Chapter 7 The Breaking Point
THE brEAKING POINT
BECKY
Present day
When trust is lost, so is the relationship. It’s as simple as that. It is that simple, yet I’m sitting here, in our living room, on our couch. Alone, again. Unable to sleep, again.
This time, though. This fucking time, I’m not warmed by the rage of discovering a sketchy, stray message from a faceless woman. Nope. This time I’m frozen in pain at the discovery of a betrayal.
I’m haunted by the evidence of us as a whole because now…
now there’s a them. I swallow back a sob and hug myself just a little tighter.
Shivers skitter across my skin as I stare blindly at the wall filled with the memories of us.
Dead center sits an oversized canvas my sister gave to everyone pictured: our parents, herself, our brothers, and me for a “late Christmas gift.” It’s a massive photo of my family wearing matching holiday sweaters—Carter and I standing in the back with equally impish grins on our faces.
I can’t seem to tear my eyes from our red tinged cheeks and the place where his arms are wrapped tightly around me.
I blink, and my attention hooks onto another with him and his family.
There, we went and rented a beach house together.
The edges of my mouth nearly lift at the memory of him trying to convince me seafood was good by catching and cooking something himself.
I did not eat it. He did, and he got food poisoning.
Finally, I move my gaze to the mantle of our fireplace.
There sits the most recent addition to our relationship shrine.
The seven by ten frame holds an image of us from last fall.
My ring, proudly displayed on the hand resting on his chest, feels suddenly heavy on my hand.
For the first time since Carter placed it there, it feels wrong, unnatural.
I crossed all my t’s and dotted all of my i’s.
I didn’t condemn him as guilty before I looked at all the pieces.
Separated, each situation really wasn’t that big of a deal.
They were not dealbreakers. Our relationship was worth an uncomfortable confrontation and an argument to fix what was damaged.
Logically, I knew we were struggling, but things were still whole. We were whole. Fractured, not broken.
Now, sitting here with his lies echoing in my mind, images of him touching her so intimately play over and over again.
They looked striking together. Nothing like the jarring juxtaposition of him and me.
More thoughts flow through my mind, more connections.
Dinners and dates missed and cancelled. Messages deleted.
It all comes together to paint an ugly picture of the end of us and the beginning of them.
I know now that our beautiful relationship is no longer salvageable—it’s simply, logically broken.
I don’t know how it could be anything but over.
A sound in the kitchen draws my attention to Carter, standing there, looking at me. He looks shattered. Why would he? Why does he think he has the right to feel anything right now? He says nothing, only stares at me with tired eyes, holding my gaze with an anguished one of his own.
I break the silence.
“You’re having an affair.”
His eyes grow huge in a second, and he jumps up and away from the counter, moving toward me in quick, long strides. His face pale, panicked, and annoyingly confused.
“No, Becks, never. How could you even say such a thing?”
“Because you keep lying to me.” I manage to use the ice that covered me before and wrap it around me as protection. I’m cool and collected.
He blanches. Practically ghost white.
“Ly-lying…?” He stutters, obviously fishing.
“Yeah Carter, lying.” I respond, that same cold lacing through my words.
He’s not going to risk addressing the wrong thing. I can see it in his eyes, hear it in his hesitation. I’m not worth his honesty.
“Where were you last night?” I ask. I’m not playing any games. This is it.
If possible, he becomes even paler. My stomach drops. Any semblance of hope I had for a logical explanation officially, completely dissipates.
He comes closer to me but says nothing. He just stares in silence. His mouth gaping open and closed like some clueless fish. At this point, he’s standing too close for me to breathe, so I stand up and make my way to the other side of the room.
I hate this.
“Jesus, Carter, Say something!”
More silence. More gaping.
My hands go to my hair, pulling at it in agitation. “Jesus, don’t you get it? Haven’t I been clear over the last three years you’ve known me?” My voice breaks, but I push through, turning to him from where I stand in the kitchen—the island now safely between us.
“I will always need the ugly truth over any beautiful lie. Because, Carter, at the end of the day, the truth, even when ugly, is still precious to me. It’s still a diamond, and the pretty little lie is just a bejeweled piece of shit.”
He looks like he wants to argue with me here, so I put my hand up, cutting him off.
“Omitting truths from me fills you up with just as much bullshit as flat out lies. But you did both to me, didn’t you, Carter.” He takes a step toward me. I take a step back.
“Either scenario,” I hiss. “Either shitty situation still leads to trust being forcibly removed from our previous relationship.” I’m practically whispering by this point. The icy silence boxing us in does not require violence or impassioned speech. Just cold, hard truth.
“Previous…” Carter chokes out, eyes wide. He’s breathing too fast, too erratic.
Too fucking late to fix it, Carter.
“Tell me the truth, please, Carter.”
“I am telling you the truth, Becks.” Carter starts, taking another step towards me. I lift my hands up again to ward him off. Don’t touch me.
“Where the fuck were you, Carter! Just tell me, please. Please just tell me the truth.” Panic starts clawing its way through me.
I need to leave, or fight, or simply slink to the floor and hold all of my pieces together while they’re trying to fall apart.
I need him to be honest, but I wish I could believe the lies.
Carter stalks around the island and crowds me against the cabinets, reaching for my hands. I jerk them away from him.
He grabs them anyway and holds tight.
“I was at Tay’s place.” He says quietly. Resigned.
I hold still and stop trying to pull away. Maybe I stop breathing. I silently wait for him to break me, to break us. Tay’s place.
