Page 68 of If I Didn’t Have You

“It’s not just our relationship!” I shouted, making my head throb even more than it had been. “Don’t you see? Fixing us isn’t enough. Not anymore!”

“Then what the hell do you want from me?”

I sank back into the pillows, tears filling my eyes. “You need to fix you.”

The words delivered a devastating blow that knocked him back a step. I wished I could take them back the moment they left my mouth, but they were already out there.

The damage was done.

He stepped back, shredding his fingers through his hair as he stoically tried and failed to keep the hurt from his face. “I had no idea you thought I needed to be fixed.”

“Ben—”

“It’s fine.”

I knew those two words all too well. He’d heard them enough from me. The discussion was over. Talking any further was not on the table.

“I hope you’re feeling better soon,” he mumbled before he turned on his heel and stormed out of the room.

His boots thumped on the stairs, and seconds later, the door slammed behind him. If I had been hoping to save my marriage, I’d gone about it all the wrong way. My words didn’t come out at all as I meant them, but that didn’t matter.

I couldn’t take them back, and Ben was too proud to sit here and listen to my explanations a moment longer than he had to.

I had to find a way to fix this. I didn’t want my marriage to be over— I just didn’t want to be stuck in a rut any longer.

No one ever told me living with a man would only get harder as I got older. Or how much work it would be after the kids left the house. I’d expected my life to be filled with joy, and instead, I was staring down the road of divorce court if things didn’t change.

20

BEN

For the first time that I could remember, tears welled in my eyes.

You need to fix you.

Like I was something broken that was too damaged to love. God, I sounded like a pussy, but those words cracked something in my heart. I knew I was a fucking mess. It was obvious to anyone who looked at me, but to hear my own wife tell me that…

Fuck, that was something that cut me to the core.

First, the hurt tore me to shreds. I got out of there and fled to my mobile home to lick my wounds in private.

The next day, the anger came swiftly, filling me to the point of overflowing. I nearly put a hole in the wall, but pulled back just as I let my fist fly. I didn’t need yet another person being disappointed in me.

For some reason, disappointment was always worse than anger. I had let her down in more ways than one, and instead of yelling at me, she just cried and looked at me like she didn’t know who I was.

Which wasn’t hard to believe since I’d basically checked out of life for the past five years.

But today…

Today, the anger took a back seat, and absolute devastation kicked in. Not because she kicked me out of the house, but because I had no clue how to fix me. If I couldn’t change, then I wouldn’t win her back. And if I didn’t win her back, what was the fucking point of living? She was my everything, and I was on the verge of losing her.

Something had to change. I just had to figure out what that was.

Now, it was day seven, and I was no closer to figuring out the conundrum that was my life, and even further from my wife’s arms.

It had been a week of sleeping in a mobile home that moved around from day to day by some mysterious prankster, intent on making my life a living hell.

Seven days of eating from a diner where everyone in town knew the trouble I was in with Clara.