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Not only did I feel foolish for allowing myself to entertain such massive feelings, but my heart was broken into the world’s tiniest shards for the person who I thought was ready to welcome love with open arms.

My hands sat at ten and two as I gripped the black leather wheel, sitting outside of Hunter’s house, hoping with everything in me that once I walked out, he’d regret it. Maybe he’d come running out the door and tell me he was sorry for kicking me out. That he had acted too fast. Maybe he’d ask me to come back inside and let me hold him while he cried and questioned everything.

Or maybe I was foolish once again for allowing myself to even think I was worthy enough.

I’d been flying on cloud nine, feeling like a brand-new woman. I’d completely given myself over to a man I deemed worthy enough to have my heart, and there wasn’t a part of me that regretted my decision to put all my eggs in his basket. It was the feeling of not being seen in the same light that felt like a knife to the heart.

In the beginning, Hunter so easily chased me and pulled me into his life. He made me feel safe. Like I could tell him anything and everything. And foolishly, I had. I carved open my heart one layer at a time and made myself all too available to him. He knew of my past … parts of me I hadn’t told anyone before.

And like it was the easiest thing in the world, he stood up with a stone-cold look in his addicting hazel eyes and asked me to leave.

I’d been rejected my entire life. By my parents, brother, men from my past, but not one of those dismissals stung as hard as this one. I was battling a raging war inside my head that told me I wasn’t deserving, but everything inside me also fought for the man in that house big enough to fit a family and three dogs. If I knew Hunter as well as I thought I did, I’d guess he was putting himself through hell, replaying that tape over and over until he found every answer he was looking for. Until he sewed up every frayed end that had been untied for seventeen years.

My heart ached for the man I loved. The man that I knew I didn’t stand a chance at him loving me back. I had to force myself to leave when it felt every bit wrong of me to go against love and everything I thought of it to be. Loving someone meant being there for them in their toughest times. While I watched Hunter break apart in front of me firsthand, there wasn’t a damn thing I could do for him even if I tried.

He wasn’t going to share his deepest darkest places with me like I had with him. He was going to hold on to those places like a secret and stick himself in the darkest corners without an escape route. Sarah held the only key to his freedom, and she was never coming back to let him out.

Like a safety blanket from my past, I stole a glance at my reflection in the rearview mirror, wiped away my tears, left my heart at his doorstep, told myself I’d yet again get over this hurdle, and drove home to sleep in my bed for the first time in weeks.

Even after years of living in the same apartment, this was the first time I’d unlocked the door and everything about the walls around me felt foreign. The lights were all turned off except for the faint glow of the nightlight coming from the kitchen. Peyton was sound asleep in her bedroom, and then there was just me, feeling more alone than ever in the place that should feel the most like home.

Not wanting to wake Peyton, I slipped off my shoes at the doorway and quietly made my way to my room. I didn’t bother changing or taking off my makeup—most of it had already washed away from the tears anyway. Crawling into my bed, it was just me and the faint chirp of the crickets outside my window.

In complete darkness, I stared up at the ceiling. For a while there, I couldn’t see a thing. But then my eyes adjusted to the night, and all I was left with were my thoughts. Mostly, my mind ran wild with the memories of what it felt like just before it all came crashing down. How my body sank into Hunter’s as he ran his fingers through my hair, bringing my mind to complete and total relaxation. How he so kindly held up his end of the bargain and rubbed my sore feet after a long day at work. How everything had been perfectly fine until that stupid part of me—even if I didn’t know better—decided to bring up wanting to see him in full hockey action. And then, it all led to those old tapes.

Even though it killed me inside to know I’d fallen for someone who didn’t feel the same, there was something deeper tickling my brain. Maybe Hunter was always supposed to be in my life for a reason. To show me that even though it’s scary to open up, it makes it all worth it to have even felt an ounce of what I’d experienced for the last few months. And I was always meant to stumble into his life, so he could find the answers to the questions that had been nagging him for years on end.

I tried to smile at the realization, knowing I was a steppingstone to his journey of hopefully finding complete healing.

But my smile dropped when I realized I was just moments away from drifting off into a deep sleep without him by my side. And then the nightmare appeared as the feeling sank in … I had no idea what this meant for us. When he’d be ready to talk or if he ever would. Was this the end? Or just a crack in our relationship? Would I ever be able to face the man that I told those three words to without a single response in return? And if I did … would I be able to get over the nagging feeling inside of me that I’d never measure up to his first love?

There was never a point where I believed in God. My family didn’t raise me to say grace before dinner or go to church every Sunday. But as I knelt on the floor in front of the TV, I cried out for help. Not necessarily to God, but to whoever the hell would listen to me and make it possible to turn back time.

Sarah had given me answers. But they were her answers. They did absolutely nothing to help me understand why she wasn’t here.

The only thing I could wrap my head around was the fact that my wife had been struggling for years, and I was too caught up in my own life to realize what was right in front of my face. Sarah found it easier to down a bottle of pills in silence instead of being loud and asking for help.

Jesus Christ, Sarah, why the hell didn’t you grab ahold of my shoulders and shake me until I saw there were bigger issues in life than losing a fucking hockey game?

All those times I left for road games, she was going through hell inside her own head. She’d put on a mask when I called her every night from various hotel rooms and pretended that everything was fine.

I saw it now, so why the hell couldn’t I see it back then?

Hearing the pain in her voice after years of not hearing it at all broke me all over again. It took me back to the time when I first heard the news. I’d just won the biggest accomplishment possible with some of the best friends I’d ever had by my side. For all of five minutes, I was living the high life. When my dad broke the news, it didn’t feel real. Because what did he mean my wife never made it to the biggest game in my career when she’d always been the first one to arrive? It wasn’t real until I came home, and our old apartment was surrounded with caution tape, flooded with law enforcement.

“Let him in! That’s Sarah’s husband!” my wife’s best friend cried as the police officers held me back and tried to tell me I couldn’t enter my own home.

Attempting to find words to say, I came up short. My throat was clogged with my own emotions, and all I knew was I needed to get inside my house and see for myself that what I was being told wasn’t some cruel sick joke.

“Hunter. Oh my God. I—I’m so sorry. I—she … Sarah never answered her phone when I came to pick her up for your game. I let myself in, but … I … Fuck, I was too late, Hunter.” She sobbed into my shoulder, and with each word that fell from her lips, it felt more and more painfully real.

Sarah was gone.

I felt her energy surrounding the apartment, but not at all like I used to when I’d come home from a road trip and she was waiting for me in the living room with a smile plastered across her face after a big win.

Just a few feet from where we stood, my wife laid lifeless under a white sheet. Gone. I didn’t have to slip the sheet down to know it was her. Popped out from the edge of the blanket was her cold, still hand. With perfectly painted pink nails and a large diamond ring on her left ring finger, the sinking feeling of losing my favorite person in this entire world set in.

It took over my body so achingly slow, creeping up like a wave ready to take you out at any given moment when it would all come crashing down.