Page 153 of Breathe Again

While I spoke, he moved toward me and knelt beside me in the grass, shaking his head. He reached out his hand to cup the back of my head.

“Mara, you’ve always been my comfort. You’ve always been my soft place to land. Every night I climb into bed beside you and all the hours since I left you in the morning are worth it. You are my life, my happiness, everything I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ll ever need. I needed to be a safe place for you.”

And there it was, the other half of the problem. I needed to be safe for him, but I needed to feel safe, too, and I didn’t always.

“I don’t know if you love me.”

“Why?” He asked gently, then waited patiently while I sifted through the evidence.

“I cry myself to sleep and you don’t notice. I try to kiss you and you turn away. I leave our bed, and you don’t follow. I tried to talk to you about my pain and you’d get angry.” I searched his face, looking for answers. “I don’t deserve that.”

He held my gaze, his eyes filled with remorse. “You’re right.” He took a deep breath. “There were a couple of things going on that led to all of that. I’m just going to admit it right now, there’s no excuse,but there is a reason, and it was never that I didn’t love you. Will you hear me out?”

My tears slid silently down my cheeks. The pain of the past year always bubbled close to the surface since the cork had been blown off the bottle. I nodded.

He gently palmed my face, wiping away the tears, and began to explain.

“The first reason, for which I am incredibly sorry, is that I misinterpreted your actions.” He winced. “In my head, I thought you were trying to manipulate me, and I thought you were being immature.”

I felt my face crumple. “Zee, I told you, I explained it to you over and over. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t pushed me away!”

He kept his hands on my face and pulled me closer when I tried to draw away from him.

“You’re right, and you’re not right.” He paused, a hint of trepidation on his handsome face. “It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t pulled away, but baby, the problem would still be there, sex was just a band aid. You were suffering. And, I hesitate to say this, but we both know that you can’t hold me responsible for correcting the imbalance, especially when I didn’t understand it.”

I nodded. Over-responsibility again. This time, me making him responsible for my mental stability.

“You’re right, it was a band aid, barely holding me together. It was all I had at the time, and I need to be responsible for my mental health.”

“Now that I know, if I still turned away from you, without making sure you’re okay, knowing the pain it causes you, I would be remiss.” He waited for my nod. “Can I explain the other reason? This one will be easier to hear.”

“Go ahead,” I answered. My voice hitched, but the tears were drying up at least.

“I have been focused so far into the future, Olivia’s future, worrying about setting up finances for her care thirty, forty, fifty years from now, that I neglected the present. It was stress, fatigue, and anxiety about Olivia’s future, and how I would ever be able to provide for her lifetime. It was never about not loving you or not wanting you. I just lost focus on what was important in the here and now.”

“You didn’t listen to me; you didn’t believe what I was telling you. I tried to talk to you, I tried to explain, I was trying to understand, I even asked questions trying to understand, and you got angry with me.”

“You’re right. I was not always a safe place for you, Mara. You say you need to be safe for me, but I need to be safe for you as well. You don’t always believe me when I tell you how I feel. Seems I didn’t believe you either. Instead of believing each other, we reinterpreted, to make it fit with what we thought was true.”

This was quite the revelation, but one last hurdle loomed, one that followed me like a malevolent shadow, one I knew I had to get out from under if I hoped to truly heal.

“I treated you horribly at times, especially in the beginning, especially at that conference for your work.” I held his eyes, sorrow in mine. I’d always felt like he’d never forgiven me for the way I’d hurt him in our early years. I was still afraid to ask, but I forged ahead. “Will you forgive me?”

Zale pointed at himself. “Let me ask you the same thing. Will you forgive me?”

I shrugged, and smiled into his worried eyes, offering forgiveness. “You didn’t know.”

He dipped his chin closer, his expression sweetly serious. “Neither did you.”

He leaned forward and kissed me gently, then wrapped his strong arms around me, gathering me close and tight against his big chest and tucking my face into his throat. I hugged him around his lean waist and breathed in deeply. Decisions were made in the space of that breath, and my tension fell away as I exhaled.

Boundaries

Mara

Nausea woke me Monday morning, my stomach remembering my intentions before my brain fully awakened. I took comfort in Zale’s solid, sleepy warmth beside me.

I had not spoken to my mother since the day I’d taken her to the hospital, the day I’d cast her out of my life, the day I ended up in the psych ward. I did not expect a warm reception and my stomach floated untethered, spinning, and flipping. No one would want to confront their mother for saying and doing the things my mother hadsaid and done.

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