Читать книгу Perfectly Undone - Jamie Raintree - Страница 9

1

Some things can never be forgiven.

This thought flashes down my spine like lightning. The rain thunders overhead with the same rhythm as my heartbeat as I sit at the dining room table I bought together with the man I love, in the house we’ve shared for the last two years.

Can they? I ask myself, consuming every last inch of him with my eyes, as if it will be my last chance.

Cooper.

On one knee.

His blue eyes tense, waiting for my answer.

Those stubborn strands of blond hair fallen over his forehead.

“Dylan?” he presses.

I shake my head—not an answer, a try at clarity. It comes.

We can’t start a marriage based on secrets.

“I can’t give you an answer,” I whisper in a voice that isn’t mine. His eyebrows furrow, unsure of whether or not he heard me correctly. I can’t stick around to watch understanding take over his features. He can’t push me into this one. I place the fork in my hand back on the table with forced precision, then attempt to pull my fingers from Cooper’s grasp. “I’m so sorry. I love you, but I can’t.”

Still he won’t let me go. The fact that he knows he isn’t going to get the answer he wants and he still doesn’t want me to leave pushes a sob from my lips.

“Cooper,” I cry, but I pull myself free, stand and cross the living room. I wrench open the front door, no shoes, and walk out into the rain without looking back.

The storm hits me with a force that shocks me, making me feel more awake than I’ve been in years. I don’t know what I’m walking toward or what I’m running away from, I just feel the wet earth against the soles of my feet, holding me up, pushing me on. My breath comes quickly, and the spring air is so new, it forms a cloud in front of my face with every exhalation. I rush forward, rain and tears mixing together on the palette of my cheeks. I reach the road, follow it with my eyes until it disappears in both directions and realize I’m in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go and not a single person I can turn to.

My hair sticks to my face, the mud to my clothes.

With no one to hear, I ask myself what I’m doing, how I got here. Don’t I have everything I’m supposed to want?

With no one to notice, I wonder if I’m wasting the life Abby never got to live.