Page 10 of Diesel
“Where are we?” My throat is scratchy and I cough to clear it.
“Somewhere we can talk.”
He cups my knee, his touch both grounding andpainful. How can he be so close and yet a world away from me?
I should push him away, but for a moment I just let myself feel, imagine that everything is okay between us, and that my heart isn’t ravaged by my pain.
“I don’t want to talk.”
“I know,” he says, quiet and resigned, “but you’re going to.”
He unbuckles my seatbelt as if he thinks I’m incapable of doing it myself, then stands, offering a hand to me. I shouldn’t take it, but I’m so drained I don’t trust my legs to hold.
I let him help me out of the car, let him steady me when my knees try to fold, then I cling to him for longer than is right, considering I left him and ran without a word.
He peers down at me, the hard shell he gives the world softening. I desperately want to fall into his arms, to sob into his chest, but he’s not my safe place anymore.
I don’t know what my life looks like without him in it. But this… This isn’t living. It’s a slow death. It’s an erosion of everything I thought I had.
“I’ll stay tonight,” I say, as if I have a choice, “but in the morning, I’m leaving.”
It breaks me to say it. My brain rebels at the idea of giving up on our marriage, but he’s the one who checked out long before I did.
His throat bobs, and I swear his eyes brim with tears, but maybe I imagine it because his walls slam into place in the next beat.
“Inside.”
I swallow the barbs choking my throat and walk into the house. It’s warm inside, silent aside from the hum ofthe appliances. This isn’t a home. I don’t know what makes me think that, but it feels empty. A shell. There are no photographs on the walls, no personal knickknacks on any of the surfaces. It’s staged to look like it has a heart, but there’s no beating beneath the wallpaper.
I sink onto the couch like my legs have weights in them. He doesn’t say a word when I drag a blanket off the back of it, wrapping it around myself.
And I know he’s thinking the same thing I was a month ago.
Is this the end of our marriage?
Because I don’t know how we come back from this and, judging from the look on his face, neither does he.
FOUR
DIESEL
I don’t takemy eyes off her. I’m scared if I do, she’ll disappear again.
Not disappear—leave.
She left me.
Cold settles in my gut. I knew something was wrong. I was gone too long, tied up in club shit and politics that I couldn’t untangle from. I thought it would be okay. She was replying to my messages and calls like usual, then it stopped. Silence. No responses, phone straight to voicemail. When I got back to our apartment and found it empty, I was fucking terrified.
Three fucking days it took me to find her once I realised she was gone. Three hellish days of wondering if she was safe or hurt. Three nightmare days of not knowing if she was still mine.
She did well staying ahead of me. I taught my little firefly well, but I’m a bloodhound when it comes to her and I’m better at hunting.
Luckily.
I scrub my hand over my face trying to calm the restlessness vibrating through my body. I don’t like how pale she is, but it’s the look in her eyes that guts me. A defeated hopelessness.
How did I leave the most important person in my world bleeding out?
