Chapter 11 #2
I think about that day a lot. How much I cried upstairs in the gym and how many times Julian pushed me to hit harder, to get me to unleash my wrath. Julian held the bag on the opposite side and allowed me to release whatever it was I had trapped inside of me.
Then, panting and sweaty, I fell to my knees and wailed. Julian tore off my gloves and hugged me close, and he cried with me. We were two grieving people, and a mutual friend became one of my best friends after that day.
From that day on, we helped each other. I’d help with Grace and he’d help me get stronger physically while I worked on mental strength.
“What else?” Christian asks.
“Nothing,” I rasp, my nails scratching softly down his back and back up to his shoulders. “All of that was only after I felt like, maybe, I could move on.”
Frowning, he turns his head to press his ear to my heart. “I was empty.”
“What?”
“I was empty when I left,” he repeats quietly. “That’s why I…spiraled.”
“Spiraled?”
He tenses beneath my palms. “I’m sober now.”
I swallow. “I know.”
Something is still missing—a part of the story he has not told me yet that feels dark and dooming.
A part of the story that might break me again.
Something happened and he hasn’t told me because he isn’t ready, and that’s fine.
But it’s just another wall, another line drawn between us.
If I have to give him all of me, he has to give me all of him too.
I can’t allow myself to give him a hundred percent if I’m only getting seventy from him.
Patience wears thin eventually, the longer it’s stretched out the threads untwine and break. How long can he keep it to himself until the threads snap and we aren’t the person for each other anymore?
It’s absurd, the idea that he isn’t for me. That he isn’t my person. He is.
I just want to scream into my pillow and hope that’s enough for all of this to fix itself.
I take a breath. “Christian, there’s something you aren’t telling me.”
Christian remains tense. “Yeah.”
I close my eyes and take a deeper breath, exhaling slowly. “Christian—”
“I’m not… I can’t.”
“I’m patient,” I say, “but I need something from you. I need whatever pieces you’re holding onto.”
“I know.”
“You don’t.”
“I do, baby,” he whispers. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever,” I mumble, trying to roll him off of me and turn away, but he doesn’t let me. “Let me go.”
“No.” Christian picks himself up and lies on his side, pulling me into him with my back against his chest. “Please, I’m sorry, just don’t make me leave.”
I sigh, frustrated, but I can’t help but sink into him with his arms around me. Tears sting my eyes. I spent many nights crying because of how much I wanted this—needed this.
When he left, I felt empty too. The apartment was empty, the bed was empty. It was too quiet to keep me sane. Every day, I could feel the lack of his body around mine. It was hard to sleep, to find comfort on a mattress where he was meant to be holding me as we fell asleep.
My skin was burning to be touched by him and now he’s here, holding me, and I feel… I don’t know. Him leaving broke me and even though I put myself back together—the pieces I could manage to pick up on my own—he’s picking up the rest just by being here.
“Christian, I don’t know what to do,” I confess quietly, wiping my cheek. “Tell me what to do.”
His arms tighten, pulling me even closer somehow, and I latch onto him with my hands around his arms. It takes seconds for his hand to find me, twining our fingers, and for him to nestle his head into my neck.
“With me?”
“With all of it,” I rasp, my voice cracking a bit.
“I don’t know,” he whispers against my neck. “If you want me to go, and really just…leave…then I’ll go. I won’t stay here if it’s going to hurt you. If it isn’t going to make you happy or if you can’t love me anymore, I’ll go. But only if you look at me and tell me that’s what you want.”
I shake my head and turn my body around to face him, my knees knocking against his. I wait for his eyes to find mine, and let the fragile silence linger. “I don’t want that.”
Christian blinks slowly, relief glossing over his eyes.
“I just don’t know what I’m meant to do now. I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel toward you.”
“I imagine you hate me a little bit,” he says, tortured.
“I don’t,” I croak. “I could never hate you even if I tried. And believe me, I tried. I kept hoping one day I’d wake up and hate you and regret you so that way I could stop loving you and it would stop hurting.”
“Do you still want to hate me?”
