Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 66057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66057 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 330(@200wpm)___ 264(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
“I loved you then. I love you now.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ll love you always.”
“You love what we used to be, not what we are now. It’s over. You know it’s over.”
We had to be. I couldn’t continue to allow him to sacrifice more than he already had for me. It wasn’t fair what I was doing to him and had been putting him through every month for the last couple of years. I had to stop being selfish and put his needs and wants first.
I loved him enough to let him go, knowing I could never give him what he truly yearned for. I tried…
But I was broken.
He shook his head. “I don’t want this for us, and I know you don’t want it either. We’re still here, sweetness. Deep inside, it’s still us.”
“Christian, please… I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s the opposite—I’m trying to set you free. I’m just so fucking exhausted from disappointing you all the time. I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Well, I can’t live without you.”
I opened my eyes, revealing our life together in my devastated expression. It was the least I could do. This was killing me too. I didn’t want this, but I didn’t have another choice. I’d made the wrong one over ten years ago, and it had cost me the love of my life.
“How do I look at the woman I love and just walk away from her? Huh? Please tell me, Kins, because I have not a fucking clue.”
I swallowed hard while more tears slid down my cheeks. “I know you blame me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. I can see right through you. I always have, and I always will. I wish I could change things. If I could go back… Fuck, I just can’t do this anymore. I’ve spent years regretting what I can’t change, and now I see it in the way you look at me, in the way you talk to me. You blame me, Christian, so stop pretending like you don’t.”
“I don’t care anymore. We’ll work through it.”
“All you’d be doing is settling for me, and I can’t do that to you. We’ve been trying to make it work for years. Enough is enough. You have to let me go.”
“The fuck I do.”
I shoved him. “Stop! Just stop! We agreed!”
“What other choice did you give me?”
“The only choice we have left!”
“That’s not the answer!”
Our chests were rising and falling in unison which was the only thing in sync with us.
“How can you not see it? What you’re doing to yourself, to me—to us?”
I jerked back, his questions knocking the wind out of me. “What do you want me to do?”
“Fight for us!”
“I can’t more than I already have, Christian! I have no fight left in me! It’s all been taken away with every—” I stopped myself, unable to say the words.
It hurt too fucking much.
“Christian! I can’t be here! I need to leave!”
“For fuck’s sake, Kinley! You can’t leave my little sister’s wedding!”
“I don’t care! It’s your fault that no one knows the truth, and the longer I’m here, the harder it is to not tell everyone!”
Despite not wanting him to say the words, there was no holding back the fury soaring through his body as he spewed, “We’re not ruining their wedding because you want to tell everyone right now that we’re getting a divorce!”
“Yes! I do want to tell everyone! It’s time! We’ve been hiding it for months! For years we’ve been pretending to be something we’re not, and I can’t do it anymore! For once can you just listen to me? Can you just see things through my eyes? You can’t protect me anymore! I’m not that young girl you found in the woods! Why can’t you see that?!”
“You’ll always be that girl to me. You may have forgotten her, but she’s never left my side. You’ve never left me, and you never will. Do you understand me?”
“Christian, we’re not an us anymore.”
“We’ll always be an us, Kins. From the first time I claimed your lips, you were mine.”
He did the only thing he could in a moment that felt as if we were saying goodbye. Gripping onto the back of my neck, he slammed his lips against my mouth, kissing me like he did that night all those years ago. He was desperately trying to remind me of who we used to be.
Except when we pulled away, resting our foreheads on each other for support, I wept, “I don’t want to be yours anymore… It hurts too much.”
I lied.
Not for me.
Not for us.
For him.
It was my turn to protect him…
From me.
My mind was thrown right back to that night when I found my soulmate at fifteen, in the woods, where he protected me, and he…
Made me believe in love at first sight.