Page 6 of Safe With You

“That I’m doing the best I can.”

“I do know.” I nodded. “I think you are.”

He looked up. “Then what are we even talking about?”

I looked at him for a long moment before answering.

“I think the best you have to give...isn’t what I need anymore.”

The words hurt differently once they were out, maybe because there was nothing to argue with. Lucas didn’t have to be a bad man for this to be wrong for me. He didn’t have to stop loving me. There didn’t have to be another woman, some unforgivable betrayal, or one terrible thing I could point to when somebody asked what happened.

Maybe two people could love each other and still reach a point where love wasn’t doing enough of the work.

For years, I’d been waiting for something dramatic enough to give me permission to leave. Sitting there beside him, I wondered if feeling this lonely was permission enough.

Lucas was quiet for a moment before shaking his head. “I feel like no matter what I do, it’s never enough.”

“It’s not that you’re not enough.” My voice barely rose above the rain coming down. “It’s that I’ve spent so much time making room for you...” I looked down at my hands. “...I don’t recognize the space I’ve left for myself.”

Neither of us spoke. Outside, headlights swept across the windshield before disappearing down the street. Life kept moving while ours felt suspended inside the car.

Finally, he broke the silence.

“So...what are you saying?”

I swallowed. “I don’t know.”

And that was the truth. I didn’t know if this was the end or if we could fix something that had slowly unraveled over years. I only knew I couldn’t keep pretending I wasn’t breaking.

“I don’t know when I stopped feeling secure with us.” I blinked against the tears gathering in my eyes. “I just know I did.”

“You want to break up?” he asked quietly.

My chest ached immediately because despite everything, the thought still hurt.

I loved Lucas.

God, I loved him.

But somewhere along the way, loving him had started costing me pieces of myself I wasn’t sure how to get back.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

It wasn’t the answer he wanted, and it wasn’t the answer I wanted either. Five years should’ve made the decision easier somehow. Instead, five years meant there were birthdays and inside jokes and ordinary Tuesdays tangled up in everything that hurt. Leaving him wouldn’t only mean walking away from who we were now.

It meant letting go of who we’d been too.

Lucas rubbed both hands over his face before sighing deeply.

I’d spent so much time making excuses for him. Protecting his intentions. Minimizing my feelings. Shrinking my needs. And in the end, none of it had saved us from this moment.

“I don’t think you realize how hard it is loving somebody who keeps making you feel unsure.”

His expression softened then, and for a second I hated it because softness without change had become our language too.

Neither of us spoke after that. The rain continued falling steadily around us while Heather Headley’s In My Mind played quietly through the speakers, low enough to almost disappear beneath the storm.

Lucas reached for my hand eventually.