Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
TORI
Past
The drive to my parents’ house is quiet.
Too quiet. The kind of quiet that lets your thoughts run wild and loud and sharp.
The kind that leaves room for second-guessing.
For imagining different outcomes. For wondering if this decision—this monumental shift in the trajectory of my life—could somehow still be walked back.
But I know it can’t. Not this time. I’ve made my decision.
I’m choosing myself. And no, that is not selfish.
I’ve tried everything. Tried to be patient.
Tried to be understanding. Tried to hold all the pieces together with duct tape and grace and optimism and self-help books and Bible verses and counseling and pure, fucking will.
But you can’t patch something that keeps breaking the same way.
And love shouldn’t demand I keep bleeding to prove it.
I’m done here. Done pretending that I am strong enough for the both of us.
Done holding together someone who refuses to put forth any effort to repair himself. Just. Fucking. Done.
My hands grip the steering wheel tighter as I pull into the driveway.
The porch light is on even though it’s barely dusk.
She always turns it on when she knows I’m coming.
The gesture tugs at something in me. A memory of being small and loved and safe.
Before I knew how complicated love could be.
Before that night—almost two years ago now—when I came to her broken, raw, and honest about how unhappy I was in my marriage, hoping to find safety and rest in her and instead finding myself met with manipulated Bible verses and hollow platitudes.
When I step inside, I find her in the kitchen, humming to herself and stirring something on the stove.
The scent of garlic and rosemary fills the house.
It’s comforting. Familiar. A piece of home I’ve always carried with me.
It’s strange, that word, home. It’s so complex.
I feel comfort, love, safety, betrayal, loneliness, anger, sadness, regret, hope, thankfulness, weariness, all at once.
“Hey, sweetheart,” she says, turning to smile at me. Her eyes scan my face, and the smile falters. “Everything okay?”
No, Mom. Things haven’t been okay for a long, long time.
I nod, thinking I can have a few minutes of happy small talk, before giving up and shaking my head. I don’t know how to put on a show anymore. I’m too tired to fake anything.
She sets the spoon down and wipes her hands on a towel. “Come sit. Tell me what’s going on.”
The last time I did that, you told me to submit better. That’s not fucking happening this time.
I sit. I breathe. And then I say it.
“I’m leaving Chase.”
Silence stretches between us like a rubber band pulled taut. Her eyes widen slightly, then soften, then cloud.
“Tori,” she says, her voice already carrying the edge of disapproval. “Honey, I know things have been hard—”
I cut her off. “Mom. Stop.”
My protest means nothing. She continues, “I know you’re hurting. But you can’t just throw away a marriage because of a rough patch. You made vows.”
“I know,” I say. “I meant them. And I kept them. I’ve stayed. I’ve supported. I’ve tried. But Mom, it’s not a rough patch. It’s a pattern.”
She sighs and sits down across from me. “What about counseling? Or talking to Pastor James? Sometimes getting things out in the open with someone neutral can really help.”
“We’ve gone to counseling,” I say. “Both together and separately. Nothing changes. This is so much deeper than counseling. I’m not trying to say this is all on Chase, but this truly is something I cannot fix for him.”
She frowns. “Well, maybe this time would be different. Maybe if you gave it one more shot—”
“Mom.” I cut in again—gently, but firm. “I love you. I know you want to believe that all marriages can be saved if people just try hard enough or pray hard enough or trust God enough. But that’s not always true.
I can’t keep setting myself on fire to keep someone else warm.
Chase doesn’t value himself, and until he does, he’ll never be able to value anyone else—not truly, and definitely not me.
I’ve tried to love him enough for both of us.
That’s not how love works. And I’m done. ”
Her lips press into a line. Her eyes shimmer, but she doesn’t cry. She never cries easily. “I just worry you’re giving up on something sacred.”
“I’m not giving up,” I whisper. “I’m letting go. There’s a difference. Giving up is quitting. Letting go is accepting that holding on is killing me. And don’t I deserve better than that?”
She closes her eyes. A breath. A pause. “Tori—”
“HE CALLED ME AN ANCHOR. A BURDEN. A WORTHLESS PIECE OF SHIT. THEN PUNCHED A HOLE IN THE WALL TWO INCHES FROM MY FACE. I. AM. DONE. THE END. NOT ANOTHER WORD OF PROTEST.”
You need something to open your eyes to the reality of my situation? There.
Her face pales, eyes widen. She swallows, and nods.
“Oh.”
Yeah. Oh.
“Does he know? That you're leaving, I mean,” she asks.
“Not yet. But he’ll figure it out when he gets back from Boston and I’m gone.”
Her voice is small, quiet. She doesn’t sound disappointed, just shaken. “Do you have somewhere to go?”
“Yes. I have a plan. I’ve been saving. I’m not making this decision recklessly. I just need you to respect it. And not tell anyone. Please. Not even Dad.”
She nods slowly. “Okay. I won’t. I’m assuming Skye is helping you?”
I laugh, for the first time in days. “Yeah,” I say, smiling. “She may be chaos, but she’s my chaos.”
Nodding once more, she says, “So you’re going to Grand River, then?”
