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Chapter 19

I don't even realize how wet from tears my face is until I step outside and chilly breeze starts whipping at my skin. If I looked myself in the mirror, I would probably find my eyes blood stained and puffy, and the skin on my cheeks reddish, as if I spent hours out in the snow without proper protection from the cold. I try to clean my face of tears, but when I remove one drop, two more appear in its place.

After I spend several minutes on trying to wipe my face clean, I proclaim this mission impossible and just leave my face as it is, hoping it's going to dry on its own by the time I reach my parents house.

I haven't told Stefan any lies. I'll probably never love Matt the way I've loved him, and I'm not sure I'm supposed to. Every relationship is different, and I don't even think you fall in love twice, with two different people, in the same way. Maybe my feelings for Matt are not quite as heightened as they were for Stefan, and maybe I don't feel them in the same intensity, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy. Maybe it's not about being happy with him, or because of him, maybe it's about the life I can have with him. Life he can provide me with.

I don't even believe in what I'm saying. As I think of those words, I can see; hear; feel how wrong they are.

I've been completely honest with him, I've shed my clothes, my skin, even my flesh. I stood in front of him, naked to the bone, shivering. I can't reinvent my life for him again. I can't let him push me forward and pull me backwards whenever he wants. My life is in New York, even if I weren't engaged to Matt, my job is there, all my things are there, and Bonnie is there. I can't allow anyone else but me to be my axis. I finally have the job I've dreamed of having since childhood, my career is on the rise, and even if there was a chance to maintain all of that if I choose to be with him, there are some aspects that a life with him would entail that I no longer want. Mainly having children, who Stefan would desperately want, and I can't, I don't want to have any more children, especially not now when I know how fragile they are and how easy it is to lose them. I can't risk losing another one, I can't be responsible for another human life again. I refuse.

Stefan's house, the old farm he grew up in, is 15 minutes away from my parents house, which gives me enough time to cool down. Externally, of course. My face is not wet anymore, but I can bet that there's a trail of tears left on my skin.

The front yard of my parents house is submerged in dark, but the tiny porch in front of the front door is visible no matter how dark it gets, thanks to the dim light my father had attached to the house. And thanks to it I can see a figure slouched on the wooden steps, hunched forward, its head hanging from the neck, looking directly at its locked hands, resting on its knees. At first I think, I fear, that it's Stefan, that somehow he got here faster than I did, and that he wants to continue our conversation. But when I come closer, I realize that the figure sitting in front of me is not Stefan, it's Matt.

"Matt?" I say his name partly surprised by his presence, partly worried by it, "What are you doing here?"

He raises his head at the sound of my voice, but his face gives away nothing. It's stoic, void of any apparent emotion, the lines of his face hard and serious. "We have to talk," he says coldly, but then again, nothing unusual, since Matt usually sounds cold and detached. I often have to remind myself that that's a lawyer in him talking, since my Matt is kind and loving and sweet, overall a nice person.

We have to talk. Worst four words stringed into a sentence you could ever say to a person.

"Sure," I say supportively, lowering myself down on the steps next to him, "What about?"

He stays quiet and calm for several seconds, then exhales nervously, staring in front of himself. "This is very hard for me to ask, so I'm going to ask it only once, and the only thing I'm asking from you is to be completely honest with me. Do you think you can do that?" he says in one breath, but still manages to sound extremely calm and coherent.