Page 111 of Call You Mine
The air between us feels heavy with the million words I want to say, the loaded silence making it hard to breathe.
This is it.
The moment I tell Ava what I’ve wanted to tell her for months.
When I first went to her house that night, I planned to tell her I wanted something real.
Now, I plan on telling her that what we haveisreal.
She is my wife.
Not just legally. But in my soul.
And I want to tell her over and over again. Because I know I will never call another person that again. It’s only reserved for her.
“Ava,” I start, ready to cut my soul in half, pour it all out for her.
That I love her, in every sense of the word.
And if she’s not ready to love me back, I’ll love her until she does.
“We got a date for the court hearing,” she blurts out, like the words were on the tip of her tongue, and she couldn’t stop them from coming out.
“That’s amazing, love.” I push off the counter, closing some of the distance between us, but I stop myself, remembering that there’s no need for us to put on the act here—no matter how much I want to touch her right now. “When is it?”
“End of the month,” she answers, but she looks like she wants to say more.
“Can I come?”
She nods, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip, like she’s physically stopping herself from what else she wants to say.
I don’t ask the other question that comes to my mind—what the adoption being finalized means.
Maybe that’s what she’s stopping herself from saying, and the thought has me returning to my need to tell her that I love her. That this marriage doesn’t have to end.
If I tell her how I feel, and she still wants a divorce, I’ll do it.
I think we both know I’ll do anything for her.
But it doesn’t mean I want to.
Ava is tattooed on my heart, carved into my bones, written on every inch of my skin. She’s what runs through my veins, and she doesn't even know it.
But she will.
I reach into my back pocket, the matchboxes I’ve been collecting these last few months to give to her for her own collection, feeling heavy, like the weight of everything I’m about to say in physical form.
Since seeing her collection at her apartment to picking up matchboxes whenever I found them—the record store, the thrift store in Vegas, Lenny’s, and anywhere else I saw them—I’ve been holding on to them for this moment.
To show her I think of her wherever we go—taking a piece of every memory we have to hold on to.
“Ava,” I start again, and it comes out as a plea. Becausethat’s what I’m doing. I’m pleading for her to listen to me, to hear me, to take in my words and let them sink in.
Pleading for her to let me love her how she deserves to be loved.
But before I can say anything more, she rips the air from my lungs.
“I’m pregnant.”
