Yours Truly ❁ n.k.h

• chapter nineteen •

How do you return to a life that doesn't even feel like it's yours anymore?

This is a genuine question, by the way.

Right now, I'm sitting in an airport, and I'm almost two hours away from you. By midnight I'll be home. We'll be in the same vicinity, in arms reach, in a home that we built together.

And yet I still can't touch you because you aren't mine anymore.

I wish I could ignore it like I've been doing with everything else lately. But it's all catching up to me and Dinah, I don't know how much more I can take.

We all make mistakes and stupid fucking decisions but it seems like only mine are coming back to bite me in the ass.

When other people mess up, they get pats on the back and in a few days time, it's forgotten.

For the past month, every person I've ever come in contact with is throwing my actions back in my face as if I wasn't there to do them. I'm sick of it. If there aren't accusations, there's questions. I'm in a hot seat 24/7.

This time, I want to come home and put you in the hot seat. Allow you to see the name you've probably been cursing every night since I left almost a month ago. The same face you felt justified in separating from.

I mean, on some level I get it, you know? We agreed to be parents first, partners second. But when we said that, we were so in love, it was like this hypothetical clause. I think it's safe to say we never thought in a million years that it would come to this.

This hurts equally as bad as nearly losing Angel.

Sometimes I wonder if you feel it too, sitting all alone with her in that house when the nights are through. Staring at our pictures, my clothes in the closet, taking a shower in the bathroom we used to share. You probably even finished all my shampoo by now.

But every time I start to feel even the slightest pinch of remorse and guilt, I hear your words again. The ones from before things spun out of control, when our lives were normal and our greatest worry was what we were cooking for dinner that night.

"I just can't take it anymore, I'm not happy here, with her. You know that."

I almost laughed to myself, glancing back at the words I'd written.

You know that. Really, Dinah? Was I really that bad that you had to run to my best friend of all people? You couldn't just talk to me first?

Nearly ten years of love and then you wake up one day and tell anyone that'll listen that I'm not enough for you. Well, I call bullshit.

We were happy. I like to think that we were. The night of the accident we were on our way back from a family day that I planned as a surprise for you. One of many things I had up my sleeve. Even though our anniversary had just passed, I didn't want to stop doing things, I didn't want you to feel like you were only worth one day.

And then you broke my heart with that.

I guess when you finally get to read this, you'll know that I wasn't really sleeping and I heard everything you said on the phone call that day. I wasn't trying to be nosy, I promise. But when you're sneaking out of the room so early in the morning that even Angel isn't up, I think I have the right to be suspicious.