Chapter 8
Contrary to what my wife believed, I did love her.
What I felt for her was fiercer than anything I had ever known, deeper than I had ever believed my heart could hold.
My eyes searched for her the moment I entered a room, drawn to her without thought.
In a crowd, her voice was the one that found me through the noise, reaching something inside me no other voice ever could.
Even in sleep, when my mind was beyond my control, my arms still reached for her, seeking her before I was even awake enough to know what I was missing.
She had reached places inside me I had spent my entire life keeping locked away and filled them with a warmth I had never known I was missing. Parts of me I had long ago abandoned to numbness had begun to breathe again beneath her touch.
There wasn’t a part of her I didn’t know by heart.
I could recognize her footsteps from down the hall, the little sigh she let out when exhaustion finally won, the way the corner of her mouth lifted whenever she fought back a laugh.
I knew the habits she thought no one noticed, the expressions that crossed her face before she even realized she was making them, the subtle shifts in her voice that told me when she was happy, irritated, nervous, or hiding hurt behind a smile.
My life was hers in every way that mattered. Every breath, every tomorrow, every piece of myself belonged with her.
There was no part of me I held back from her.
Except the one thing she needed most.
The words.
I had always been at war with words. I learned that young, long before I realized what that war would eventually cost me. Back then, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with me. I simply believed some words were harder for me to say than they were for everyone else.
I remember the first time it dawned on me that there were words I could feel with my entire heart and still couldn’t bring myself to say.
Whenever my mother used to say, “I love you,” smiling brightly at me in the dark, I would freeze.
Three simple words.
She said them so easily. So naturally. They came from her without hesitation, without fear, without any struggle. She never had to fight her own throat just to tell someone they mattered.
I would stare at her, my chest painfully full, desperate to give her the same three words she had given me so freely.
But every time I tried, my throat would close.
My lips would part, then stop. The words would die somewhere between my heart and my mouth, leaving me with only the one pathetic response I could force out.
“Yeah.”
For years, I thought that was the problem.
Her.
I thought there was something about my mother, something about us, that made those words impossible for me.
Then high school proved me wrong.
When my girlfriend looked me in the eye and said, “I love you,” my entire body simply locked.
My mind went completely blank. My chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe, while my throat closed around the words I was supposed to say.
I knew exactly what should have come out.
I could form the sentence perfectly in my head, every word clear and ready, but the moment I tried to push them past my lips, my body turned against me.
I tried anyway.
I parted my lips, searched desperately for my voice, begged myself to just say something—anything—but my throat refused to cooperate.
I pushed harder, willing the words forward, but they remained trapped somewhere between my mind and my mouth.
No matter how desperately I tried to force them out, they simply wouldn’t come.
Not a stammer. Not a whisper. Not even a broken attempt.
Just silence.
I stood there with my heart hammering against my ribs, my jaw clenched so tightly it ached, fighting to force three simple words past the invisible grip around my throat.
The harder I tried, the more I shut down.
Panic tightened around my chest. My fingers curled helplessly at my sides as my pulse thundered in my ears.
Every second that passed made the silence heavier, more unbearable, until I could barely stand the weight of my own inability to speak.
I wanted to speak.
God, I wanted to speak.
But I was trapped behind a barrier I couldn’t see, couldn’t explain, and had no idea how to break.
That was when I finally understood.
It wasn’t my mother.
It wasn’t the person standing in front of me.
It was me.
I was the problem.
Something inside me was broken. Something I couldn’t name, couldn’t fix, couldn’t even understand.
So I had found a solution.
If I couldn’t give people the words, I would give them something else.
Something they could see. Something they could hold on to when my silence made them doubt what I felt.
With my mother, that meant becoming the son she could be proud of.
I studied until the words on the pages blurred together and my eyes burned from exhaustion. I learned how to smile when she showed my grades to her friends, even when all I wanted was to crawl into bed and sleep.
