Page 94 of Chosen Road

“Hi,” he whispered. “Is this okay?”

“Yes.” I’d forgotten how good it felt to rest within the shelter of his shadow, the heat from his body warming our bed. I smiled at him and watched the anxiety ease away from his handsome face. “Did I tell you about my meeting with my director last week?”

“No. Did it go well?”

I watched the different emotions skitter across his face as I told him the story. When I got to the end, I could tell he was struggling with what to say. I laughed softly. “Don’t censor yourself, Gus. I can handle it.”

“The guy’s a dick.”

“He’s not so bad. At least, he admitted it and he’s working with me now.”

“Yes, but for two years he piled his shit on you and that’s not okay.”

Since I started paying attention to my emotions, I’d been able to step back and notice when odd feelings cropped up. This was one of those times, and what I was feeling was intense anger.

I examined the sensation further and found shame. I felt criticized. Focussing on only his words and his tone, and not the feelings his words evoked, I realized that what he said was correct. “You’re right. It’s not. It bothers me that it took me so long to do something about it.”

“Why did it take so long?”

Gus

She blew out a breath.

Watching her, seeing the flash of anger, waiting while she worked through her emotions, I realized anew just how often she shut down. And how often I rushed in to fill the silence. I held my tongue.

“So many reasons. You want me to try to explain?”

“Definitely.”

She began slowly. “The biggest factor is concern for the kids. I don’t want anything to be missed. I was essentially redoing the work every night that my colleagues did during the day. In the beginning, when he first asked me to check over the files, I found a few mistakes, one a serious lapse. It scared me that something else might be missed if I was too lazy to check.”

“I can understand that,” I replied.

She nodded, her eyes far away, sifting through her thoughts. Her cheeks pinkened.

“The other reason is that I dislike confrontation. When he first asked me, it was only a few files once or twice a week. As the number of files increased, I felt uncomfortable about confronting the issue so I tried harder to stay on top of it so I could avoid it.” She paused and met my eyes before wincing and looking away. “That’s kind of where you came in.”

I raised my eyebrows but maintained my silence, giving her room to think and speak.

“I looked into it and found out that the number of cases I handled daily easily outweighed my colleagues’ by fifty percent. That’s before taking their files home with me to check. This pissed me off and I started feeling resentful, but it’s not like I could stop because I was concerned for the kids and worried somebody might miss something. I felt trapped, resentment on one side, anxiety on the other. I didn’t want Alex to suffer so I made sure I spent time with him every day.” She met my eyes and hers were misty. “But I sacrificed you.”

Tears rolled down her face, I opened my arms, and she threw herself on my chest. I closed my eyes and lay my cheek on top of her head and stroked down the length of her spine, easing her tension, molding her body to mine, as her body quaked and shook.

Her voice quavered but she pushed through. “I’m so sorry, Gus. I never meant to hurt you. I thought you could take it, but of course no one can take that kind of rejection and I should never had expected it. It wasn’t even rejection, it was exhaustion. And then Jacqueline-”

My body jerked when she said that name, and she stopped talking. I ran my hand down her back. It was important that she be able to express herself. “And then Jacqueline,” I prompted, the name sour in my mouth.

Amber took a heaving breath and continued. “I knew she wanted you. I saw it when I visited you in your office, but you seemed oblivious. When I told you and you were so quick to dismiss me, I started to believe there was something going on between the two of you. I wasn’t sure enough to push, but I felt so much anger and resentment. I became more and more sure you were contemplating leaving me and I didn’t want to compete with her, so I turned my attention to Alex and my work, areas where I felt no one could take my place.”

She shared so much I was almost speechless. I wrapped my arms around her. “If there’s somewhere you can be certain no one can ever take your place, it’s here. I thought you no longer loved or wanted me.”

She nodded against my chest, her hands clasped around my neck.

“Do you want me to continue?”

She gently squeezed the back of my neck. “Yes.”

“I tried to tell you how I felt, what I needed, but it angered you. I asked you to go to counseling, and I do understand now why you couldn’t, but then it smacked of rejection. There was never a time I didn’t want you, Amber, and I’ve never not loved you.”

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