can’t believe that I begged you for years to quit, to move on, to do something else and you didn’t listen to me one time. Not one single time. And then we fall apart and suddenly you know there are more important things.”
The doorbell rang, but neither of us moved to answer it. Instead, Nick pushed the main door so hard that it slammed shut, right in the bewildered faces of some little kids.
I glanced wildly at the door, wondering what neighbor I was going to have to apologize to tomorrow. Nick stepped right in front of me, pulling my attention back to him.
“Why do you care, Kate? You’re going to divorce me no matter what, so what does it matter what I’m doing with my life? Huh? Why do you care so much?”
“Because!” A punch of air whooshed out of me and I struggled not to sway. My fury was too much for my mortal body. I felt like a force of nature, like a tornado that would destroy every single thing in the wake of my anger. “Because it’s what I wanted from you! Because I worked so hard at our marriage, at making things work with you. And you didn’t give me anything! You didn’t try anything! And now… now it’s too late and suddenly the decision is easy for you. It doesn’t matter that we fought endlessly about it! It doesn’t matter that I begged you, that I pleaded with you to try something different. It doesn’t matter that I would have supported you anyway, against my will, against what I wanted, just because I loved you and wanted you to succeed.” Hot tears fell from my eyes, landing on my cheeks and lips. I couldn’t stop them. I couldn’t fight them anymore.
Nick’s wrath matched my own. He took another step forward and I forced myself not to retreat further. “Oh, really? You would have supported me no matter what?” He let out a bark of derisive laughter. “Then why are we here? Why did you file papers and kick me out of the house? Why, if all you wanted was for me to succeed, are you sleeping here alone and I’m living on my brother’s couch?”
I took a step back anyway. I was a coward. Or maybe the pulse of his frustration was so strong it pushed me back. My shoulders bumped against the wall and one of my decorative pictures shook next to my head. “Why couldn’t you try for me? Why couldn’t you have decided this six months ago?”
His lips had pressed into a straight line before he gritted out, “I wasn’t ready.”
The sound I made was half-tortured, half-furious. “So why now?”
I waited for his answer while his shoulders jerked with the intensity of his emotion and his jaw clenched and unclenched. But he never said anything. Instead, he shocked the absolute hell out of me, by ripping the bowl of candy out of my hands and throwing it against the far wall.
Plastic collided against the drywall and candy flew everywhere. I had just enough time to let out a startled gasp before his lips crashed to mine with equal force.