Page 52 of Shoot Your Shot

Her entire face crumples, and her shoulders sag as she turns away from me. And then she starts running. She doesn’t run into a room though. This time, she bolts outside.

With the storm coming, I don’t give a fuck if she thinks she needs space from me. Right now, she’s not getting it. Especially not in a fucking towel.

Charging after her, I catch the door before it closes and run down the stairs as she gets to the bottom. She heads down the driveway as the rain starts to come down. At first, it’s subtle. Within seconds, it’s fucking pouring.

“Paige, cut the shit!” I yell out, forcing my legs to carry me in front of her.

She tries to dart around me, but I throw my arm around her waist and pull her against me.

“If you want to go inside the cabin and lock yourself in a room, be my fucking guest! But this storm is going to be rolling through all night. The temperature’s going to drop, and the wind is going to pick up. So, for once in your life, just fucking listen and go inside,” I yell desperately, wanting to keep her safe. “Trust me, I understand why you don’t want to be near me. Ifucking get it more than you’ll ever know. But for the love of fuck, stop.”

She shoves at my arm like a caged animal, so I drop it down, and she stumbles back, looking at me. Her hair is soaked now, sticking to her forehead as beads of water roll down her face.

“Do you want to know the stupidest part of this entire thing?” she screams. “Do you want to know what is just so fucking stupid about this fight?” she cries yet laughs at the same time, though her laugh is haunted. “You think I’m mad at you that you couldn’t give me a baby,” she says, her fists balled at her sides. “Don’t you?”

“I mean, I know I fucked up, Paige. I know I acted like an ass.” I run my hand over the top of my wet hair. “But, yeah, I think a lot of your anger is from that. And I don’t blame you.”

“And that’s why we’ll never work, Kolt,” she sobs, pounding one fist against her chest. “Because if you really think that, then you don’t know me. You don’t know me at all.” Her neck muscles strain as she cries harder. “If you did, you’d know that I would never be mad that you might not be able to have kids. I’m fucking pissed that instead of just talking to me”—she pounds her chest again—“your wife—you chose to push me away. You chose to be the demise of our relationship instead oftalkingto me.” She looks at me with pure disgust. “You are a coward, Kolt.”

She wraps her arms around herself, crying hysterically. “You’re my person. You’ve always been my person. Yet when you found something like that out, instead of confiding in me and letting me help you through it, you sabotaged us.” She sniffles. “That’s proof that what I already thought is true. I’ve always loved you more.”

I feel like she just punched me in the fucking face as my head snaps back. “That is the furthest thing from the truth, and you know it!” I say quickly. “All I’ve ever wanted is to give you theworld, Paige,” my voice rasps loudly into the rainy night. “When I knew I couldn’t do that, I knew I couldn’t keep you.”

“Yet you won’t sign the divorce papers,” she bites back. “Don’t try to act like everything you do is for me. GoodfuckingGod.”

Grabbing her hands in mine, I squeeze them so that she can’t pull out of my hold.

“I was going to sign them when they came. I planned to,” I tell her honestly. “But one night, I told Logan everything. About my doctor’s appointment. About what I’d learned. Everything. He told me I had been a dumbass for treating you the way that I did and an even bigger one to let you leave.” I pull her body closer to mine, looking down at her. “When I went to tell you that … I thought you had moved on. Selfishly, even though I had let you go, I didn’t want you to become another man’s wife.” I look at her, ashamed. “I wanted you to keep my last name for as long as I could get away with it. I’m so sorry, Paige. For everything.”

“As much as I wanted a baby with you,” she sobs, “I wanted us more.”

There’s nothing for me to say in this moment. Looking back, I know there were so many mistakes we both made to get us here, to right now. But the ball is in her court. If I’ve hurt her beyond repair, I’ll have to sign the papers and walk away from her.

Leave it better than you found it, is what I’ve always been told. But if I leave now, she’ll not be better than I found her. I’ll be leaving her broken.

“Nine days, baby.” I move my palms to her soaked cheeks. “In nine days, if you can’t forgive me enough to stay, I’ll sign the papers, if that’s what you really want. Even though it’ll wreck me, I will do it if it makes you happy.”

Her head falls against my chest for a second before she tilts her face up to mine. “We need to stop hurting each other. Whether that means together … or apart.” She drapes her arms around me, digging her fingertips into my sides. “I love youso fucking much. But this isn’t normal, Kolt. It isn’t healthy, either.”

“I know,” I rasp, because she’s right. Even so, this marriage is all I want.

Wrapping my arms around her, I lift her body against mine, and her legs snake around my waist. It isn’t sexual, but something deeper this time. As I walk us back toward the cabin in the pouring rain, her sad, lost eyes bore into mine.

She doesn’t have to speak for me to know what she’s thinking. Because I’m thinking the same thing …

Where the fuck do we go from here?

My eyes pop open for a split second before closing again. Yawning, I snuggle back against the pillow, deciding I’m not ready to wake up yet. Especially when this bed feels so comfortable.

A hand moves against my side, pulling me closer, and my eyes fly open. When I crane my neck to look at Kolt, he’s staring up at the ceiling in deep thought. I admire his handsome face for a moment before gazing at his tattoos. Something I can never get enough of, it seems. And every memory from last night rushes through my brain.

Though I was angry that he had kept the truth hidden about his doctor’s visit and that he’d felt the need to sabotage our marriage because of it, I wasn’t upset about his results. How could I be when I knew he wasn’t the only one keeping us from getting pregnant?

Still, I was so unbelievably hurt that he’d lied about something so big. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite because I have endometriosis and haven’t told him yet. But in my eyes, it’s different. I haven’t told him the truth about me because we weren’t together when I got my diagnosis and had surgery. Had we been together when I found out, he would have been the first person I told the news to.

I might have been wounded by the revelation, but eventually, I collapsed against him and let him carry me into the cabin. Because as hurt as I was to learn the truth … it was clear Kolt was tortured over it. He had carried that secret, solo, for so long. So, while I am upset with him for keeping me in the dark and even madder that he pushed me away, just thinking about how much agony he must have dragged around all this time kills me, making me not want to make things any worse for him.

In his own very fucked-up way, everything Kolt did, he did for me. Even if it wasn’t the correct call, I really do believe he thought he was doing right by me, his wife.

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