“And then you wanted to change everything and the house and the boys, and I was overwhelmed and . . .” I shake my head in despair. This is all coming out wrong. “If you have me, you already have the boys-you don’t need to adopt them.”
His back straightens. “It’s nonnegotiable, Claire.”
My face falls. “What?”
“If I marry you, I want to adopt the boys.”
“Why do you want to change things?” I stammer.
“Because . . . I want my own family.”
“But I love you.”
“It isn’t enough.”
My face falls.
Oh my God . . . this really is the end; my eyes fill with tears, and we stare at each other as everyone else in the airport disappears. I take a step back from him to try to protect myself from what he’s saying.
“I would give up having my own children, Claire, so that I don’t lose yours.”
A tear rolls down my cheek, and the lump in my throat nearly closes over.
“I love them. I want them as my sons. I want their surname to be Anderson-Miles.”
I shake my head, unable to push the word no past my lips. “You just want to take them,” I whisper. “You’ve already taken me over; you can’t take over my sons. They are not up for grabs. You want power. I know how you work, Tristan-you always have to be in charge.”
His face falls. “Is that what you think?”
I nod. What else could it be?
He drops his head; his face is solemn. “Goodbye, Claire.”
“Why?” I cry. “Why do you want this so much?”
He turns to me like the devil himself. “Because I deserve my own family, God damn it. And I love them, and if you can’t see that, I don’t even fucking know who you are.”
My heart drops.
He leans forward. “All this time . . . I thought you loved me,” he whispers through tears. He pauses as my eyes search his. “Guess not.”
“Tris,” I whisper.
He turns and marches through the doors and into the airport.
“Tristan,” I call.
He keeps walking.
“Tristan!” I cry.
The private doors open, and he walks through them without looking back. Security guards step in front of them to block me from running after him.
He’s gone.
Tristan
Fourteen days and fourteen nights . . . living without her.
Without them.
I sip my beer as I stare at the football game on the screen. I’m in the busiest American pub in Paris. People are everywhere. I hear their voices in the distance; the echoes of their jovial laughter fill the space. But I feel as if I’m hovering above them, not really here, not really there.
In a detached state, cut . . . to the bone.
If it were a physical injury, I would be in intensive care, barely clinging to life.
The heart hurts more than any injury ever could. It beats weakly . . . barely at all.
Every breath that I take feels like my chest is about to cave in.
Every exhale a struggle.
The walls have closed in, the dust has settled, and yet nothing has changed.
The world is spinning at a million miles per minute, but the silence without them . . . is deafening.
I never knew what it felt like to lose someone you loved. A heartbeat that once we shared, I can no longer hear.
I lost four pieces of myself on the same day.
My entire world.
I sip my beer as I stare at the television screen on the wall.
I want to talk to my boys . . . I want to kiss my girl.
And then I remember the painful truth.
That neither are mine-they will never be mine.
They belong to him.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and the name Jameson lights up the screen. “Hey,” I answer.
“You all right?”
“I’m fine, Jay.” I sigh.