His features harden again. “Our marriage is not ruined.”
“There’s no way to fix this, Ty. Not like you want. Not like I’d want. I don’t even know you. I mean, drugs, Ty?”
“I’m clean. I swear to God. I wasn’t an addict or something, just starting down that road, but thank fuck I caught it. Or maybe you caught it by catching me. I don’t know,” he sighs. “I’ll fix this, Elin.”
“How do you think you’re going to fix the damage you caused when you don’t even know what that all entails?”
“Tell me,” he says earnestly.
I shake my head.
His eyes cloud, his voice wavering. “I need you, Elin.”
Looking down the hall, my chest tightens. I remember sitting in the bathroom that’s not fifteen steps from where we are, watching the toilet water turn pink after my doctor’s appointment. Feeling a part of me leave my body, a part of my heart ripping away.
I look at Ty. “Yeah, well, I needed you too.”
TY
Pain is streaked across her face, her anguish on display for the world, for me, to see.
I can’t take it.
If there’s one thing in this world I’ve wanted more than any other, it’s Elin Watson. From the moment I saw her at her locker, her body in a pair of jean shorts and a yellow top that fell off her right shoulder nibbling on a red sucker, I had to have her.
And I finally got her. I promised to take care of her, protect her, love her. Standing here, seeing the fallout from not doing those things destroys me from the inside out.
She watches me from across the room.
“Do you remember the first day I kissed you?” I ask, watching her face soften as the memory pops in her head. “I’d wanted to kiss you for days, but I was afraid to push too hard.”
“I remember Lindsay telling me to be careful around you. That all the girls liked you and you were a player,” she remembers.
“All the girls did like me,” I say, trying to bring her back to me. Trying to remind her that I’m the kid she fell in love with. “But I liked you.”
“Everyone said it was just because I was the new girl,” she says.
“Well, I’ve known you for a long damn time, and I want you more today than I did that day in the hallway outside of math lab.”
She looks out the window, a faint smile on her lips. “I told you no the first time you asked me out. Everyone knew you around town, everyone liked you. It was overwhelming.”
“It doesn’t help that on your first day, I kind of stalked you, huh?”
Elin starts to come around. The tension eases from her face, the lines weaken around her eyes as a hint of the sparkle comes back. “When you made Pettis get up from beside me at lunch, I was scared to death. I couldn’t figure out what you wanted from me.”
“I think we both know what I wanted from you,” I wink. “Your ass in those shorts . . .”
She laughs, the sound music to my ears. “You ended up getting it.”
Taking a step closer to her, she doesn’t move away. I breathe a sigh of relief. It’s a small victory I’m too happy to take. “Do you know what I want from you now?”
“Ty . . .”
“I just want my wife back, E. I want my life back.”
“You can’t just have it back,” she whispers. “Things were burned.” She looks at me through her thick lashes. “I was burned.”
“I’m sorry.”
She blows out a breath and glances quickly down the hallway. Swallowing roughly, she hesitates a long moment. When she looks at me again, something has changed. Her bottom lip quivers, her brows pull together in a concerted effort to maybe hold herself together.
“I could’ve helped you, Tyler. If you would’ve told me how you felt, what you were going through, we could’ve fixed it. But you didn’t trust me, and I can’t . . .”
Tears well up again and I reach for her. My heart cracking in my chest, she bats my hands away.
“Stop,” she says, her voice void of any strength.
“You want me to stand here and watch you cry and not want to comfort you?”
Smiling through the tears, she breaks my heart even more. “You can go, and I’ll cry by myself. I’ve gotten pretty good at it lately.”
“Damn it, Elin. What do we have if we don’t have each other? Everything we’ve ever wanted—every dream, hope, every idea of a family and a future—are tied together. You can’t just walk away from that.”
“I didn’t,” she says, finally breaking her silence. “You did.”
“I did not. I walked away to protect you.”
“Funny, I’m walking away to protect me too.”
Her voice cracks, and I don’t care anymore. I grab her and pull her into me, and she, surprisingly, lets me.
She doesn’t make an effort to embrace me, but I don’t care. I just hold her for dear life.