“Please just stop, Bennett.” I cry. “Stop.” I stand up on shaky legs and prepare to tell him the truth, just so that he’ll stop pushing down all of the carefully constructed walls I’d put up in the past six months. “We’re getting a divorce. We’re…we’re not together.” I bite my bottom lip as his face morphs from confusion to sadness to anger to confusion again all within the span of a second. And then he’s laughing. Hard.
And it reminds me I haven’t heard him laugh like this in a while. A true hearty laugh that used to make my heart smile. “Oh my God, laughing hurts like a bitch, but I can’t help it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and wipes his eyes. “That was cute, honey. But when I’m better, I’m taking you the fuck over my knee for using the d word.”
Wren looks at me. “Well, I think you’ve got it from here. This isn’t usually how we handle it, but I’m going to let you field it. I’m calling for a consult. I’ll be back in ten, try not to kill him before then.” He nods at me before he’s gone.
“Livi…” Bennett’s voice is low, just above a whisper. I look at him, preparing to explain to him just what he’s missed in two years all while trying to keep it together. “Am I dying? Is that…is that why you’re so upset?”
My heart squeezes and pulses at the thought of living in a world where Bennett Clarke doesn’t exist. I want him happy, even if it isn’t with me. That mantra I repeat at the start of every day just to get me through it means he has to be alive. “No! No, you’re not dying. It was just a car accident. But…but it looks like you’ve suffered some memory loss, but Wren said it’s normal. And you’re going to be fine.” I sniffle as I look towards the window. The automatic lights have flickered on, as the room was almost dark and I turn on the light just over his bed illuminating the room even more.
It’s then, under brighter lighting I notice the bags under his eyes and the slight graying by his temples. “How…how much time am I missing?”
I hesitate, wondering what to say; if I should lie or just come right out with it. I go with the latter. “Two years,” I say softly, unsure of how he’s going to take it.
“What the hell? Two years? And…” His eyes immediately move to my hands, the hands I have by my sides. He zeroes in on my left hand and assumedly my bare ring finger. “No fucking way.”
“Bennett…”
His eyes pry away from my hand and find mine. They aren’t angry or filled with rage, but sadness and despair. “You…you left me?”
Yes. “Not exactly.”
“I’d never leave you, so that means you left me. When? How? Why?” The tears are in his eyes and he doesn’t even try to stop them from slowly trickling down his face. “I love you…did you stop loving me?”
“No.” I shake my head, tucking a hair behind my ear. “I’ll probably never stop loving you.” I’ve never said that to him, not in the six months we’ve been going through the separation and divorce. I probably shouldn’t have said it now under these circumstances, but my heart feels like it’s been ripped open. I feel raw and exposed and Bennett is pushing himself into my soul again. I can feel it.
Be strong. He’s going to remember. Don’t let him back in. He still broke your heart.
“You broke my heart, Bennett.”
“No…I would never.” He shakes his head, disregarding the words. “I would never break your heart. I promised you that on our wedding night. And I never go back on my word when it comes to you.” He speaks these words of finality and my hands begin to shake.
“You did.”
“Did I…? I didn’t…” His face falls, as he tries to pose the question, I know he’s thinking. Did I cheat on you?
I nod slowly, the tears swimming in my lids, and I know the second I blink they’ll trickle down my cheek. I twist my mouth and look away from him, trying to keep the tears at bay when I hear him whisper my name again. “Baby, look at me.” His voice sounds as pained as I know mine will be the second I open my mouth.
“I’m not…” I start, my gaze fixed on the floor. I stare at my shoes, black open toe pumps that were a part of my I’m getting divorced shopping spree.
“Olivia.” He speaks again and when I look up his eyes are filled with devastation. “I am so sorry. I don’t know how or…why…but there’s no excuse. I don’t know what would have possessed me to do that.”
I do, I think and I push the rationalization down and back into the box in the corner of my mind that I’d labeled do not open.
The box full of rationalizations that I’m not so innocent in this.
I didn’t cheat on him though.
No, you just let him think he was in this marriage by himself.
I squeeze my eyes together, trying to quiet the voices in my head and when I open them he’s staring at me. “Your hair is a little shorter and more curly,” he says. “But you look beautiful. You’ve always been beautiful.” His voice washes over me like a warm spring rain, heating my chilled bones instantly.
My hair was still past my shoulders, though only barely, and I wore it more wavy or curly now as opposed to sleek and straight like when we met. Two years ago, my hair was longer, although not by much, which made my heart flutter with just how much he noticed everything. But that’s how he was. He was the husband that noticed the haircut or the new clothes, or when my nails were a different color. He was the husband who could sense my period without looking at a calendar because my breasts looked bigger.
“Thank you.”
“Wait, two years?” He scratches his jaw and narrows his gaze in question. “That must mean…I mean we must have…do we have any children?”
The lump in my throat almost feels painful as I attempt to swallow and shake my head slowly. “No.” My lip trembles as my stomach flips, my heart sinks, and I feel the need to sit down again as I remember each time I peed on that stick. Each doctor’s appointment. Each moment of euphoria learning that I was pregnant. And then the low after I learned that I no longer was.