Page 70 of Mountain Void

Her shoulders drooped forward, and she stared at her hands as if she couldn’t bear to look at him.

For a long instant, nothing made sense. He understood each individual word she’d said, but not the shape they formed all together.

His body forgot how to breathe. His vision blurred, stars forming behind his eyes.

21

Lorenz

“Lorenz.”

He flinched at the sound of his name. It was Charlie’s voice—her same voice—but he couldn’t recognize it. Just like he couldn’t recognize his own body.

Six years.

For six years, he’d carried one version of their ending. And now, suddenly, it was as if a veil had lifted. He suddenly understood—understood that every silence, everything they’d gone through, every step that had taken her away from him—could all be traced back to this.

“How long?”

His voice sounded distant, flat. Charlie flinched, but answered him.

“I knew right after the miscarriage,” she breathed.

Months.

Months before the divorce. Months in which they’d slept in the same bed, eaten at the same table, moved around each other so carefully.

“All that time. You knew.”

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Charlie said. Her face had gone pale. He could see she was hurting, but there was nothing he could do about her pain. His body had turned to stone.

He shoved back abruptly. He couldn’t stay here for a second longer.

Charlie startled, raising her hands in something like supplication.

The reaction cut through him, but only for a second. There was too much inside him. Anger, grief, disbelief, all tangled together.

“You let me think you didn’t want me.”

“Lorenz. Please. I was barely functioning.”

Self-pity filled him, the taste foreign and bitter. His pulse hammered in his ears, blocking out his reason.

“You don’t get to make excuses for yourself,” he spat out.

She recoiled against the cushions, and he hated himself for that, too.

“Please,” she begged, and it was unclear what she was begging for, but whatever it was, he couldn’t give it to her.

I can’t understand you.

I can’t forgive you.

“I can’t do this right now,” he said, turning away before he could see her expression. “I need some space.”

“Lorenz—”

“Please stay here.”