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“Have your space.”
“I can’t stay here.”
“Yes, you can. I’ll leave. This is your home, Red. Don’t leave, stay.”
I manage to relinquish his hand as I stand up, facing him. “I’m not kicking you out of your own home.”
“It’s our home. And I’m in the doghouse, so I’ll go.”
“Where will you go?”
He shrugs. “My mom’s place.”
“Okay,” I whisper, if only because I don’t want to fight, and I’m ready to go to bed already.
“For how long?” he asks, staring at the distance between us like a glorified cockblocker.
“However long it takes.”
I head for the bathroom, shutting down the voice begging me to look back, to hug him one last time, to kiss him stupid.
Instead, I close the door behind me and lean against it. I need to make sure he leaves before I grab on to the loop of his jeans and beg him to stay.
They say love gives people the power to destroy you.
But perhaps that isn’t true. Perhaps what destroys us is our reluctance to walk away.
Which is why I need to let him go.
He won’t change and stop running until his past stops chasing him and dragging his soul through hell by way of nightmares.
I stare at myself in the mirror, palming my taut stomach, my mind blown at the knowledge that I’ll be creating a life every second of every day until I get to meet our baby.
I grab my breasts, holding them up. They are fuller—the difference subtle, yet there.
After a long time has passed, I step inside the bedroom and see that Damon’s gone, along with a few of his necessities.
I chased him out of his own home.
But I hold on to my instincts, whispering that this needs to happen. Damon needs to grieve Palmer, and I need to make sense of the fact that Palmer destroyed Harvey’s future and Damon protected her.
Just the thought of facing him at work tomorrow, seeing him so close and yet knowing I won’t be able to touch him or kiss him, is enough to puncture my heart.
Nothing but time will fix this, so I cook a beef stir-fry and spend the rest of the night doing laundry and googling baby names.
Pain is a disturbed stalker. It waits, dormant, in the creek of the forest to catch you when you’re weak and lonely.
And then it pounces.
Except, as always with Damon, I have hope.
And we all know hope is the true killer.
I thank Gia by text after reading the list she sent me of all the books I should read and all the things I’ll need for the baby.
It’s unbelievable that not long ago all my worries centered on if I should be with Damon. And now there’s a tiny thing inside me.
I see Damon step out of the elevator, pushing the glass door. I’m gawking at him in his charcoal suit and white dress shirt. When he stops near my desk, I notice the subtle darkness under his eyes.
