The drive from the stadium to my flat seems to go on forever. I’m kneading the steering wheel the whole time, knuckles white, afraid that Kayla won’t be there when I return. Is it possible that she just left and caught the next plane out? Maybe sticking around for her bags wasn’t worth it. Maybe fleeing me, the scene of our destroyed relationship, was the only way out for her. If she had her passport in her purse, it’s all she would have needed to vanish.

I can’t blame her. For all I know my hopes might all be in vain, that I’ll walk in my flat and see her beautiful face. Right now she might be somewhere over the Atlantic. Right now she might be heading back to her new life without a backward glance over her shoulder. Maybe that’s why my calls aren’t going through and my texts aren’t being delivered. She’s in airplane mode, heading far, far away.

The last time I was around her I didn’t even look her way. What if that was the last time I’ll ever see her again? What if my last memory of her is of me feeling too shameful to even glance in her direction? If I had known that would be the end, I would have grabbed her, held onto her with every ounce of strength I had. I would have stared at her so deeply that I wouldn’t know where I end and she begins.

I would have done everything differently.

I would have never given her an excuse to leave.

I have to pull over the car, motorists swerving past me, honking. I don’t care. I can’t even be right now. The thought of losing her so soon, without even a goodbye, is debilitating.

I stay like that, trying to breathe, my head resting on the steering wheel, parked illegally. I stay like that until I find the courage to keep on going and face my truth, whatever that truth may be.

I find parking around the corner from my flat and head on up. Outside the door I wait and listen, hoping to hear some kind of movement inside that will put an immediate end to my suffering, at least on one level. If she’s still here, I still have a chance to right things.

I quickly unlock the door and step on inside. Lionel comes running over, begging for me to scratch him behind the ear. I crouch down, absently petting him, trained for any sort of sound.

There. From the kitchen. The fridge door closing.

Hope sings from somewhere deep within me.

I head straight on over there and see her standing with a glass of juice in her hand. She’s staring at me like she’s been waiting, her hair stringy and hanging around her face. Her eyes are red and puffy and I can feel every ounce of pain that’s radiating from her like poisonous sunbeams.

“I thought you were gone,” I manage to say, dropping my bag to the floor.

She watches me for a moment, her face contorting momentarily. “I tried to.”

I lick my lips, unable to say the right thing. The only thing I can say is, “Kayla, I’m sorry,” and it comes out in a harsh whisper.

She raises her chin, trying to keep it from trembling and all I want to do is stride across the room and hold her in my arms and promise her that everything will be okay.

But I stay in my place. Because I know to hold her right now would be hopeless.

“What are you sorry for?” she asks flatly.

“For what happened?”

“And what happened? Do you remember?”

Guilt has one foot on my lungs, slowing pushing down. I shake my head. “No.”

Her face pinches together. “Then why are you sorry?”

“Because,” I cry out hoarsely. “Because I know I got drunk and I know I was in a mood and I know I did something very, very wrong. I don’t know what but…I can feel it. I can feel what you must have gone through. It’s sticking in me, like knives, and I can’t shake them loose.” I pause, trying to breathe. “I know I hurt you. And you can’t know how sorry I am for that. For everything wrong I’ve done.”

“But you don’t even know,” she says breathlessly, as if in disbelief. The look in her eyes is another kick to the gut. “You don’t even know what you’ve done, what you said. You don’t know the person that you become.”

“I have an idea.”

She gives me a bitter smile. “Oh no, I don’t think you have any fucking idea. You are nothing like this man here. You’re not you. You’re someone else, someone I hate.”

Hate.

“You’re the fucking devil, that’s all I know. Mean. Horrible. You stare at me like you don’t even recognize me, you talk to me like I’m someone else and no matter what I say, how I reason with you, nothing works. It’s like I cease to exist to you. How can I handle that you? How can you promise I won’t see that side of you ever again?”

I want to promise. In my desperation I want to promise her everything. But I know I can’t. Because if I promise it and it happens again, I won’t get another chance.

“Listen, love, please. I am going to do whatever I can to make sure that doesn’t happen again.”

“You said your addict days were behind you. They aren’t. And you know it.”

But the thing is, I didn’t know it until now. I’ve been making too many excuses, too much justification for years. As long as I kept my career, as long as I wasn’t on the streets, as long as I seemed okay to everyone else, then it wasn’t backsliding. I wasn’t like the junkie anymore. I wasn’t powerless and enslaved to something beyond my control. I wasn’t Lachlan Lockhart.

Sometimes it takes years to realize the truth. Sometimes it takes a moment.

My truth is this and it’s immediate: I’ll always be Lachlan Lockhart.

And I’ll always be fighting a very bloody war.

“You’re going to break my heart,” she whimpers, tears streaming down her face that she wipes angrily away.

“No,” I tell her, shaking my head. I stride to her, grabbing her by the shoulders desperately. “No, no, no.”

“Yes,” she cries out, avoiding my gaze. Up close her heartbreak is terrifying. “Yes. If this continues, yes. You will break me. Or I’ll break myself first.”

“Please,” I beg her, the tightness in my chest suffocating me. “We can work through this. I promise you, promise you we can.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head quickly, her lips pinched together. “We can’t. We aren’t strong enough. I’m not strong enough.”

“Yes you are,” I tell her. “You’re the strongest person that I know, Kayla and I know it’s a lot of pressure I’m putting on you, just asking you to even put up with me, let alone move here, but please. I love you. I love you so much that I can’t see straight and it’s destroying me. You’re ruining me to the very ground, can’t you see, but there’s nothing else I want more than to be at your feet.”

I collapse to my knees, holding her around her legs. “I can’t lose you. Don’t walk away from me. Don’t leave me. I’ve finally found you. You. I don’t want to go through the rest of this life without you at my side. I don’t even think I can.”

She’s rigid in my arms and I sob onto her thighs, holding her so tight because I feel that if I don’t let go, she can never leave. I’m just a ravaged mess of a man at the feet of the woman I love and begging for her to stay.

When her hands find their way into my hair, her fingers touching tenderly among my scalp, I nearly cry with relief. Her touch, her affection, soothes me like a bandage on a wound and I melt against her.

“Please,” I mutter against her legs. “I’ve never been more serious. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Rehab,” she whispers. “Or counseling. Something Lachlan, you need something and it has to be more than what I can give you.”

“Yes,” I tell her, even though the idea of going back to rehab for alcohol, more than a decade after going to rehab for meth, is embarrassing and shameful. Even though there will be no secrets if I go, that the world will find out and know just what kind of person I am. But I would do it for her. “I’ll go.”

“You have to want to go,” she says.

I stare up at her, resting my chin on her thighs. “I want to go,” I tell her.