Ashton
At a point, some distant point in time, I fell with you, and here in this moment, slowly watching us unravel at the seams, only one sentence rings loud and clear in my head, in my heart. The lyrics to our favorite song, one we haven’t listened to, talk less danced too in years, I wanna fall with you again.
“You’re screaming.”
“I’m not, I’m talking to you in a perfectly normal voice, not raising my voice at all in the hopes that maybe you’d finally listen to me.” My wife says, voice rising in pitch with every word. I sigh, taking my glasses off to rub at the bridge between my Temple. I grit my jaw and fix her with a hard look, as i try not to lose my calm, “can you please try to be quiet? Josh will hear you.”
My wife, the love of my life, browned haired and blue-eyed beauty stands opposite me in her night gown. Everything about her stance screams on edge, defensive, arms folded to her chest and eyes narrowed at me. I haven’t seen her smile in what feels like months, it’s funny because I used to live for them, I still do. “He’s fast asleep. Besides, do you really think he can’t see that we’re falling apart? that his parents are at the edge of a divorce?” she asks and I flinch. She’s right, she had walked into my study one evening when I had come back from work and had gone straight to my study for even more work and had dropped an envelope right in front of me. I had looked up at her, her stance was the same as it is now, defensive. The look in her eyes? determined. I didn’t have to look at them to know what they were, divorce papers, she was going to leave me.
She had picked out a house that’s on the other side of town. She doesn’t know I know about it, I shouldn’t. But after ten years together, we had built a social network that consisted of the same people. I haven’t signed them, I don’t know how to, but I have no right asking her to stay either. I played my part in bringing us to where we are now, the beginning of the end.
“I’m listening to you, I always listen to you.” her eyes widen and she takes a step back, a scoff coming out of her lips, some shred of emotion manages to slip past the emotionless mask she had been keeping in place with me since she asked for a divorce, one I recognize as frustration. “ Are you joking right now Ashton?” I flinch again, another reminder of where we are. She hasn’t called me by my full name since that night at her 18th birthday party, that feels so long ago. In a way it has been, she’s 28 now, I’m pushing 30. We have a son and we’ve been a team for as long as I can remember. But now, we’re falling apart.
“If you listen to me, if you have for once listened to me since you got this job five years ago, since we were thrust into the public eye, we wouldn’t be where we are now, about to lose everything we built together.” emotion fills her voice on the last sentence and my heart aches, instinct makes me take a step forward, hand outstretched to comfort her, like I have any right too. But she takes a step back, and I try to not let how much that hurt me show on my face. It still feels odd, hiding my emotions from her. I never had to, we both made it a priority to feel whatever we felt and talk about it, to not let it consume us. I think I broke that rule first, I started to hide first.
She sighs and wraps her arms around herself “I can’t do this anymore Ashton, I’ve tried to stay for Josh, ease him into the idea of not having the both of us in one house, but I can’t do this anymore, I just can’t.” she shakes her head and my heart breaks. “Diana,” I start, trying to reach for her again. “I’m moving tomorrow Ashton,” she says in a smaller voice, my heart cracks. I try desperately to meet her eyes, but she won’t look at me, she won’t meet mine. “ I won’t take Josh from you, I won’t do that to him, we’ll figure it out, but this thing, you and I, I can’t anymore, so please just sign those papers and let me go.” her voice cracks on the last part, tears rapidly filling her eyes, and I’m crossing the space between us to get to her before the little voice in my head will convince me that she’d just reject that too.
My arms wrap around her, she lets me. I breathe out in relief, but there’s a gaping hole in my chest that just keeps getting bigger as she cries, I hold her through it, a tear sliding down my cheek. “Don’t leave me, please.” I dare to whisper, beg. Because I truly don’t know how to live without her. She pulls away to stare at me, her eyes are red but they’re so intense, she searches my eyes like she’s looking for something. The smile that takes over her face is sad, “when was the last time you hugged me like this? hugged me at all?” she asks in a whisper. My throat gets tight, I can’t answer. I’m barely home, my job keeps me away, but I thought she understood. I think she did for a while, that I was doing this for us. but things started to get bad, they haven’t gotten better, I’m not sure they can, and I can’t for the life of me understand it, how we got here.
“It’s been two months since I asked you to sign those papers, and what have you been doing the entire time?” she asks eyes shining, biting at her lip like she’s trying not to cry. “Working, flying in and out of the country, not being here, not being at home, not being freaking present. You haven’t changed, you’ve been this way since you took over from your father. I miss that man that told me he loved me more than life itself all those years ago, you’re not him anymore. I feel like I barely know you Ashton, I feel like Josh barely knows you. All you care about is work, me trying to leave isn’t even enough to change that, I’m not enough.” she adds softly, inhaling shakily and stepping out of my hands. “Of course you are, you always have been, D. I’m sorry.” I try, the tears falling freely from my eyes now.
