Chapter 17
Now
It’s not just that I’m injured. Or that we’re stranded in the jungle without water. Though that alone is reason enough to cry. It’s everything.
It’s the confusing mix of pain and anger and longing I feel toward Liam. The pressure that sparks under my skin every time we touch, and all the ways that terrifies me.
Most of all, it’s how alone I feel in all this. While I’m struggling to clean up the shards of glass where my heart once was, Liam’s fine. No, better than fine. Good. Great.
I try to blink back the tears, to banish the evidence before Liam can see just how not fine I am, but I’m not quick enough to stop two fat tears from spilling down my cheek.
“Hey,” Liam says, his expression softening. “We’ll get your ankle taken care of. I promise it’ll be okay.”
He winds his arms around my shoulders, hauling me to him, and my heartbeat stumbles over itself at the gentleness in his voice. The heat of his hand. The familiar scent of sunscreen and sweat clinging to skin.
For a moment I imagine he’s still a soft place to land. Somewhere safe.
But he’s not. And it’s not okay. Because nothing’s been okay in a long time.
I pull back, untangling myself from his arms. “Just stop,” I say, inching far enough away that I can’t smell his cologne or the soap on his skin.
A divot forms between his eyebrows. “Stop what?”
“This!” I wave between us. “Stop trying to be nice to me.”
“I’m trying to help.”
“Well, you’re not. You’re making everything worse. So please just stop pretending like you care about me.”
I watch as his expression absorbs my words, eyes widening, mouth parting before dipping into a frown. “Me? You think I’m the one pretending? You’re the one acting like you’re okay when you’re clearly not.”
His words feel like tiny, well-pointed arrows, sharp and accurate, and suddenly the frustration I’ve been trying to keep at bay is frothing to the surface, threatening to boil over.
Maybe it’s because I’m covered in mud and injured. Or because I almost just died, but I pin my eyes to him and finally let the bomb inside me detonate.
“You’re right, I’m not okay,” I say tightly. “Not all of us are just okay with getting divorced.”
Liam sits up, hitting me with the full force of his attention. “What are you talking about?”
A humorless laugh breaks in the back of my throat.
“I’m talking about the fact that I’ve spent the last three months trying to be okay, to pull myself out of this dark place.
But I can’t. I’m fucking miserable. Some days I’m angry and other days I’m in so much pain I feel like I might break in half.
But it never goes away. Meanwhile you seem to be doing fine.
Like your life is so much better without me in it.
Like you don’t even care. And yes, I ended things so maybe this is what I deserve. But it still fucking hurts, Liam.”
His jaw tightens. “You really think I’m just okay with all this? That I don’t care?”
“That’s what it seems like. You’re in the best shape of your life. Your career is taking off. You’re going to parties. You already took your ring off. You’ve got fucking condoms in your wallet! So yeah, you seem to be doing pretty great to me.”
His face turns stony, his lips folding into a tight line. “You have no fucking clue, do you?”
I don’t know what pisses me off more. The words themselves, or the way he’s looking at me, like he knows something I don’t—something I couldn’t possibly understand. But my frustration reaches critical mass.
“No,” I say, my voice loud enough that it echoes off the trees.
“I guess I don’t have a fucking clue. So why don’t you explain it to me, because from where I’m sitting, it looks like you’re perfectly okay with this whole thing.
I mean, maybe I should have asked for a divorce sooner!
Maybe I’ve been holding you back from doing shots with Katie and working at prestigious research institutes in London. Maybe I—”
“Roslyn. Just stop.” His voice cuts through the end of my sentence, thundering between us, and I freeze.
His expression shifts, an angry current sparking from his eyes to the canyon between his brows, and I can’t help the tiny, satisfied thrill that emerges inside me at the sight of him finally losing his cool.
“You know that chart at the hospital?” he asks, his voice thin, like it’s taking everything in him to keep his composure. “The one where you’re supposed to choose the face that corresponds with how much pain you’re in on a scale from one to ten? Ten being excruciating?”
I frown, unsure where this is coming from. “Yes, but—”
“I’ve been at a fucking ten every day for the last three months, Roslyn. So no, I’m not okay.”
I stare, stunned into silence.
My first reaction is disbelief. Because it doesn’t make sense. All signs point toward Liam doing fine, great even. But the longer I look at him—the weariness in his features, the lines under his eyes, the sag in his posture—the more my sturdy case collapses like a house of cards.
