Chapter 83: Chapter Eighty-One – Kisses and Tutu
The movement replayed in slow motion in his mind. Willow stepping toward Victor, her weight shifting slightly as if she had already chosen the direction long before he arrived. Then her hand resting over her stomach. That single gesture burned into him with merciless clarity, a truth he did not know how to touch and could not breathe around.
His stomach cramped so violently that he folded forward over the steering wheel, gripping it like it was the only thing stopping him from drowning. The pain bent him in half. His breath punched out of him in a ragged burst while his fingers clawed at the leather, knuckles scraping against the stitching. He curled over it until his forehead nearly touched the wheel again, trying to hold himself together with strength he no longer had.
A sound tore out of him, low and guttural, so raw it barely resembled something human. It felt dragged upward from somewhere deep inside him, deeper than heartbreak and deeper than grief, the sound of something breaking open where no one could see it. It carried no clean rage and no simple sorrow. Something sharper lived inside it, something primal that existed beneath language and beneath reason.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his throat tightening painfully as the memory struck again. Her eyes had been filled with something he could not fully name. Fear. Confusion. Maybe both tangled together. Her voice trembling when she spoke. The words soft but absolute. A plea. A dismissal. A cut through bone.
He squeezed his eyes harder until bursts of light flickered behind his eyelids. The pressure hurt, but he welcomed it. Anything was better than the agony pressing against his chest.
"How could you," his voice broke entirely before the sentence finished, "how could you just walk away from me like that?"
The question slipped into the empty car in a shredded whisper. He was not shouting. The softness made it worse. It sounded like something spoken beside a grave, a confession released into empty air. The words carried no anger, only disbelief and heartbreak, the kind of pain that rewrites a man.
His throat burned as he tried to swallow. The heat crept upward until it felt like shards of glass sliding down his esophagus. Clearing his throat only made it worse. His breath stumbled unevenly as his chest struggled to keep rhythm. He pressed his thumb hard against the edge of the steering wheel as if the pressure might anchor him to something solid.
His vision began to blur slowly. The distortion gathered at the edges before creeping inward toward the center. He blinked once and the world smeared into thin streaks of light.
He dragged the sleeve of his jacket roughly across his face. The fabric scraped harshly against his skin as he wiped harder than necessary, almost angrily, as if erasing the moisture might erase the evidence of what was happening to him.
His hand fumbled toward the ignition. When he turned the key, his fingers trembled so violently that the metal slipped once before catching properly. The keys rattled against the plastic casing. His hand had to twist again before the engine finally responded.
The car hummed quietly to life.
The vibration traveled through the seat beneath him while the dashboard lit up in a dull glow. The soft light illuminated his reflection across the windshield.
Zane did not move.
Motion felt impossible. He remained frozen in the driver’s seat, staring ahead as if his body refused to acknowledge the simple truth that he needed to leave. Where would he even go when pieces of him still felt scattered across that gravel driveway?
He sat there breathing unevenly while the rearview mirror reflected his face back at him. The mirror framed him like a portrait of defeat. Every tremor, every tear, every fracture showed clearly in the dim light. He looked older than he remembered, strained and hollow, like someone who had run endlessly through grief and collapsed just short of the finish.
He did not recognize the man staring back.
The eyes looked wrong. The mouth looked wrong. The tension carved across his jaw belonged to someone else entirely.
"You promised," he whispered to the empty car. "You promised you wouldn’t run."
The word promised split something open inside him the moment it left his mouth. He remembered her voice the first time she said it, soft and hopeful, trembling with something fragile and real. He remembered believing her.
His fingers tightened around the steering wheel again. The leather dug into his palms while his hands shook harder. The tendons along his wrists stood out sharply beneath his skin as he squeezed until pain traveled slowly up his arms.
He forced a breath into his lungs. The inhale scraped painfully down his throat while his chest expanded slowly and reluctantly.
Then he forced another breath out.
The exhale left him trembling.
The pain inside him did not lessen. Instead it spread outward through his chest like something poisonous leaking slowly into his bloodstream. It reached places he had never realized could hurt.
For one terrifying second a thought formed clearly in his mind.
If she chooses him, if she stays with him, if she carries his child, what am I supposed to be now?
The question hollowed him instantly. The road ahead that once held plans and possibility collapsed into emptiness. His grip on the wheel tightened until his nails pressed into the leather.
His next inhale came too sharply and broke halfway through. The sound tore painfully through his throat as his chest spasmed. His eyes squeezed shut again as if darkness might shield him from the thoughts pressing into him.
His hand moved automatically to shift the car into reverse. The gear clicked loudly into place inside the hollow cabin while his shaking arm forced the motion forward.
Then he drove.
The car rolled backward slowly before moving forward again. Every motion felt stiff and mechanical, his body operating entirely on muscle memory while his mind remained somewhere else entirely.
He did not drive fast. His hands stayed locked around the steering wheel while each turn felt painfully deliberate. He kept his eyes fixed on the road because the alternative meant closing them and seeing her again.
The world outside the windshield blurred into streaks of dim light and shadow. Buildings, trees, and street signs passed him in quiet smears against the darkness.
He was not heading anywhere.
He was simply leaving.
And leaving felt like dying.
Inside the car he unraveled slowly. Each passing minute stretched longer than the last while every breath became something he had to negotiate with his own body.
He felt like a man who had just lost the one thing he was never built to lose.
As the car moved through the dark streets, a truth settled beside him like an unwelcome passenger.
He was not meant for this kind of pain. He was not built for this kind of absence. He was not prepared for a world where Willow no longer reached for him.
And he did not know if he would survive learning how.
