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“No, you’re not. You’re trying to push me away because you think it’s best for me. I see that, and I wish you’d stop.” Tears prick the backs of my eyes as he walks across the room, his hands folded behind his head.

“Then, what is it?” he asks. “Why don’t you want to do it? When it could launch your career further than anything else. When I was your age, I blew off every single good opportunity that came my way. I threw my life away instead, and it took me twenty years to get here. Why don’t you get it?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to. Do I really need a reason?”

“Yes. Sunny.” He lets out a long sigh. “I didn’t pursue anything I wanted to. I took the easy way, and it got me nowhere. I want better for you.”

“Stop treating me like a kid!” I cry. “What if I want nothing more than to paint and be with you? Why can’t I do that? They said I could get jobs, so I’ll do that. That program is six months, Alexander. Six months that I’ll have to live there, work full time, almost never see you. What if what we have doesn’t survive that? What if you…” My voice trails off.

“What if I what?”

“What if you move on? What if you lose interest in me?” My throat aches as I force the words out. “What if you cheat on me?” I watch the expression drain from his face. He doesn’t react in anger or sadness. A neutral tone takes over the features of his face and after a long breath, he walks away, onto the patio alone.

With my next blink, tears spill onto my cheeks.

Resting my elbows on the counter, my face in my hands, the moisture seeps through my fingers while he sits in silence on the patio. I wish I hadn’t said those words to him because I know they hurt. The pain of knowing that I don’t trust him. I can’t trust him.

But also knowing…with a gnawing assurance that it’s the only reason I won’t sign up for that program. Because what he said was true.

I am afraid of being alone. I’m afraid to face the truth, which is…that I’d rather be stuck in a hellhole with my family where I’m neglected and mistreated than try something alone and fail at it.

That is what is holding me back.

It’s the knife through my heart, and in my anger, I stabbed a knife through his heart too. One that I’ve been holding on to since before we started this thing we have. I knew what I was getting into with him. I heard the stories, heard the things he’d done, and I fell hopelessly in love with him anyway.

After a few minutes, I step quietly out to see him. I drop into the chair opposite from him, and I watch him wrestle with these emotions.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Don’t be. You’re right to be worried.”

Another punch to the gut.

“That’s not what I meant.” He rubs at his eyes, looking tired and stressed. Then, he opens them and reaches for me. I let him hold my hand in his while my stomach turns with anxiety. “Sunny, I want to tell you I’d never do that to you. I love you too much to hurt you, but that’s the kind of person I am, isn’t it? Impulsive. Selfish.”

“That’s not what I see,” I whisper as a tear slips over my cheek.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment. The weight of this conversation is draped over us like a heavy cloud.

My eyes lift to his face as he narrows his gaze on me. “What really worries me is that you’d pass on this—this opportunity that would change your life—because of me. Because you love me and yet you know…I’m…”

There are tears in his eyes, and a sob racks my chest. Please don’t say it.

“I’m a monster.”

“Don’t say that,” I cry through my tears.

It’s quiet for a moment as he stares out at the cool water rippling across the pool. The late summer air sends a chill in the breeze, and I bawl silently while he does nothing.

“If I promise you can trust me, would you go?”

“I do trust you, Alex.”

“Then, go.”

“Let me think about it, okay?”

When his eyes meet mine again, the air between us is saturated with this new pain, the doubt, the guilt, the fear.