Chapter 54
Fifty-Four
Louise
Ipoint to the flowers still sitting on his counter. The only thing left in the otherwise completely empty house.
I’d pulled in just as Joel was pulling out with the moving truck. He’d braked just long enough to notch his chin at the house, where Zach’s truck was still parked, and I’d raced inside.
“What happened? Why did you block my number?” I ask, but he just stares at me.
I step closer, pleading with him. I don’t even care how pathetic I sound.
My heart is in my throat. “You said locked in, Zach. You said it. When I said I would walk through the hard stuff with you, I meant it. I meant every single word. Let me in. Please don’t push me away because it got ugly, because it got scary.
Tell me what happened, how I can help. Please. ”
Zach stares at me, his jaw clenched so tightly I fear he may break a tooth. His eyes, the blue that I have come to love so much, are rife with emotion.
I take another step forward, but he remains where he is. Unmoving. “Please, Zach,” I whisper again.
But he stays completely silent.
And I realize this is it. His decision has been made… and I’m not part of it.
God, why does this hurt so bad? Why did I have to fall so hard for him?
I knew better. And I still did it.
“You know that…just, deep in your gut feeling…” I whisper, flattening my palms against my sternum between my breasts, where that aching tightness is most acute “—that feeling that you just know you’re right?
And everything inside of you is screaming, begging for you to be wrong, but—” I curl my hands into fists, holding them tight against that ache in my chest, “—you know you’re not… ?”
He stares at me, unmoving, unblinking. And the tears I’d been fighting for days slip down my cheeks. I let them. I don’t bother to swipe them away.
“I really, really wanted to be wrong, Zach. You promised you were different. And I believed you,” I whisper, my voice cracking. Shrugging my shoulders, I breathe, “Turns out you’re just like the rest of them, huh?”
He remains resolutely silent. The only show of emotion is the anguish in his eyes. And something inside me cracks open wide.
Because even though this is killing him inside, too, at the end of the day, he either can’t or won’t choose me.
Turning, I cross the room I’d come to view as home one last time. At the door, I turn, meeting his gaze once more.
“I hope you know, I love those girls. I might not be a mom, and I know I’m not their mom… but if you’d given me a fair chance, Zach… you’d have seen that I’d fight like hell for them. And for you.”