“I am,” I confirm. “I think it will be good for me to have a change of scenery. Skye needs a roommate now that Alis and Sunny are moving in with Dex, and I’m sure I can find a job in the city somewhere. I have enough saved to hold me over for a few months while I look for something.”
Mom crosses her arms on the table, leaning into the conversation and entering inquisition mode. Now that she’s accepted my fate, she may as well gather all the details. “Does Alis know?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No. She’s had so much going on, and with things finally coming together for her I didn’t want to burden her with any of it. Skye is the only person who knows anything about it.”
“She’s wild, but she’s loyal.”
I smile, thinking about my purple-haired firecracker of a friend. “Yeah,” I say, smiling.
“And you’ll be safe?”
“Always.”
Mom is quiet again for a moment, then clears her throat. “How long have you known?”
I blink. “That I needed to leave?”
She nods.
I exhale slowly, picking at a thread on the edge of my sleeve. “I know this sounds cliche, but I think on some level I’ve always known we weren’t compatible. In pieces. In moments. But the night he punched the wall… that was the breaking point. I knew in my bones it was over.”
“And before that?”
“Before that, it was the backhanded comments. The distance. The way I felt lonelier with him in the room than I ever did by myself.”
She sighs, the sound full of something heavier than judgment. “I wish I had been more help to you before now.”
“You did the best you could with what you knew,” I say gently. “I see that now. And I forgive you for not seeing it then.”
Tears threatening to spill over, Mom reaches over and wraps me in a hug. “I love you, you know that, don’t you?”
“I do, and I love you, too.”
“And I’m proud of you.”
Now that, I did not expect.
I pull back, looking her in the eyes to gauge the sincerity behind her words. “Really? You’re not disappointed in me for leaving?”
Mom laughs, wiping the tears now falling from her eyes. “Victoria, I’ve never once been disappointed in you in your entire life. You’ve put up with more crap than any one woman should ever have to go through with that man, and you’ve handled it with grace. To be honest, I’m almost jealous.”
Say what?
I arch my brow, clearly asking for her to go on.
She shakes her head, still chuckling. “I love your father, I really do. But if I had half the courage you do, I would have stood up for myself years ago.”
“You still can, Mom,” I assure her.
“Maybe,” she shrugs. “You just keep doing what you’re doing, and maybe you can teach this old dog new tricks.”
This conversation is completely bass-ackwards from the one we shared on the porch swing two years ago, and for the first time all day, I feel like I can breathe.
Suddenly, leaving my marriage doesn’t feel like failure. It feels like freedom.
A freedom I thought I might never get to taste. A freedom that I now realize I had to carve out with my own two hands. I feel the weight lifting, not all at once, but enough to believe that something better is possible.
When I finally stand to leave, Mom walks me to the door. We linger there, awkward in the way only two women raised to suppress our own wants and will can be. And then she wraps me in one more hug, tighter this time. Tighter than she used to.
“Call me when you get home,”” she says.
“I will.”
“And if you need anything, anything at all, you come here. Understand?”
“I know. Thank you.”
Driving away, I glance back at the porch. She's still there. Watching. Arms folded over her chest like she's holding herself together. But she's there.
And maybe now, she's holding space for me too.
On the drive home, my mind wanders back to something I said during our conversation—something I hadn’t realized fully until the words left my mouth this evening: that I feel lonelier with Chase than I do by myself.
I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get over that realization, but I can already envision thousands of dollars of therapy bills in my future.
And to think, I chose him. I chose to stay.
I chose to love him. Nobody forced me into a relationship with him.
Nobody guilted me into loving him. The hollow, empty feeling at the core of my being is the result of my own, conscious choices.
I’ve been so focused on building up my nerve, believing in what I deserve, that I haven’t stopped to think about the fact that I put myself in this situation to begin with.
Throughout the years, all my complex feelings about staying have focused on Chase and his need for me.
Until tonight, the only complex part of my new perspective was coming to the realization that it is not selfish to prioritize my needs.
Now, however… now I’m faced with the realization that I’m not only angry at him; I’m angry at myself. How might my life have been different if I hadn’t held on so tightly to him?
“Was it love when you latched onto the broken foster kid because you wanted to fix him? A little project for you to heal and patch up with your sunshine and spreadsheets?”
I don’t know. I don’t think so. Was it?
“Was it love when you decided your perfect life would look better with a tragedy in the prom pictures? When you told yourself I just needed stability? That you were the answer to all my fucked-up questions?”
I didn’t think my life was perfect. Did I? I didn’t think I was the answer to all his problems and questions. Did I? Is that why I kept choosing him? Because I thought I was the answer? Like I could fix him? Do I have a savior complex? Am I the problem here? AM I THE PROBLEM?
Take a deep breath, Tori. Deep, deep breath.
This is why I need to leave. I can’t do this anymore. I need space. I need a new life. I need a new… everything.
I don't know what the next few weeks will look like. I don’t know how Chase will react. I don’t know what grief still lies ahead.
But I know who I am. I think. And I know I deserve better than what I've lived the last decade of my life. I’m pretty sure. Yes. I do. I deserve better. Even when I don’t feel like it, I know it, intellectually. So I’ll keep saying it until I believe it at my core.
And for the first time in years, that feels like enough.