Trigger warning! Sensitive subjects ahead!
Rebecca watched as Colby's face completely lost all the color it once held; she watched his breathing change from routine, and calm was now rapid and ragged. He had a panic attack.. he'd had those multiple times in the past, especially in the last year of their marriage after what happened with Rebecca that night.
CJ was too preoccupied with the toy chest in the corner of the room to notice anything was wrong between his parents.
"Colby.." She said, it was muffled in his ears, but he could hear her
His eyes met hers briefly, and that's all he could look at for the time being.
"Sit down.." She pushed him gently towards the exam table as she silently thanked God that they were still in that room and would have privacy. "Look at me" she grabbed his shaking hands in hers. "Focus on me."
Oh, if she only knew how she was the only thing he focused on all the time.
"Deep breaths.." She said, "Breathe with me," she said, and she watched him take a deep breath with her and let it out slowly. "Again," she said, and she watched him do it again.
They repeated the process for five minutes before Colby even started to come back off the edge. He began to come back to himself, and the color was slowly beginning to return to his face.
"This is a disaster," he said in a whisper with a shake of his head. "This isn't happening" he shook his head.
"It's gonna be okay," she nodded.
"How?" He asked as his eyes met hers again. "How can you even say that?" He asked, and he watched her look over at CJ
"We get to have another one.." She said with a small smile
"WE don't get to have anything" he shook his head. "YOU get to have another one.. you and Trevor," he said, and her eyes widened
"We should take CJ home.." She looked at her son. "Then you and I have a lot we need to discuss," she said, and he nodded slowly
Rebecca and Colby drove their respective cars back to their once shared home. Rebecca carried a sleeping CJ in the house and up to his room. She tucked him into bed and stared at him for a moment before shutting the door quietly.
As she walked down the stairs, she saw Colby sitting at the bar in the kitchen, she walked in slowly and saw him staring at the glass beer bottle in his hands, and she shook her head.
"Ya know, I thought Kent was lying to me," she spoke up as she walked in the room, and he looked over at her, "I thought he was lying about you going back to drinking every day."
"When you have nothing left in your life, and you have nothing else to go on for.." He shook his head as he took a drink from the bottle
"You have everything in life.. you have a little boy to go on for," she said, and his eyes met hers.
"You were my life," he argued. "You were and are my world, and I have to cope with the fact that you've left me.. you don't even know the actual story of why everything happened" he shook his head. "I have to cope with the fact that you've been with somebody else."
"Hurts, doesn't it?" She asked, and his eyes met hers. "It feels like your heart has been ripped out of your chest, huh?"
"Is that what you're trying to accomplish here? You're trying to make me feel fucking miserable every single day?"
"I'm trying to get you to realize that I can leave at any time I want. I'm trying to get you to realize that you don't get everything you want just because you have the money to get it.." She shook her head. "Tell me," she said, and he stared at her. "Tell me what happened," she clarified, and he shook his head.
"You're not in any way ready to hear this right now.."
"You've been trying to convince me that I don't know what went down.. you've been trying to convince me to listen.. now I'm waiting to listen, and you don't want to tell me?" She questioned
He took a deep breath, ran a hand over his face, and took another swig from the bottle. He stared at her in silence and then at his hands before shaking his head.. fuck it.. it was now or never.
"After CJ was born.. you were doing well.. you were the best mom in the world to that little boy," he said. She nodded "you even pushed me to the side and put him first, which I was perfectly okay with.. as long as you took care of my son, I would do anything for him," he said, and she leaned against the counter. "Then, after CJ's 2nd birthday, things started to change. I saw the change in you. You started to constantly worry about everything that revolved around him, which wasn't like you.. he was now in his exploring stage, so worrying would have been normal for any new mom. Still, you were overprotective of him, and you pushed me away even more than before... I just brushed it off and tried not to think about it.." He shook his head. "Then I came home one night and saw a trail of blood coming right from here.." He pointed to the counter where she was standing. "Up the stairs... I followed it and saw the drops on the floor got bigger the closer I got to our bathroom."
Rebecca closed her eyes. She remembered this night vividly.. but she tried her best to push it out of her head.
"When I walked into our bathroom, I saw you in the shower surrounded by blood and a knife next to you.." He cleared his throat. "You had cut your finger while cooking, which is why the blood started in the kitchen, and you came upstairs to clean up, but when I checked on you, you were going in and out of consciousness.. and I knew it was way too much blood to just be a cut on the finger, so I started checking you out, and I found the source almost immediately.. you had cut yourself multiples times on your thighs" he shook his head, "and you just kept repeating the same thing to me.. it made the pain go away.. it made the world just be quiet for a little while," he said
He watched her wipe the tears away from her cheeks quickly.
"We got a doctor to come here, he ended up having to stitch you up because you had cut yourself so deeply.. and I had to call Scarlett to get a doctor to come to the house.. and then I had to get her to make an appointment with a psychiatrist.. and then another one, and then you finally settled on the therapist you're with now.. but Scarlett had to know all of it to know what to be able to tell the multiple people she had to call," he said, and Rebecca nodded "and she was quiet for a little bit... but when she saw you were starting to come back to your normal self and she wasn't going to be able to get in there and replace you, she got mad.. and she told me that she was about to go public with everything and tell everyone.. the whole city, the whole world and the multiple investors we were currently trying to obtain.. you know as much as I do that if she did that it would have only turned the investors away which meant no money.. it would have also ruined your public image and I knew with how fragile you were at the time it would have only made things worse and I couldn't let her ruin you like that. I couldn't let you do what you did that night again.." He shook his head. "I offered her a higher-up position in the company, and I offered to buy her cars, houses, anything she wanted. I offered her money, but all she wanted was to sleep with me.. she said I sleep with her whenever she wanted, and she promised to keep her mouth shut."
"She was using you.." Rebecca said in a whisper, "She was using you for sex, and she was blackmailing us...."
"She was," he nodded, "and as much as I hate the pain I'm going through right now and the pain that it is causing you. I would do it a thousand times over if that meant you would be protected."
