Page 41 of Chasing the Other Woman

"Sam, no⁠—"

"She's out in the field with you. Sitting beside you. Getting your jokes out there when you're lassoing the monster. She's the one coming back with you, laughing, after a chase, feeling like the world is hers. She gets to stand beside you and have it all while I get to sit at a desk and wish it was me getting just an ounce of the same attention from you she gets."

"God, Sam, you can't think⁠—"

“Tell me, Brooks, when I told you to turn right before that storm nearly caught you the other day and you took Luci’s advice over mine, were you thinking, Let me take this one last thing away from her. That’s what will finally push her away for good?”

"I never wanted you to leave, Sam. Please⁠—"

"If you wanted to hurt me, Brooks, if you wanted to punish me, congratulations. You have excelled."

The last thing. That's the last thing I wanted. I wanted to protect her, to keep her safe.

"I messed up, Sam. I messed up so badly that I don't even know where to start."

"I do," she says, her voice so quiet I barely hear her.

She looks down at her hand. I've watched hundreds of horror movies over the years. Many of them with Sam draped against me. None of the scenes from those movies can compare to the horror of the moment when Sam grips the ring on her finger and pulls it off.

"Sam, please."

“I know why you changed after the miscarriage,” she says.

My chest hurts. The world tilts like I'm about to go down the hill of the worst roller coaster that life can conjure.

“What?”

Her eyes come back to mine. “You blame me.”

I stare at her.

For a second, I'd swear that everything stops. My heart. The earth's rotation. All of it.

“What?” I say again.

“You don’t have to keep pretending.”

“Sam, no.”

“Every single thing you did told me.” Her hand presses to her middle, not dramatically, just like she's holding herself together. “You stopped trusting my judgment. You stopped trusting me in the field. You treated me like I was fragile and reckless at the same time. Like I was something you had to manage.”

My pulse pounds so hard my injured arm throbs with it.

“That’s not why.”

"I wanted to go with you that day. You told me you weren't sure, but I pressed the issue. You think it's my fault."

"Sam, that's⁠—"

"You think I did it. And part of you must hate me for it."

I move toward her. "Please, listen to me, Sam."

But she's too far gone now. Her eyes have shifted in a way that tells me she's looking straight through me. She's no longer in this moment. She's in a hell of the past's making.

I reach for her, as if I can pull her into the present with me.

The words are right there. If I'd followed the call that she made that day, all three of us would have come home. She would have been safe. I wouldn't have nearly lost her. And our baby would be a toddler now.