Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Stevie
His words follow me like a bruise. They don’t fade when I leave the house. Don’t soften with distance or fresh air or the hum of the car beneath me. They settle into my chest and throb every time I breathe too deeply.
Having kids isn’t everything.
I know what he meant. That’s the worst part. I know he wasn’t trying to hurt me. I know fear was talking, not indifference. I know Angel loves me with every hard, scarred piece of himself.
But knowing doesn’t stop the pain. Knowing doesn’t change the way it landed. The way it sliced clean through a part of me that was already raw. The way it made me feel… stupid. Like I’d been clinging to something childish. Like I’d been too much. Too needy. Too desperate.
And I hate that my brain does that — twists his words into a weapon and then hands it right back to me.
The road to my sister’s feels longer than it is. Streetlights blur past like tired stars. My hands grip the steering wheel so tight my fingers ache. The radio is off.
I can’t handle music.
Can’t handle lyrics about love or loss or babies or hope.
I can’t handle anything that might crack me open more than I already am.
At a red light, I catch my reflection in the rearview mirror. Eyes red. Face pale. Mouth set in a line like I’m holding myself together through sheer force. I look like a woman who’s been fighting a war no one can see.
I pull into my sister’s driveway and sit there longer than I need to, forehead pressed against the steering wheel, hands trembling in my lap.
The house is quiet. Safe. Somewhere I can think without feeling like I’m being watched or measured or pitied.
I can exist without the weight of being someone’s wife who can’t seem to give him the one thing everyone assumes is inevitable.
I swallow hard and force myself to get out of the car. Each step up her path feels like a confession. Inside, the silence wraps around me gently this time. Not the suffocating silence of my house when Angel’s pacing and I’m spiraling. This feels different and quiet and doesn’t demand anything.
I kick my shoes off by the door and drop my keys on the counter, then just…
stand there. Breathing. Listening to the quiet hum of the fridge.
The faint tick of a clock I didn’t know she had, and the distant sound of a car passing outside.
This is what space feels like. Room for the truth to finally surface.
I move like I’m underwater, slow, and heavy, and curl up on the couch with a blanket pulled tight around my shoulders. My phone sits face down on the coffee table like it might accuse me if I look at it too long.
I replay the moment again. Not just what he said, but everything around it. The exhaustion in his eyes, his voice roughened when he realized he’d gone too far, and the panic under the anger.
Angel wasn’t telling me to stop wanting a child. He was telling me he was scared of losing me. And somehow, we still ended up hurting each other.
I think about counselling. About the things we said, how we promised to talk, to listen, and to stay present even when it was uncomfortable. And then I think about how quickly we slid back into old patterns the second hope crept in.
That scares me more than the argument. It means we’re fragile in ways we haven’t fully reckoned with yet. It means the wound is still open, even if it scabbed over a little. One wrong move and it bleeds again. One wrong sentence and we’re right back in the dark.
And if we keep doing that, if we keep reopening the same hurt over and over, it won’t just hurt. It’ll poison us, turn love into resentment. And I cannot let that happen. I won’t. Not to Angel. Not to us.
My sister isn’t home yet. She’s still at work.
She texted earlier that she left the spare key under the plant pot like always.
The thought of explaining this to her makes my stomach knot.
Not because she won’t understand, but because she will.
She’ll look at me with those eyes full of quiet concern and say something gentle that makes me cry.
And I don’t know if I can cry any more than I already have.
I go to the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror. My eyes are red. My face looks thinner than I remember. There’s a handprint smeared into the glass where I braced myself earlier, like I needed proof I still exist.
“I don’t know who I am right now,” I whisper to my reflection.
Wife.
Woman.
Maybe, Mother.
Maybe-not.
Every version of me feels unfinished. I sink onto the edge of the tub and let my head fall into my hands. The tile is cold under my bare feet. My throat burns. My chest feels like it’s full of sand.
I don’t want to leave Angel. God, I don’t want that.
I want to crawl back into his arms and pretend none of this happened.
Pretend love is enough to smooth over the sharp edges.
But love didn’t stop me from disappearing into obsession.
Love didn’t stop him from saying something that cut us both open.
And that means we need something else right now. Clarity. Space. Not to walk away. But to breathe without bleeding on each other.
I sit back up and wipe my face with the edge of the blanket. Then I pick up my phone. My hands shake so hard I nearly drop it. There’s a message from him already.
I’m sorry. I love you. And I’m here when you’re ready.
My chest tightens; I believe him. That’s why this hurts so much. If he was cruel, if he was careless, if he didn’t care… leaving would be easy. But he cares. He cares so much that he’s been choking on it. And he’s trying.
My fingers hover, shaking. Every version of what I want to say sounds wrong. Finally, I force myself to be honest — even if it breaks us a little more before it heals us.
I know you didn’t mean it the way it came out.
I pause. My eyes blur with tears. Because even admitting that feels like swallowing something sharp.
But I can’t be around you right now without feeling like I’m failing.
That word hurts. Failing. But it’s the truth of what my brain keeps screaming at me. If I stay, I’ll keep hearing his words echoing off every wall, and I’ll keep fighting my own body and then taking it out on him.
And I don’t want to resent you.
I stop again. Breathing shallow. Tears drip onto the screen. I wipe them away with my thumb.
I think we need space. Not forever. Just enough to figure out who we are outside of this pain.
I stare at the words for a long time. Then add the hardest part.
I don’t want a divorce. I want a chance to come back to each other without all this anger and fear.
My thumb trembles. I hit send. And immediately wish I could unsend it. The waiting after is its own kind of torture. I pace the living room. Wrap the blanket tighter around myself like it might protect me from the ache blooming in my chest.
I stare at the phone until my eyes hurt. The seconds crawl. My stomach twists. My mind conjures worst-case scenarios like it always does.
What if he thinks I’m giving up and he shuts down?
What if I just destroyed us?
The phone buzzes. My heart lurches so hard it feels like it hits my throat. I pick it up with shaking hands. His reply is immediate.
If that’s what you need, I’ll respect it.
Tears flood my eyes.
I hate this. But I love you more than I hate the distance.
That line breaks something in me. Because that’s Angel. Hard edges. Soft heart. The tears come then, hot, and relentless. I press the phone to my chest like it’s a lifeline. Because this is what loving each other looks like when things get ugly.
My sister comes home an hour later and finds me curled on the couch, blanket wrapped tight, eyes swollen. She doesn’t ask what happened right away, just sets her bag down, kicks off her shoes, and sits beside me.
Then she just opens her arms. I crawl into them like I’m twelve years old again. Like I didn’t just make the hardest decision of my life.
“I didn’t leave him,” I whisper into her shoulder. “I just… stepped back.”
“I know,” she murmurs, rubbing my back. “Sometimes that’s what you have to do to keep from falling apart.”
“I’m scared,” I confess.
“Of what?”
“That I’ll never come back to myself,” I say. “That this… need will swallow me whole.”
My sister holds my face between her hands and looks at me.
“You’re already coming back,” she says firmly. “You just don’t see it yet.”
I swallow.
“What if he stops loving me while we’re apart?”
She snorts softly.
“That man looks at you like you hung the damn moon.”
A broken laugh escapes me.
“He’s stubborn.”
“Yeah,” she says. “So are you.”
She stands and pulls me up gently.
“Come on. Shower. Food. And then we’ll talk about what you need.”
I nod, letting her guide me toward the spare room.
Because right now, I don’t trust myself to know what I need.
That night, I lie in bed staring at the ceiling fan, watching it spin slow and steady. This isn’t the ending. But it isn’t the beginning either. It’s the pause. The place where you decide whether love is strong enough to wait while you rebuild yourself piece by piece.
I press a hand to my chest and breathe through the ache.
“I still want you,” I whisper into the dark.
“I just need to find me again first.”
And for the first time since the hospital, that feels like the bravest thing I’ve ever done.