“No.” His thumb comes to my cheek, wiping my tears before he holds my hip. “I don’t want to hate you.”
“Lana, I don’t know how to tell you things that happened,” Christian says. “I don’t know how to talk about it without hating myself for the things I’ve done. Or without hurting you.”
I open my mouth to speak but he continues.
“The thing I regret the most in this life is leaving you,” he whispers. “I love you so much, Lana. Please just be patient with me.”
“You’re asking a lot of me,” I say. “It’s—”
“Unfair,” he says. “I know. I’m asking for a lot and not giving you enough.”
I don’t even know if he’s right or wrong. I don’t know anything today. It was good of me to take the day off so I can wallow in my thoughts, pull answers out of my head.
“You need patience,” I say. “But so do I.”
He frowns slightly. “I know.”
“I’m having a bad day, Christian.”
Christian’s hand on my hip loosens, caressing my backside before he moves up the flare of my hip and down the slope of my waist beneath my shirt until his hand curls around my ribs. “What can I do to make it better?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you need from me today?” he asks. “How… How do you need me to love you today?”
I blink, a small smile tugging at my lips.
“Therapy,” he explains, and I snort quietly, dropping my forehead to his chest.
“I just need…a quiet, relaxing day I think.”
“Do you want to watch some movies? Order take out and eat a tub of frosting?”
I pick my head up and look into his eyes. I should have kissed him last night and I want to kiss him now. I want to pour myself back into him.
I nod. “Yeah.”
“It’s also supposed to rain today,” he says. “We can grab a book and read out on the patio.”
I nod again.
Christian always had this magic about him.
He has always been a contradiction to himself.
Intimidating yet soft. Scary looking sometimes, but so comforting.
He’s always known the best way to love me on a bad day.
And although my bad days are usually, mostly silent, he brings them laughter and gentle conversation about nothing and everything.
He’s a giant teddy bear, and it’s all for me.
“Chinese food?”
“Whatever you want, I’ll go out and get it.”
My mouth flinches. He’s staring at me and I’m staring back at him wondering where we would have been if he hadn’t left. It was a fantasy I lived in for a while until I realized how toxic living in a fantasy that won’t happen is.
I put my hand to his stubbled cheek, sweeping across his cheekbone with my thumb. My vision clouds and I know a piece of him is broken, but a piece of me is broken too. If he’s hurt, I’m hurt. “What happened to you, baby?”
“Lana…”
“Let’s just go back to sleep for a bit,” I whisper.
“Baby—”
“It’s fine.” For now. I turn and try to drift across to my side of the bed, but his arms don’t let me.
“No.” He pulls me back into his chest, tighter than before, and nestles his head into my neck like a baby might do. “Please.”
“I’m tired, Christian.”
“I know, I’m sorry,” he rasps. “It’s my fault.”
“Just be quiet and hold me,” I croak, wiping my cheek.
“Don’t cry, baby, please.” He kisses my head. “Please.”
I breathe through the swell of emotion, not wanting it to burst through my ribs like a pipe.
Natalia was right—it is my prerogative to be defensive over my heart.
But it’s been almost two months since he’s been back and he’s showing me things—sleeping in my driveway for weeks on end, my new sneakers, but especially last night when he came to me for help.
I trust that, bit by bit, he will prove to me that I can finally entirely forgive him.
I am already forgiving him more every day, and I believe him when he says he’s staying.
He’s sober and healthy, and, so far, he’s loving me the way I need to be loved. So far.
Christian isn’t perfect, never has been, and I never expect him to be. I don’t want him to be because then he wouldn’t be my Christian—the man I’ve loved since I was nineteen.
Soulmates aren’t perfect. People think soulmate is synonymous with “perfect match,” but that is so far from wrong. Neither of us are perfect. We fought. We cried. And that’s what is perfect for me.
He’s my shark soulmate. Stubborn, tenacious, strong, fearless. I think that is what makes us interminable.
Whispering, I blurt the honest words my heart feels, “I think we’ll be okay.”
“I think so too.”