Page 32 of Infinite
At that thought, my heart broke a bit.
I love him. I will love him until the day I die. That much will never change, but I won’t do to him what he did to me.
I won’t push him to be something he’s not like I tried to do before. It’s what caused us to fall apart before, and now I know that I was selfish to ever ask it. I wanted a family when he wasn’t ready. Now, I’m the one who isn’t ready, and he can’t ask the same of me.
Once again, we’re back in this place, where one of us is half out the door. Only now it’s so much worse because I know what us loving each other without restraint feels like.
I’ve felt his warmth, bathed in it, and it’s something that never grows cold. Quinn won’t ever be warm enough to melt the ice around my soul.
My eyes close, and I turn my head. He’ll get the picture and let me be, which has been the way he’s handled me all week. Like I’m a piece of broken glass that will shatter if jostled too hard.
“So, that’s it?” Quinn asks with an edge to his voice.
“What’s it?” I look back at him, confused by the sudden shift.
“This,” he says as though I should know what he’s talking about. “You’re giving up. You’re going to let all the love and hell we’ve been through just . . . go without a fight? Make it all fucking meaningless?”
“Fine. Why aren’t you sleeping?” I ask.
He sinks down in front of me. “Because I can’t fucking breathe, Ashton. I’m losing you. We lost the baby. I’m doing whatever I can to get you to break out of this and rage. You quit your job. I was kidnapped, for Christ’s sake. All of this is weighing on me, but the thing that I can’t . . . handle . . . is that you might hate me.”
My lips part, and I stare at him. There, in his eyes, is a man who is falling apart. He shouldn’t be sad, I have that part handled. I lift my hand to touch his face, the beard scratching my palm. “You need to shave.”
Slowly, Quinn’s lids fall as though he’s in agony. “No, I need you, Ashton. Ineedyou.”
I want to tell him he has me for as long as he wants. I want to pour my heart out to him, but it’s not even beating anymore. He’s my whole world, and when he goes, I will be forever dead inside. All of this is on the tip of my tongue, but I swallow it.
I won’t add to his guilt. That would be selfish and cruel. He doesn’t need to stay with me out of obligation. I mean, what would everyone think if he walked away now? That he abandoned his girlfriend after the loss of our child, that’s what.
Quinn wouldn’t do that.
Not after he spent months proving he loved me.
And he did.
God did he ever. He loved me so hard I thought that maybe I wouldn’t break. Those days when finding him consumed me, I wondered if maybe I would find a way to be fine once he was home. There was this small sliver of hope that his arms could heal it all. Quinn could battle away the hurt and sadness.
But it wasn’t that way.
In fact, once I found him, I felt completely void.
There was nothing else to focus on other than the loss we’d endured, and I found a way to push myself into oblivion.
“I’m right here,” I tell him.
“No, baby, you’re not. You’re a million miles away where I can’t reach you.”
“I want . . .”
I want it all to go away.
I want to feel his warmth.
I want none of this to be reality.
The things I desire can never be, so there’s no point in telling him. The real truth is that I want to be left alone.
“What do you want?” he urges. I shake my head, refusing to open my mouth to voice any of it. “I can carry both our pain, I’m strong enough, but you have to let me,” Quinn says as he brushes his thumb across my lip.
