Chapter 13 #2
Adair closed his eyes. “I should’ve never gone out. I should’ve come home. I was...I was tired and I didn’t want to face everything. I didn’t want to see how sad you looked. How far we’d drifted. I felt like I was drowning, and that night…I was just selfish.”
“Selfish?” she repeated, mouth open, eyes wide. “Selfish is finishing the last of the ice cream. Buying something we can’t afford when a bill needs to be paid. What you did? What you chose? That’s betrayal. That’s abandonment.”
Adair’s face crumpled. “I hated myself the second it happened.”
“You should.”
“I do…”
“So what else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Surely it didn’t start with a kiss. What led to it? It had to be something for that bitch to be staring ME down like I was with HER fucking husband earlier!”
“Bine—”
“TELL ME!”
Sighing, Adair gave in, “everybody went out for drinks…somehow it ended up being me and her and…we were talking, dancing and…it just happened.”
Sabine’s breathing slowed just enough to make room for more tears. She backed away further, her shirt damp, her arms sore, her soul stripped bare.
“Baby, I didn’t sleep with her—”
“But you kissed her,” she snapped. “And you let her touch you. And you danced. And you laughed. And while I was in labor with our daughter, you were somewhere else smiling and shit with the bitch you told me I didn’t have nothing to worry about when I called her little inappropriate ass looks out BEFORE! ”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“No! You were protecting you.”
“I didn’t want to make it worse. I thought if I told you the truth, it would’ve destroyed us.”
“It did!” she screamed, gesturing between them. “You just dragged out the funeral! We’re done, dead!”
Adair closed his eyes hating to see his wife like this.
“I stayed,” Sabine whispered, voice wobbling now. “Even after everything. I fucking stayed. You don’t even know what that took. What it cost me to forgive a man who couldn’t even tell me the truth about the night our baby died.”
Adair turned away, one hand running over his head. “I panicked,” he whispered. “I was selfish. wanted out. Just for a night. I wanted to not feel like I was suffocating.”
“Then you should’ve said that. You should’ve told me how heavy it all was. You should’ve fucking told me you were tired of me.”
“I was never tired of you,” he said quickly turning back to her. “I was tired of feeling like I couldn’t fix anything. Tired of failing you.”
“And you don’t think I was tired?” she shouted now. “You don’t think I was breaking in ways you couldn’t see? You chose to lie. You chose not to be there. And then you chose to pretend you were.”
Adair tried to step forward, but she backed up. His knees gave out like a man who’d taken a bullet, and he dropped to the floor with a thud that shook the room.
“I didn’t mean to,” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. I just didn’t know how to carry it and you. I failed you. I failed…her.”
Sabine folded onto the floor, opposite him. They didn’t touch. Didn’t look at each other.
Just sat.
In the ruin.
In the raw.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” she whispered, knees pulled to her chest. “I don’t know if I’m your wife. Your ex. Your fool. Your victim.”
“You’re none of those things,” Adair said. “You’re the woman I wake up missing every day. You’re the mother of my son. The mother of the daughter that I would give my life to get back. You’re the only person I ever loved this much.”
Sabine looked up, and something shifted in her expression—grief and rage giving way to exhaustion. That old exhaustion. The kind she knew too well. The kind that said: I want to be done fighting but I don’t know how to stop.
“I just needed the truth,” she whispered. “I needed to know I wasn’t crazy for feeling it. For knowing it. For seeing it in your eyes all this time.”
Silence.
Sabine stood first. Shaky. Quiet. She didn’t yell. Didn’t threaten. Just moved toward the hallway and paused near Ade’s door.
“I’m leaving tonight.”
Adair stood too. “Sabine—”
She held up a hand. “Don’t. Don’t beg me not to.”
“You’re my wife,” he said, voice cracking. “This is our home. You can’t just take our son and walk out.”
Sabine’s eyes glinted with something near madness. “Watch me.”
Adair lunged. Not to hurt—but to hold. To beg. To remind her of the life they built.
But the damage had long been done.
“Don’t touch me!” she shoved him back. The shout cracked through the quiet like lightning. From the now open bedroom door—crying.
Ade.
“See what you did!” Sabine picked her baby up, cradling him in her arms, apologizing profusely. She went back to the storm that was now their living room, in search of her phone. It was well past midnight, but she needed to go.
Adair’s eyes glistened, watching his wife protectively hold their son as if he would hurt him. Hurt her. That shit cut deep because even if not physically, he did hurt them. He ruined his family.
Sabine’s thumb hovered over Narri’s contact for only a second before pressing. It rang once.
Twice.
“Girl? You okay?” Narri’s voice came groggy but alert.
“I’m so sorry for calling this late,” Sabine breathed out, her voice trembling. “I just…can you come get me? Please?”
She broke on that last word. The “please” scraped its way out of her throat like it had to fight through every instance she’d spent being strong.There was a rustling sound on the other end. Narri was already getting up.
“Say less. Where’s Ade? Is he with you?”
“He’s fine. He was crying but he’s okay now,” Sabine whispered, running a shaky hand over her son’s curls as he curled into her arms.
From across the room, Adair paced like a man being caged. “Narri don’t need to come to this fuckin’ house. You not leavin’ me, you not taking my son, Sabine.”
Narri didn’t miss a beat. “Fuck you, nigga! My friend calls, I’m comin’! And Ade go wherever the fuck she do!”
In the background, Tate’s voice cut in. “Yo, what the hell is going on?”
“Your bitch-ass friend hurt my friend, and I’m going to get her!” Narri shouted without pause. Mind you, she grew up in the same upper echelon community as Sabine, but somehow, being with Tate turned her into something else. “Tell him don’t say nothin’ to me unless he want smoke.”
Adair raked both hands down his face, staring at the ceiling like it could answer for him. “Sabine…please. We can fix this. Don’t leave like this. Don’t take my son out this house.”
“I told you not to beg me,” she said, her voice empty now. “I’m not staying here tonight and if you try to stop me again, I’ll scream loud enough to wake the building.”
She was done arguing.
Ade was somehow falling back to sleep amidst the chaos. She laid him on the couch, covering him with the same blankie he’d dragged out earlier. His body curled toward the armrest; little fist balled under his chin. Sabine brushed a kiss over his curls and turned toward the back of the apartment.
Adair watched her disappear down the hall. The back of the apartment never felt so far. He walked to Ade, crouched down, and gently kissed the top of his son’s head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Daddy so sorry man.”
Then he stood, wiped his face roughly with the back of his hand, and followed his wife down the hallway, toward the bedroom. Toward the fight. Toward the last chance to hold onto whatever was left.
But Sabine was done.