She’s right about everything, when dad had died just like that, peacefully in his sleep, everything had fallen on me. I hadn’t wanted it and the limelight that came with running the biggest conglomerate in the country, but I had too. Doing that had somehow become my life. In the beginning I had tried to juggle running an empire and reading my son stories to bed. But the more time went by, the deeper I got sucked into the corporate world, into the world my father belonged to. I think I became just like him at a point, and he wasn’t exactly the poster picture for father of the year, I never wanted to be like him, but somehow I became just that. And I couldn’t see the effect it was having on my family till Diana started to withdraw into herself, till her smiles got weaker, till I started to lose bits and pieces of her. And now, now I don’t know how to make it better.
Tears silently stream down her face as she makes her way towards Josh’s room, it’s quiet till she looks back at me, “that’s almost never enough Ashton. I might be leaving, but you’re letting me.” her voice breaks on the last sentence along with my heart. I see her wipe at her tears before slipping into our son’s room. And as I stand in our living room alone, letting the tears fall freely, in the house we built that has somehow managed to come down around us. All I can think about is the first time I met Diana, and how ten years later, I still think she’s the most beautiful woman in any room, I still think she’s the only one for me, i never thought I’d lose that, but somehow, I’m about too, and it’s my fault.
{********}
“My wife left me.” I state, staring into nothing, mind completely blank. It’s like I can’t think straight, not since Diana walked out the door with Josh over a week ago, she didn’t look back. “And how did that make you feel?” the woman seated opposite me asks in a gentle voice. I try to focus on her, but even that feels like too much effort, so I just focus on her voice instead. I try to sort through every emotion I’d felt for the past few months. Every emotion I felt watching her walk out of our home, our son in hand. He had looked so confused, had asked me to come with them, Diana had said to him ‘daddy will come get us sweetie’ it was meant for him, to not alarm him of the destruction going on around him. But I had heard it, and my heart had held on to that. So here I am, talking to a counsellor, trying to find my way back to my family.
“Empty.” I finally reply and she hums. I’m not exactly sure why I sought out a counsellor slash therapist. But ever since this entire thing started, there’s nobody I trust enough to talk to about it. Diana and I barely talked about it till we fell apart. She tried, and I wasn’t kidding when I told her that I always listen to her, but I could never really do anything about It. It's like i had become part of my work, like I needed to be on top of everything or else it’ll fall apart. I felt like I owed it to dad to protect what he lived his life protecting. Somehow, along the way, I lost sight of what was important to me, what I want to protect, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure it can be fixed, I swallow dryly. I tell all this to the counsellor who listens quietly till it gets hard to speak again, she’s quiet for a moment before she speaks again
“Mr Lockwood, do you love your wife?” she asks and I finally, finally focus on her. She’s watching me, a pen and notepad in hand, quietly waiting for me to answer, it’s not something I need to think about “I do.”
“And does she know that?” she asks and I blink at her once, twice. My brain screams that of course she knows, how could she not know that I adore her? that I’ve always adored her? I’m about to answer just as much when I actually think about it, how our relationship has been the past months, how I’d stopped being present in my own family, buried knee-deep in keeping the company together, expanding, living fathers dream. I think about all her calls that went unanswered, every time she tried to talk to me at night when I was home, but I only had strength to slide into bed and dose off. All the family dinners I missed, Josh’s school presentations she had to go to alone. We haven’t had a date night in months, we used to every month.
I miss that man that told me he loved me more than life itself all those years ago, you’re not him anymore.
I look back at the counsellor who's already watching me like she knows the answer to my question, even though the look in her eyes is kind. Ice settles heavily in my chest. “I’m not sure.” I answer truthfully, heart hurting, how did we get here D? “Was that always going to be your answer at any point in your marriage.” she asks softly, and it makes me want to laugh. I do without realizing it, memories of the life we used to have floating through my head. “Not a chance.” I answer. “Then tell me, Mr Lockwood. About how you loved your wife, so much that she would never doubt it.” my heart races in my chest, memories filling my head at her request. I barely know where to start, so I start from the beginning. When I met the girl with the brightest pair of eyes I’d ever seen, and how we fell in love.
A/N: Hey guys! really hope Ya’ll liked this, it’s going to be in three parts lol. The second part will hopefully be posted soon, and it’s about when they first met, and what their love used to look like. Don’t forget to clap if you like this as much as I do lol, and please look forward to the rest of it.
Authors Note: Dearest gentle reader(LOL) This is not the end, do stay tuned. Thank you for reading and do remember to clap if you liked this!
