Chapter 7 Makenna
SEVEN
MAKENNA
He blinks hard once, then steps back from me. His fingers curl around the back of the chair like it’s the only thing keeping him on his feet. He’s processing, looking for solutions and understanding in my words.
I want to tell him that it doesn’t matter, that I love him and that’s enough, but I can’t. Because if we don’t fix this it’ll continue to eat at everything we are until the resentment is burrowed so deeply we’ll never dig it out.
How do I explain to him that I feel like a stranger in our marriage?
That I’m tired of being a secret in his life?
How do I tell him I miss waking up next to him?
I don’t want a divorce, but I can’t keep doing this.
“I love you.” He chokes on the emotion, and it makes my own throat tight.
“I know.” His fingers curl tighter, but the rest of him stays frozen, like any movement might break him. “Love was never the issue, Zane.”
His jaw loosens then sets again, not in anger but frustration. “I’m trying to understand.”
“And that’s the only reason I’m still here.”
He turns to the kettle and busies himself, switching it on before he grabs two mugs. It seems dismissive, rude even, but it’s not. He needs a moment to think, the space to let his thoughts breathe.
So I don’t push him. I just wait as he pours the drinks neither one of us really wants. Finally, he slides a mug in front of me, the bitter smell of the coffee filling my nose.
I don’t reach for it until he sits. Neither of us speak or move. Zane stares at the table like he’s reading our future etched into the wood.
“I don’t want this to be the end,” he says.
I run my fingers over the edge of the table, like it might calm the pounding inside my chest. I open my mouth and the words die on my tongue as he surges to his feet. His chair wobbles as he moves to the window just as the sound of a car reaches my ears.
“Stay here.” The order is barked in a tone he’s never used with me.
What the hell? My stomach twists into an angry knot but hurt is a deeper pain. Even now he keeps me hidden. Is he this embarrassed by me?
I sink down as he disappears into the hallway. Every nerve ending in my body feels too wired and every instinct tells me to leave.
What the fuck am I staying for?
I swipe at my tears. I don’t understand any of this. His actions and his words don’t match. He tells me he’s not ashamed of me, but then he hides me away like I’m nothing.
It’s almost as if…
It’s almost as if he scared of me being seen.
I blink. Why would he be afraid of that?
When he reappears a moment later, he’s holding a couple of bags. He slides them onto the counter before going back to the window and peering out.
His shoulders eventually climb down from his ears, and he cuts a look over his shoulder
“Did you stay hidden?”
My patience fractures alongside the last of my strength. “Don’t worry. I’m still your dirty little secret.”
He exhales through his nose, sharp but fighting for control. “Stop saying that.”
“What else am I meant to think? Someone turns up here and you make me hide in here like a fugitive.” There’s a lump in my throat I can’t swallow past. “I want to understand, but honestly, I don’t. You’re acting like I’m a liability.”
“You’re not a liability but I am when it comes to you!
” He snaps it so brutally I almost rear back.
It would have hurt less if he’d ripped my chest open and pulled out what’s left of my heart.
The muscle in his cheek ticks as he tips his head back and stares at the ceiling.
He’s grappling for control and when he speaks again his voice is softer.
“Don’t you understand?” he rasps. “If something happens to you, I’ll never come back from it.
If he’d seen you, I’d have slit his fucking throat right there on the gravel and watched him bleed to death. ”
I flinch at the violent image he paints and when he starts to pace, my head spins. I’ve never seen him so animated.
“You don’t mean that,” I whisper.
His eyes snap to mine and the look in them almost makes me step back. “Yeah, I do. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you fucking safe.”
“I don’t need you to keep me safe. I need you to love me.”
His face falls, like all the fight drains from him.
“I do love you. I love you so fucking much I can’t breathe sometimes, which is the problem.” Another blow that lands in my chest like a grenade. “You look around and you see the perfect life I’ve created for us, but that’s not the true picture.”
What is he talking about? I wrap my arms around my middle, protecting myself from any more hits. “Then what is?”
His eyes are granite, tension tightly wound around every muscle before he shakes his head. “No one can know about you, Kenna. Not ever.”
My stomach sinks. He’s never going to give me a reason, and I don’t know how to live in this echo chamber of half-truths and lies any longer.
“That’s it?” My voice climbs and I press the heel of my palm into my eye, done with this.
“That’s all you’re giving me? Some cryptic bullshit that I’m meant to decode?
Well, I can’t, Zane. I’m not a mind reader and when you shut down or you refuse to be honest about what you’re doing, I have to guess and then we both get pissed. ”
“I’m not asking you to be a mind reader. I’m just asking you to trust me. Everything I’m doing is for you.”
I did trust him. That’s why I’m still here. That’s why I stayed through the lonely nights, the tears, the feelings of being dismissed and unloved.
I laugh. It sounds thin, scraped over too many heartaches. “You didn’t bring me here for my sake. You did it for your own.”
“If you really think that then you don’t know me as well as I thought you did.”
“I don’t think I know you at all. You chained me to the bed!
You’ve brought me to the middle of nowhere without even asking.
You disappear for days, weeks and then turn up like nothing’s wrong.
Who’s the stranger here, Zane? Tell me what the hell is going on, why you’ve treated me like a pit stop for our entire marriage, why you want me to stay hidden.
Tell me because I swear if you don’t, I’ll walk and you’ll never see me again.
I can’t love a man who keeps me locked out of his life! ”
I’m breathless by the time I stop talking.
His throat bobs like his words are stuck in it.
This is killing me. I don’t want to tear us apart but I don’t see how we move past this unless he starts opening up.
For the first time since I met him, he is no longer the anchor that keeps my boat from drifting.
He is the weight dragging me into the water while I drown.
He closes his eyes and then he says, “Sit. I’ll tell you everything.”