His head snapped up. I hadn’t meant to go that far or finish that thought, but Nick was too perceptive to miss it. “You hate the person that I am with you. Is that what you were going to say?”
I shrugged one shoulder, ashamed that I’d let those words slip out. I shouldn’t have said it, even if it was true. If nothing else, it drove my point home. I was a terrible person with Nick. To Nick. We’d made each other into horrible people.
Our relationship was toxic. He was slowly poisoning me.
I was slowly poisoning him.
“So what are you saying?” he demanded on a rasp. “You want a divorce? Is that what you want? You think we should get a divorce?”
I nodded, unable to get those precise words beyond my lips. “We aren’t good together. We hate each other.”
“Yeah, you’ve made that abundantly clear tonight.”
“Can you think of any reason that we should stay together? Give me one good reason that we should keep doing this to ourselves and I will try. I swear to you, if you can come up with one reason to stay together, I’ll keep doing this. But, Nick, god, this is ruining me. I don’t know how much more I can take before I just fall apart.”
This time when the tears started falling, I didn’t wipe them away or try to stop them. My chin trembled from the force of my emotion and a devastating sob racked my chest. It was true. All of it. I hated myself and I hated him because he was the one that had turned me into this awful person.
I could not do this anymore.
If he came up with a valid reason, I didn’t know what I would do. I knew I told him I would stick it out, but at this point, I couldn’t do it. I would never really try again at this broken relationship. I had nothing left inside of me to give.
He watched me for a long time. I could see him processing everything behind his veiled eyes. I knew he thought he was hiding his emotions from me, but after seven years of marriage and ten years of being together, I could read him like an open book.
This was his analytical phase. He had to weigh each piece of information, emotion against truth, accusation against reality before he could come to a logical conclusion.
My husband, the cold-hearted thinker. Logic and reason outweighed everything else. If it wasn’t a fact, then it didn’t exist to him.
Or at least it didn’t matter.
“If this is what you want, then fine. A divorce, legal separation… whatever will make you happy.”
Whatever will make me happy. Is this it? Is this what I want? But I had already told him it was. Immediately I regretted everything about tonight, everything I had said and everything I’d accused him of. But I couldn’t keep feeling this way. I couldn’t go through this again, only to have it happen tomorrow and the next day and the day after that. It was time to stand up for myself and fight for my happiness. Nobody else was going to do it for me.
Not even Nick.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
There was a long weighted silence as if he were waiting for me to take everything back, to make my final words disappear. Eventually, in a hoarse, tortured voice, he said, “I’ll, uh, sleep on the couch tonight. I can move my things out tomorrow morning.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. Was he serious? Were we really doing this? “Where will you go?”
“I’ll stay with my brother until I can get a place of my own.”
“Jared won’t care? I mean… what will he think?”
“You can’t have it both ways, Kate. You can’t ask for a divorce and then hope to keep it a secret. Besides, it’s better than staying at a hotel.”
“No, you’re right,” I whispered. I rubbed my stomach and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. I asked for this. I practically demanded the divorce. So why did I feel such a horrific feeling of disappointment.