“What do you mean?” I finally force out.
He swallows, slivers of sunlight catching the lines around his mouth.
“I’ve been miserable, Roslyn. That party you heard over the phone?
Kevin threw that because he saw how depressed I’d been and was trying to cheer me up.
He’s also the one who put condoms in my wallet.
” He pauses, giving me a heavy look that pulses through me.
“Working out has been a way to deal with my stress and anxiety, and I took off my ring because every time I looked at it, I was reminded of everything I lost. So no, I’m not thriving right now, Roslyn. I’m a fucking mess.”
I try to make sense of what I’m hearing. To fit it within my neatly curated picture of Liam. The one where he’s already moved on. But it’s like a trapdoor has opened up beneath me and I’m in free fall, my stomach climbing into my throat, no safety net to catch me.
I’m a fucking mess. His words ring in my ears, shaking me to my core, and not at all in the way I thought they would.
I’d thought—perhaps hoped—that I’d enjoy knowing he was torn up over the divorce.
That it would be validating. A relief to know that he’s just as messed up and hurt by this as me.
Instead, I feel there’s a weight on top of my sternum pressing down, making it harder to breathe.
There’s so much I want to say. So much I want to know. But the first thing that comes out is, “What about London?”
His brows pinch. “What about it?”
“I mean…” I shift my weight, my legs squelching in the mud. “Why London? Is it for the job? Or…” I swallow hard. “Do you really want to get away from me?”
His jaw clenches, his eyes dipping to the ground. “Let’s not do this.”
“Please,” I ask, my voice fraying. “Just tell me the truth.”
He shifts his weight where he’s seated in the mud beside me. “I am trying to get away from you.”
Hot, fevered panic steals my breath.
“But it’s not like that.” His gaze morphs into something sad, almost mournful. “I can’t stay in Seattle anymore because it’s too painful.”
“Painful?” I repeat, my voice so hoarse I hardly recognize it.
“I can’t live there when every corner of the city reminds me of us, of everything I had. Everything that’s no longer mine.”
It’s a confession so large, so overwhelming, that for a moment I swear the ground shifts beneath me.
There’s a part of me that wants to scream he didn’t have to lose it. He didn’t have to lose me. He could have stayed. He could have fought. He could have come back. But another part of me doesn’t want to know why he didn’t fight. Why he didn’t come back. Why I wasn’t enough.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way?” I whisper after a beat. “This whole time you’ve been so cold and indifferent with me, and I thought…” My chest tightens as words form in the back of my mouth. “I thought you didn’t care,” I finally say.
He sounds exhausted when he says, “Of course I fucking care. But what was I supposed to say? You asked for the divorce. Then you ask me to pretend that we’re still together and…” He carves a hand through his hair. “I guess I don’t know how to be around you anymore.”
The admission knocks me off-balance. It’s how I feel too. Like I’m orbiting in space, with no gravity to ground me.
“I don’t know how to be around you either,” I admit. “This has been really hard on me.”
“Me too.” His jaw softens, and it feels like a tiny opening in what has otherwise been a shut door between us.
“I wish you would have told me how you were feeling. Maybe we…” But I let the words fade away, too unsure, or maybe too afraid, to say them. “You could have said something,” I force out.
“So could you.”
I feel caught, like he’s pulled at one of my fraying threads, and now I’m slowly unraveling in front of him.
“You’re right,” I say after a beat. “I could have.”
He nods, his throat bobbing like he’s digesting my answer.
“Would it have changed things?” he asks.
I don’t know what things he means. If he means things now. Or things in the past.
“I…” I start to say, but the words melt away as I realize I don’t know how to respond. I feel like I’m stuck on an impossible Jenga turn, where no matter what I do next, the entire tower will collapse.
Either I tell him he’s right, there’s nothing he could have done or said that would have changed anything.
Which isn’t necessarily true. Or I admit to the confusing part.
The part dividing my brain, equal parts want and fear.
The part of me that still wakes up searching for his warmth.
The part that burns every time his skin meets mine.
The part that wonders if maybe he’d fought for me—for us—if maybe he hadn’t just walked away, then things might be different.
But he hadn’t, I remind myself. He made his choice three months ago when he packed his bag and left. And so had I.
“I don’t know,” I say at last. “Things were bad. Right?”