A Love Like Ours

Chapter 45

The binding was just as soft, just as worn, just as heavy in my hands as it had been when Madelyn had given it to me. But now, having read all of it, it felt completely different.

It was the most important thing I'd ever carried.

It was no longer inanimate, because it was pulsing with life, with truth in my hands.

It was no longer just a book... it was her heart and soul.

And she'd given it to me, bared both to me in a matter of seconds and minutes that I'd lost track of as soon as I'd cracked it open.

I was still crying.

The pain, the heartache, the deep sadness and the slow ache of crawling out from it's depths—the feelings her words exuded filled me until I couldn't breathe. I lost track of how many times I thought I'd need to set the book down, because surely reading her pain might kill me.

But I still couldn't get the words out of my head, so I flipped the book open again to the parts that had really struck me—the parts that had felt like a killing blow I'd somehow managed to survive.

I should've called him when I had the chance, she'd written after I'd slept with Jenna and hadn't gotten in touch with her. She hadn't wanted to call me because she was afraid I'd either want to end things between us for good, or beg for forgiveness she was sure she'd give me anyway. But that wasn't the point. The point was she shouldn't have had to call me in the first place. I should've called her. I should've told him I still loved him and wanted to be with him again when I had the chance. But it's too late now.

That was just one of the moments I'd wanted to hurl the journal across the room. But letting it leave my hands was also the last thing I wanted.

If he got tired of waiting around and has decided he doesn't want to be with me anymore, then it's entirely my fault.

No, no, NO, I still wanted to shout. It wasn't. It wasn't her fault. It was mine. Totally mine. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe normally, and flipped to another page.

It's all felt totally surreal. Like I'm me, but I'm not me anymore either. Like I'm a shell of myself, a shell only inhabited by what's now growing inside me. Like I'm awake, but this isn't real life anymore. I don't WANT it to be real life anymore.

I didn't know. Not really. What all of it had done to her. I couldn't have completely understood what she was feeling even with the explanation she'd given me time and time again.

But reading it, no details spared, seeing her emotion bleeding all over the page, especially where tear drops smeared the ink—I finally felt like I understood every last bit of what she had felt over the last few years. After I'd slept with Jenna. After I didn't call her. When she slept with Rob. What it had felt like afterwards, knowing that she didn't care for him. Knowing that she still loved me. What she'd felt when she found out she was pregnant...

I could've kicked myself reading most of it. For so long, she'd thought I didn't want her anymore. She'd thought that the love I had for her wasn't as strong as the love she felt for me. And she was so wrong, but she couldn't have known that because I hadn't gotten in touch. I'd slept with Jenna and left her alone to think the worst. Like a bloody coward.

It pissed me off. It made me want to go back and do everything over again. Be the man she needed me to be. Because the love she felt for me, the love she'd written on these pages, was as palpable as my own, even through everything she'd dealt with. And neither of us had done a thing about it until it was far too late.