As the weeks flew by, I became increasingly frustrated with the walls Abigail had put up that I couldn't scale no matter what I tried. With the constant threat of her making me leave if I tried to talk to her about all of the mistakes I'd made and hurts I'd inflicted on her, we couldn't talk it out and try to move forward together. I only hoped that by showing her how I felt, she would open the door to me again. This time, I wouldn't mess up.
So I held my tongue for the time being and tried to convey without words how I felt. Thankfully, I could tell my son how I felt all the time and I did it in a low voice that always made my boy's eyes go wide and made him quiet as he listened to my voice.
"You need to give it up," she told me quietly one night after she caught me whispering to Griffin all my hopes for the future. "You and I are not happening. Ever. We will co-parent our baby, but that's it. You'll have your life and I'll have mine. We'll talk as needed about our boy, but other than him, we have no reason to communicate."
"We could be great together if you'd give me a chance."
"I gave you a chance for eight months, and that wasn't enough. So, you've had your chance, we didn't work out and that's OK. I'm finally to the point where I'm OK with how we turned out."
"I'm not. Abigail, I love –"
"Stop," she shouted at me, frustrated beyond belief. "You can't keep upsetting me like this. It's not good for the baby or for me."
"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but we need to talk this out."
Flopping onto the couch, she shook her head. "What you're not getting is that there's nothing to talk about. Someday, I'm going to find a man who loves me like you love Charlotte, a man who makes me his world, who thinks I deserve beautiful words and declarations of his love, and who backs them up with his actions. A man who, when he proposes, will have put some thought and effort into it because he loves me that much. And he'll love our boy, too, so much, and we'll have children together and build a life together. But that man is not going to be you. All I feel from you is a desperation to get together with me because of our baby. Every time now when you say something nice or even loving, I'm just cringing inside because it's just so insincere to me. I don't believe a word you say to me, so I really wish you would stop. The only reason you're pretending to want me is because of the baby."
