What Grows Dies Here

I’d been in and out of the country for the past year and a half, coming only to see Ruby and my girls.

I’d deftly managed to avoid Karson completely until right then.

It was the middle of the night. I was at my house, drinking wine and watching a serial killer documentary.

I didn’t sleep these days.

Well, I must have because I was still alive, and human beings needed sleep to survive, but I was getting the bare minimum, even for me. Who needed to sleep when you could party in Prague? Or Budapest? Or Croatia?

I hadn’t just been partying my way through Europe as most of my friends believed. I had gone back to Vietnam to work on my charity, then to the East Sudan. It did good for my perspective on things. Tina had said that could be a healthy thing for me, looking at people experiencing things measurably worse than me, without any of my resources. As long as she didn’t belittle my own struggle, she’d clarified.

I needed the escape from my struggle. From myself. Needed to see a reminder that people in far worse situations than mine still found reasons to smile.

I missed him.

Every day.

Every moment.

I labored over the decisions I made, how I’d hurt him, abandoned him. But I stayed firm in my decision that I’d done the right thing by leaving. Not just because of what I couldn’t give him, but because of who I’d become. I was a fucking mess. I was broken. And he’d want to fix me. But I had to either fix myself or learn to love the broken pieces.

I knew he’d find me eventually. There was only so long I could run. I was tired. I missed my friends, my family, missed seeing Ruby grow. There was a time limit on this little routine. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, miss the most pivotal and important moments in my friends’ lives because I was too much of a coward to face him.

So I was going to stay.

Richard, Stella’s father, was getting married in New Zealand in a couple of days, and we were all going over to celebrate.

I was excited. I needed something to celebrate.

And when my eyes caught him moving into my living room, parts of me did celebrate. Parts of me could breathe again.

I stood on shaking legs as he slowly approached, taking in every inch of him. He looked the same as he always did, suit, pale skin, sharp jaw, piercing eyes. But he looked different too, sharper, somehow. More dangerous, if that were even possible.

His eyes did their usual assessment of me as he stepped toward me, eyes narrowing as he took me in.

My stomach dropped. I was wearing a nightgown with a cashmere cardigan on top. A lot of my skin still showed. My hair had grown out past my shoulders, and I’d parted it into two braids. My face was free of makeup. I hadn’t had cosmetic procedures in a while, so I assumed I looked older, more drawn.

Whatever it was he saw, he didn’t like.

He finally stopped a few feet from me. The distance he put between us was like a chasm. I ached to cross it, to melt into his arms.

I stayed where I was.

“Though it fuckin’ kills me, I’ll watch you run around the world, run from me,” he said by greeting.

I jerked ever so slightly at the sound of his voice as it ran along my skin, my hairs standing on end.

His stance was rigid, the cords in his neck defined. “I’ll let you pretend that you can run from us,” he continued, words clipped. “I’ll deal with the fact that I’m not sleeping beside you every night. I’ll fuckin’ wait for you.”

My heart thundered in my chest as he spoke.

“As much as it kills me, I’ll stand on the fuckin’ sidelines because I don’t want to push you farther away,” he gritted out. “It goes against every single one of my instincts, but I’ve been able to sleep at night—barely—because I thought that it was what’s best for you. I’ve let you push me away. But I’m done.”

His teeth clenched at the last word, as if he were forcing it out.

My breathing quickened under the weight of his words, settling like stones at the bottom of my stomach.

“I will watch you do all of that shit, but I will not watch you waste away. Turn into skin and bones before my fuckin’ eyes.” He threw his hand out at my body, and I flinched.