Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“And I’ve tried with you, but you’re never here. You’re off saving the world, so we’ll all be grateful. Well, guess what, Si?” She storms over to the garage door in a flourish of silk and fury. “I’m not grateful. I’m tired.”
“Of me?” I demand of her back. “You’re tired of me?”
She looks over the smooth brown curve of one shoulder and doesn’t answer with words, but the resentment, the anger festering in her eyes, confesses the truth. She walks through the garage door and into the house without a reply.
And it’s too much. Her indifference, her bitterness. My body refusing to cooperate, refusing to do what it’s supposed to do. It won’t cry when people die. It’s not erect when my nearly naked wife whom I love like my own breath touches me, kisses me. Fury spikes through my blood. It runs hot and quicksilver from my heart to my hands and feet. I stride to the row of cabinets along the garage wall and jerk open a door, scanning the contents until I find what I’m looking for. A paintbrush—and a can of pink paint left over from redecorating Deja’s room. I grab it by the handle, feeling the heft of a half-full can, and charge through the garage door and into the kitchen. Sheer rage and adrenaline propel my tired legs up the steps two at a time and down the hall to the nursery. Sure enough, she’s there again, curled up in the rocker with a blanket draped over her scantily clad body. Wordlessly, I walk over to the wall bearing the verse and, with one swift stroke of the paintbrush, slash through the words.
“What are you doing?” Yasmen rushes over, reaching for the brush, which I hold over my head, out of her reach. I quickly slap the brush against the wall, dragging it over the wishes we had for Henry that died with him.
Yasmen cries, heaving against me, beating my chest, slapping at my back. “I hate you. I can’t believe you…”
I wrap myself around her, circling her, pinning her arms to her sides, pressing her to the wet wall, heedless of the pink paint staining her negligee, my suit.
“I don’t want this anymore,” she says, tears streaking down her cheeks. “We can’t do this. I want…I need a divorce.”
I go completely still, blood freezing in my veins at the word I never expected to hear from her.
Till the wheels fall off.
“You don’t mean that.” I swallow against the hot lump in my throat. The tears may finally come.
“I only know that I’m so sad all the time. It hurts all the time.” Her shoulders shake with sobs, her face twisted with the violence of her emotions. “I wonder if the sad I’d be without you would hurt less than the way I’m sad with you.”
“I make you hurt?”
“Yes,” she whispers, closing her eyes over the tears trickling down her cheeks.
“You don’t love me anymore?”
“I can’t find it. I can’t find us. It’s buried under all this pain.”
“It’s not buried. I don’t have to look for it. I don’t want a divorce. I love you, Yas, and you love me. We are going through a hard time, but we said till the wheels fall off.”
“Look at us,” she says, glancing down to where I press her body into the wet wall. “Did you hear us tonight? Is this what we want our kids to see? I said I hated you, but I don’t. Not yet, but if we keep on like this, I will, Si. And you’ll hate me.”
“I could never hate you.” I brush my knuckle over her damp cheek. “I will love you until I die. We said till death do us part.”
“Death is tearing us apart.” Her laugh is bitter and short. “We assumed it would have to be our deaths that ended this. Turns out it was theirs.”
“We said vows.”
“Those are words, not walls. They don’t defend. They don’t enforce. They don’t protect us from life. From pain. From how things change. And I don’t want to stay in this just because we said we would. I need to stop hurting, and being with you? It hurts now.”
The words stab through me with the sharpness of truth. I hear in her voice that she believes it. Of all the things that hurt her, being with me is what hurts most. She strains against my arms, trying to leave, and I instinctively tighten them around her, holding her to me, pinning her to the wall.
“Let me go,” she whispers, the tears thick in her voice and shiny on her cheeks. She doesn’t just mean in this moment. She means for good, and as strong as I’ve been through everything—losing Byrd, losing Henry, the struggle to keep our business—I don’t know that I’m strong enough to let Yasmen go.