Page 67 of The Infinite Light of Dust

“You didn’t have to wait here all day,” I told him, hanging my keys up on the holder as I slid my shoes off.

“I wanted to.”

“What do you want to say, Kael? You’re sorry? I’ve heard it before, and I really don’t want to hear it again. I don’t want to argue with you, and I think both of us could use some space.” The reserve was clear in my voice, and his eyes told me that he could feel it too.

“I don’t want space. Not from you.”

“Then what is it you want exactly?”

He reached for one of my hands and caught me off guard. I didn’t have time to pull away.

“I want to be by your side until your hair is silver, until our backs hurt and our joints ache. I want to stay next to you as we make something of our names, struggling then succeeding, and until our memories fade. That’s what I want. And I know you do too. I don’t understand why you’re fighting against yourself so hard.”

Using every single tiny ounce of energy I had, I blocked his words from entering my chest. Once they settled in there, I would be a goner. I would forgive him and wrap my arms around him and lose my sense of self in him, again, and I couldn’t allow that to happen. Everything from my mother’s hatred for me to my brother’s aloofness and my father’s coldness reminded me that I could only depend on myself. Maybe Kael was used to having a platoon, an incredible mother, and a group of friends by his side, but I wasn’t. I had never known what it felt like to know that if I fell someone would be there to catch me, or at minimum help me up.

“There’s nothing left here for you, Karina. Your father might not be around long, your mother left again, your brother is leaving in a few weeks. Come with me and let’s start over, please.”

“I have memories here, Kael. I have a life here. I have a job and my house and Elodie.”

“Elodie is going to move to wherever your brother gets stationed,” he harshly reminded me. I knew that, but there was a small chance he would be stationed here.

“Estelle will be here, and eventually she will be alone.”

“And? You can barely stand her.” He was onto my excuses, but I kept them straight.

“We’ve been getting along.” I defended myself by a thread. “For better or worse, she’s my family.”

I had grown closer to Estelle in the last two weeks than I ever imagined possible. She wasn’t my only reason for wanting to stay here, but she honestly was one of them. At the bottom of the list, sure, but still on it. I wasn’t even sure what the hell else was on my list, but I was so damn afraid of feeling trapped, giving up the only things that make meme, like my house, my job, all for a man who continued to hide things, very fucking important things, from me, and an uncertain life.

“I can’t pack up and follow you to Atlanta. And a few hours ago you said you were ready to give up that dream.”

“And the offer still stands, but what the hell can you do here that you can’t do there?”

“A lot . . . nothing? I don’t know!”

“Can you please think of yourself for once? Every choice you make is based on someone else’s feelings or well-being and never your own! It’s always about your brother, Elodie, your father, even the damn neighbor. Everyone except you and your happiness.” He raised his voice, clearly exasperated.

I took a step toward him; my living room felt like it was shrinking.

“That’s exactly what I’m doing, Kael. Thinking of myself. I told you from the moment I met you that I was never going to be a woman who follows a man to another city, abandoning her life and her goals for his. I can’t do it.”

“And what exactly are your goals?” His voice turned dark, defensive.

“Don’t you dare act like I don’t have any goals. Just because my dreams are smaller and less lucrative than yours doesn’t make them irrelevant. I want a quiet life, Kael. One where I don’t have to worry whether I can believe the person I’m sharing it with. I want to be alone. That’s all I want.”

He scoffed. I knew his emotions were getting the best of him, and it wasn’t like him to be ruled by his anger more than logic, but that made two of us.

“A quiet life? Like being in constant danger and constant hustle? Always chasing something that you don’t even know you truly want? Is that the kind of life you want, falling apart? Like your house for example?” He pointed to the crack in my ceiling that had been growing as the weeks passed.

I threw my hands in the air. How fucking dare he. If he wanted to be harsh, I could be fucking harsh. My sadness was drowned by my anger.

“And what? You’re going to keep me safe, Kael? Before I met you I was never in any danger, I had never had my trust betrayed in the worst way, and I had never, ever questioned my own sanity while being gaslit by a liar who claimed to hide shit from me to ‘protect’ me!” I used air quotes for the wordprotectto emphasize my point.

He stared at me, eyes full of fire.

“Go ahead, what’s your next excuse? If you were serious about having a future with me from the beginning, you would have consulted with me about Atlanta in the first place instead of buying a place there and hiding it. Now you think because you waited until the last minute that I’m going to jump when you say jump? And don’t talk about my house like that. I work my ass off to have this house, and you know what it means to me. And my father is slowly decaying? So what, I should just leave before he dies and pretend he doesn’t exist, like you do yours?”

I knew I had gone too far, but so had he. We were both taking our anger out on one another and neither of us seemed to be able to stop. This was for the best anyway; he should hate me and leave me too. If he longed for me after we split he would be even more miserable, and even if it didn’t seem like it at the moment, I didn’t want that for him.

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