Bride by Design

C H A P T E R 8

THROWING THE TOWEL IN

Helena

"Let me be and stay away from me," she said, her voice breaking. "I want to heal and start my life over without you haunting me."

"Seven years. We had seven years together so why can't you give me one last chance?" I believed we had that much between us.

"I wasted seven years on you and you're still asking I give up more?"

I never thought she'd think it and never did it cross my mind.

'Wasted'?

Her perspective of what we shared was humbling and gutting.

"The scraps of paper flyers, leaves and food wrapper that littered this sidewalk are trash. The stack of files, complaints and reports on my desk that I'd rather put oil and light to fire are garbage. I could rattle on and name more but spending my life with someone I professed to love wouldn't be in it. I know I'm to blame for so much in all of this but is it that really easy?"

"You think this easy?" she asked incredulously. "You think what I went through was a joke?"

"No!" We lost a precious life and it was my fault for giving her grief. I caused it and there wasn't a night I've slept in peace. There were no words to convey it, "I am sorry."

Did she think I felt nothing for my own child? If so, it was wrong of me to assume she had such a stellar view of me.

"How..." I gulped down the bitterness. "One day you just stopped caring..."

She tired of loving me.

"It didn't happen in just one day. They were days within seven years. Your indifference and neglect. Of you living a life excluding me from everything..."

My inability to show how I feel and mismanaged time were undisputed. However, 'living a life excluding her'? She was very much a part of it-an integral part of me.

"I was supposed to be your wife but the title I think was undeserved. You saw me not as the woman you were to marry. Some days I even wondered if you ever saw me at all, Helena"

The wedding was for formalities' sake. For me, the moment I took her hand, I've considered her mine. She came into my room, the only place I feel safe to be me, and took my bed, she should have known no one else had it-had me.

"A day after that... I finally had the courage to accept it. End us and fix me. I could finally look in the mirror and see my reflection, why do you want to drag me under your shadows? I've dedicated my best years in loving you but now, I ask you to let me love myself, Helena."

My life was all business but when I met her, it became more. My house was just a house until she made it our home. Always on the go, I had a hectic life before her. Work always took me far but I knew she was waiting and ready to welcome me, I had a place to rest. I thought she understood the demands of my work and understood me and my complexities because she never complained.

I asked too much from her.

The initial plan to woo her would have to be scrapped as red rimmed eyes told me it was really over and I couldn't make a counter offer. My poorly executed efforts to make her take me back had an opposite effect. She couldn't stand my insufferable presence and forcing her to would only fill her heart to the brim with loathing.