Page 32 of Kiss From A Rose

"What's going on? This doesn't sound like you. Is Malou putting you up to this? Fucking with your family so she has someone with her while she's…."

"While she's dyin'?" I finished for him, hating him right now. "Yeah, that was her ploy: get breast cancer at the age of thirty-five and have it spread by thirty-nine so that she could have me around her right before she died. Can you hear yourself?"

Weneverfought. I never questioned him. I made peace. But I was so tired of being the one who had to back down and make concessions. I was tired of never being heard or seen.

"That came out wrong, Rose. I'm sorry. How is Malou?"

"Like you care, Gray."

He had the decency not to say he did because I knew he didn't.

"I care about how it affects you, Rose," he replied softly. "How are you?"

"I'm fine. Leah told me she met with you. Ah…let me know what you want to do with the car."

"It's paid for, Rose. Just keep it."

"I can't afford the insurance on it, and I have Malou's truck."

"I'll pay for your insurance."

I'll pay. He always said that.My money. Neverours. Neverus, alwaysIandme. Twenty years I'd stayed with this man, and I'd have stayed twenty more, and what a waste that would have been.

This conversation was all the proof I needed to know I’d made the right decision by leaving.

The first time he talks to me in three weeks, he's yelling at me, accusing my friend of dying to keep me here.

"No. Take the car. I'm not using it."

"Burn the fucking thing then."

"I can sell it and send you the money," I offered. "I don't know how much it will sell for here but—"

"I don't give a shit about that measly amount of money. And you don't need to pay me back the fucking five thousand."

I sighed.Pay me back. He could've said, we were married for twenty years; my money is your money, or…anything else butthat. He always saw me asother, not part of his life or his world. A wife who was pulled out of the box on special occasions in public. The wife who he fucked into the mattress. Oh, we had a good sex life, but it wasn'tlove, now was it? I didn't have his respect; I'd always known that, but it had taken me years to understand that I couldneverhave his love if I didn't have his respect. In any relationship, those two went hand in hand.

"Is there anything else?" I asked, dejected, tired.

"Yeah, you can get your ass back home, Rose. I'mnotdivorcing you."

Hope bloomed in my chest despite all the warnings I'd given myself. "Why?"

"Because I say so. Already everyone is thinkin' I'm sleeping with my assistant, we get divorced they'll think it's true."

Hope shriveled. "So, you want me to come back so people don't think you're having an affair?"

"I don't care why you come back, just come the fuck back."

He didn't respect me. He didn't respect my feelings. He didn't respect my heart. I didn't know what to say when everything inside me wanted to simply die because this pain was shattering in its intensity.

"Rose, we're married. We have two children. Come home and we can talk, figure out how to fix whatever you think is wrong?"

WhateverIthink is broken?

I wanted to hurl the phone against the wall. I was angry. But what was stronger was the deep, deep grief I felt as I finally understood that my marriage wasover.

All the hope, I’d tried unsuccessfully not to have, had been a dream. Nothing had changed. Gray hadn't missed me while I was gone. He wasn't heartbroken. He was angry. He wanted his wife back, not Rose, but Mrs. Rutherford. Well, fuck that!

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