If Walls Could Talk (Adamtina)

Chapter 3

He didn't kiss her. But for a breathless, almost agonizing moment he really wanted to. In fact, he almost did.

Hearing Christina say words to Adam that he never thought he'd hear through her beautiful lips glistening with tears made him want to grab her so hard he could crush her shoulders and kiss the life out of her.

And that was a very big problem.

Not just because he was getting married, which was unspeakably bad enough, but because he'd honestly thought he was over Christina. Otherwise he wouldn't have been able to invite her to watch him sign over his future to someone else.

And maybe he really was over it; maybe it was just the allure of hearing someone who once meant the world to him say such heartfelt things that made his heart twist. I mean, who wouldn't be momentarily roused by that?

He just didn't know. But even the possibility that Adam might still love Christina in that way rattled him so hard he was surprised she couldn't hear the deafening sound it made inside him as they stood there on that lonely beach.

He was with someone else now. Someone he'd felt committed to for such a long time. And he knew his love for Claire was real. If it wasn't, he wouldn't have dropped to bended knee all those months ago and asked her to become the woman his children call 'mom'.

So why had Christina's few words moved him to tears? He wasn't even a crier, especially when it came to women. Although, if he'd been given a dollar for every tear he'd lost when Christina broke up with him, he'd probably have his own hotel in the Maldives by now.

During the car ride home that night, in which he barely remembered even seeing the road, Adam had tried to collect his whirring thoughts but couldn't catch them. There was the mesmerizing touch of Christina's hair gently brushing against his skin from the wind, a sudden and bone-crushing urge to kiss her, his leap back from her as he told her a little too harshly that he was going home, and the rush back to their cars in silence as Christina cried softly beside him. He could barely remember how they parted ways; he just knew he didn't kiss her on the cheek this time and that they didn't really look at each other.

And when Adam had arrived home he'd savored the minor windfall that was walking into an empty house. Claire was out of town for work for one more night, and even though he'd missed her like mad over the few nights before, this night he knew his only sleeping companion would be Christina's words playing on loop in his head.

I love you so much I feel like I can't breathe.

Adam had tried so hard to get comfortable when he'd crawled into bed that night, to sleep the anxiety away, but it felt like his sheets were stinging his skin as he tossed and turned for hours. Eventually he'd sat up in the darkness with a huff and fumbled for a sleeping pill in his drawer. He found one and gulped it down, but even the power of medicine wasn't strong enough to sedate his tireless thoughts.

He'd passed out for a short while, but in the middle of the night he'd woken with the sudden image of Claire in his mind. She was so completely different to Christina. The physical disparities were striking: Claire was tall, super athletic and brunette with light green eyes. But the personality differences were just as pronounced. Christina was impulsive, volatile, passionate. Her personality was as big as she was small. When she'd loved him, she'd loved him with every fiber of her being. It was so easy for Adam to believe that that meant he was "the one" for her. She'd doted on him, gushed in his presence, stared at him for hours while he went about his day - done everything to express her feelings except write "I love you" in the sky.

It was all part of why it felt like he was being sprayed with bullets when she sat him down one day and told him she didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore.