Page 121 of Something Forever

“Listen, Abbi, I know you probably hate me — and trust me, I hate myself a lot right now too — but can you please, please, just ask her to come home? I need to talk to her.”

“I don’t owe you anything. Eat shit, asshole.”

She hangs up on me without another word.

That went well.

Just as I decide that I’ll give it another hour before packing up, raindrops start to fall. I take a deep breath, willing the tight feeling in my chest to subside. I close my eyes, letting the rain pour over me. I don’t know how long passes, but when I open my eyes, Whitney is standing in front of me, her wet hair matted against her head.

I blink, sure that I must be imagining her, but then her expression seems to shift as she glances away from me. Her arms are crossed, and her shoulders are hiked up to her ears.

“What do you want?” she asks, her voice hard and cold. The sound of it is all wrong.

“Whit,” I manage, my voice a rasp. Pushing myself off the ground, I stumble towards her, but she steps back, keeping distance between us. I swallow, trying to find my footing. “I got your message,” I announce like an idiot.

She says nothing.

“Are you… can we go inside?” I ask, gesturing to the apartment. “You’re getting soaked.”

“No,” she says, refusing to meet my gaze.

I shake my head. “I fucked up. Caroline told me that divorce is what you wanted, and?—”

“She what?”

I draw my head back. Guilt swarms through me again, not only because I believed Caroline, but because Whitney still doesn’t realize the extent of her mother’s interference. I wish I didn’t have to be the one to tell her, but we need to clear up this miscommunication. “What did Caroline say to you?” I ask her.

She shifts her weight and crosses her arms. “She gave me the papers that you’d signed and told me that you thought a clean break was easiest. That it was… better this way.” Her voice cracks on the last word, and my heart drops to my stomach at the sound.

I shake my head. “I didn’t say that. I’d never say that.”

“It had your signature?—”

“Caroline had your ring, and you promised me you’d never take it off. She knew I’d told you I loved you and that you hadn’t said it back. I thought… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have believed her. I know that.”

She shakes her head, disbelief coloring her features. “Wow. I can’t believe she… ” She turns away from me, wiping at her eyes, and I take a step towards her, wanting nothing more than to take her in my arms and comfort her. “She gets the inheritance money if we get a divorce.”

Of course she had some ulterior motive. It’s all starting to make sense now.

I run my hand through my hair in frustration, tugging at the strands. “Okay,” I exhale. “We’ll figure this out, baby.”

Her gaze snaps to mine, anger still clouding her features. “You signed those papers, Liam. You can’t just take that back.”

“You are my wife?—”

“Not anymore,” she cuts me off, her chest rising and falling with angry breaths. My stomach bottoms out at her suggestion, a rush of panic hitting me.

“You signed them?” I ask, praying she hasn’t. Something flickers in her eyes as she glances away from me. Clinging onto that hesitation, I take another half-step towards her. “Please say you haven’t. Please say it’s not too late. Let me fix this.”

“How long did it take you to completely cut me out of your life? To throw away everything we had? Thirty minutes? Ten? Five? It was so easy for you to believe my mom?—”

“Nothing about that was easy. I thought?—”

She throws her hands in the air. “You thought wrong! You don’t trust me. Maybe you never have. That’s what this is about.”

I’m losing my grip on this conversation. I don’t know what I can say to get her to forgive me. Guilt and dread fog my mind, making it impossible to think.

“You know how I feel about my mom. You believe her over everything we had together? You trusted her word enough to just toss me aside?”

---