I didn’t care about being the top student. I cared about the way her face changed when I was.
So I kept doing it.
Football was no different. I could have spent those afternoons anywhere else, but I stayed on the field long after everyone else had gone home, repeating drills until my legs trembled beneath me.
I’d drag myself through another sprint when my lungs were already burning, practice another shot when my feet were blistered and aching, then limp home and force a smile when she asked how practice went.
Every achievement became another way of saying what I couldn’t.
Every medal, every highest grade, every goal was something I could place between us whenever my throat locked up and the words refused to come.
When my girlfriend began looking at me with that same wounded disappointment after I failed to return her confession, I understood what I needed to do.
I couldn’t say it.
So I had to make up for it.
I spent days transforming the school auditorium to ask her to prom, hanging lights, arranging flowers, filling the space with every extravagant detail I could think of. It was excessive. Ridiculous, even. The sort of grand gesture I would normally have avoided without a second thought.
But if this was what it took to wipe that look from her face, then I could endure it.
When she walked in and saw what I’d done, her entire expression changed. The hurt gave way to surprise, then a smile, and the knot that had been twisting beneath my ribs finally loosened.
I remember the relief more than anything else.
And that was when I thought I’d finally figured it out.
Maybe I didn’t have to say I loved someone for them to know. I could prove it instead. I could give them the kind of gesture that spoke for me when I couldn’t.
The bigger the gesture, the harder it would be for them to doubt me.
When Alessia first said the words to me, I felt like the luckiest man alive.
I still remembered the exact rush of happiness that had gone through me.
A smile had broken across my face before I could stop it, so wide my cheeks had hurt, and for one beautiful second, there had been nothing else in the world but her standing in front of me and the fact that she loved me.
I had wanted to tell her how much those words meant.
I had wanted to give them back to her, to finally say the thing I had spent my entire life struggling to say.
But when I couldn’t, I did the only thing that came naturally.
I pulled her against me and kissed her.
Everything I couldn’t say poured into that kiss.
Every ounce of love I’d been carrying for her, every feeling that had always caught in my throat before it could become words, every desperate, overwhelming bit of happiness that had surged through me when she’d told me she loved me—I gave it all to her.
I held her tighter, refusing to let the moment end.
I wanted her to feel everything I was too broken to put into words.
I wanted her to understand what I couldn’t explain, to feel the depth of what she meant to me in every second I held her close.
The way my arms wrapped around her was the confession I could never bring myself to make.
The way I kissed her was the only answer I knew how to give.
Somewhere beneath the rush of happiness, I was silently begging her to understand.
This was me.
This was how I loved.
And when I finally pulled away, breathless and smiling, searching her face for the same happiness I felt surging through me, I truly believed she had understood.
Her lips curved upward, yet the smile never reached her eyes.
She held my gaze for a moment, searching my face with an uncertainty she seemed determined to hide.
The happiness that had filled her eyes when she’d told me she loved her had faded, leaving something hesitant in its place.
Something that made the warmth I’d been carrying in my chest drain away.
I knew that look.
I’d seen it before.
That small pause. That careful smile. That way she searched my face before looking away, almost trying to convince herself not to feel what she was already feeling.
Disappointment.
My stomach dropped.
She was disappointed.
I was still holding her, still feeling my heart pound with all the love I’d been trying so desperately to give her, yet suddenly none of that mattered. All I could see was the one thing I’d failed to give her.
I wanted her to look at me and see how completely I’d fallen for her, how much of my life had begun to revolve around her without me even realizing it. I wanted her to feel secure in what I felt for her, to know exactly where she stood with me and never have to question it.
I’d wanted her to feel loved.
I’d wanted her to feel cherished. Wanted. Chosen.
Instead, I’d made her wonder.
So I did what I had always done.
I decided to give more.
Something bigger. Something undeniable. Something she couldn’t possibly look at and still wonder what she meant to me.
I was going to ask her to marry me.