“Becks…” he sighs. “I don’t want to say anything else, it’s nothing. It was nothing!” He ends on a partial shout, jerking my hands in his emphasis.
I want to do so many things, but I wait—my body taut in warning, in preparation to get out, run.
“I gave her a ride to and from the music thing yesterday after work. Her car has been acting up again…she said she wanted to see what the big deal is.” He’s speaking fast, holding my hands on this side of too tightly.
“I was just going to drop her off, then she told me she didn’t feel very safe surrounded by people she didn’t know.
I stuck around and brought her home after.
” He takes a shuddering breath. “When I pulled up to the house, she told me that her door was caught, so I leaned over her to open it—Jesus, Becky, please? I want to stop.” Our faces are so close, and I see the agony there.
But that doesn’t change anything, does it?
“You didn’t just open the door.”
“No.” He breathes out the word.
“You put your hands on her. You touched her.”
“Yes, but—”
“You kiss her?” My voice is louder in accusation. What’s happening right now?
“No!” Loud, emphatic.
He pauses.
“Well, yes, but Becks, I—”
I rip my hands away from his strong grip.
“Get out.”
“Becky, baby—”
“No!” I shriek. Then “no,” soft, quiet. “Stop saying my name, and you don’t get to call me baby.
Get out. I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you.
I will either leave right now and get a hotel, or you can go and stay with someone, anyone.
Even her place. Sounds like you’ll be welcomed there.
I don’t care. Just. Get. Out.” My hands are braced against his chest, trying in vain to get him away from me. He's too close.
“Jesus, no. It’s not—”
I rip his ring off my finger and throw it at him as hard as I can. He flinches when it hits his chest and falls to the floor, except his wide eyes remain locked on me.
“Becks please, don’t do this. I love you—"
I shout over him. His words are just noise to me now. “Get the fuck out! Or I need to leave right now. Decide, right now. Right fucking now. Stop talking!”
I’m shaking by this point. Not in the numb cold of before, but in the relentless, full bodied way of an impending anxiety attack. I know I’m losing control, and I’m confident I won’t be able to stop it this time. I can’t fight this, and there will be no flight or freeze—only a complete breakdown.
I begin to hyperventilate—my vision and mind fogging over.
I crouch down against the cabinets at my back and curl into as small a ball I can get into.
Then, I rock. I shake my head and chant.
“Please, please just go, just go, just go.” I don’t know if I’m crying anymore.
Everything around me is fuzzy and vague.
I’m officially in survival mode. Breathe. Chant. Rock. Don’t break.
I think I feel hands on me at some point, but I shriek again and again until they’re gone and then I keep rocking. Too many emotions, no control, so much pain.
A door closes. I don’t know if it’s the front door or the bedroom. I just rock. And breathe. And shake.
An indeterminate amount of time passes and I feel hands again. They’re smaller, colder—softer. I look up into the eyes of my sister. I know he called her, but I don’t care. I cry out again and wrap my arms around her and continue to break down. My anxiety slowly peters out. My tears continue.
God, I hate crying.
?????
Carter
What was I thinking?
I sit on the bed of my childhood home and stare unseeing at a wall filled with images of me at different stages of my life, completely gobsmacked on how I ended up in this situation.
I spin my woman’s ring in circles, the tiny ass diamond catching light, as Becky’s heartbreak plays on repeat in my mind—her gasp for me to just go.
I feel another punch in the gut at the memory of it.
The unfortunate thing is that I know what I was thinking, and it had nothing to do with Tay, and everything to do with Becky. My spitfire, my wild love whom I managed to break piece by piece into someone small, hurting, and broken.
Luckily, and unluckily for me, she’ll rise up and reclaim those pieces and build herself back into the incredible, strong, and powerful woman I first fell in love with. I have no doubts.
Luckily, because the world is just a better and brighter place with her shining in it.
Unluckily, because it will mean she remembered she didn’t need my sorry ass in the first place, especially while I was the one who dulled her shine.
I left the house the moment Becky’s sister, Lenny arrived.
I was honestly terrified. As soon as Becky started to scream at me to leave, I went into our bedroom to pack a bag, and to try and buy some time.
When I came out fifteen minutes later, she was still there, still rocking.
I tried to get her attention by calling her name, knocking on the wall, anything.
She acknowledged nothing. When I went to touch her, just her arm, she started screaming like I had burned her.
I moved back immediately, but she kept screaming until her voice broke and eventually faded.
I had no clue how to help her. It had never been this bad before.
In the past I could hold her, rock her. That wasn’t an option when I was the one who did this to her.
I tried googling anxiety attack, but that stupid source told me all sorts of vague bullshit.
Could last from five minutes to multiple days, one article claimed.
Another said, emergency room if it lasts more than thirty minutes.
I knew Becky would murder me if I called an ambulance, and I didn’t want to consider what would happen if I tried to put her in my truck, so I did the next best thing I could think of—I called her sister.
She lives two hours away, and it was the middle of the night, but I was panicking.
Based on her reaction to her sister’s touch, I knew I had made the right choice.
I know my girl has anxiety. She told me about it after one of our first fights. She’s had a few attacks over the years. They were nothing compared to what I witnessed on the kitchen floor.
Three hours. She sat in that tormented state for three hours.
I feel a tear roll down my face and don’t move to wipe it.
I deserve this pain. I did that to her, and I couldn’t even touch her.
I ached to hold her, but she acted like my touch was fire.
So I left, and now here I sit—staring at a wall—thinking about my little curvy cutie and how she probably isn’t even mine anymore.