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My mind wandered back to the very first time I listened to her message word for word. Each word to escape her mouth robbed my lungs of much needed air. Every string attached to my heart was being pulled and wound tightly around the thumping organ inside my chest. With every word, that rope tugged tighter until it felt like I couldn’t breathe, and the only thing left to do was shut down.

“I know it’s hard to see it now because you’re stuck in all the bad thoughts, but it wasn’t your fault, Hunter. It wasn’t you, and it wasn’t hockey. Sarah chose to do what she did and it’s fucking tragic. Sometimes, it’s hard to put a name to an emotion, and since Sarah never sought professional help, it sounded a hell of a lot like she was living a double life.” Carter leaned forward and ran his palms over his face.

“She lived part of her life hiding in plain sight, putting on a show so no one could see what was really going on inside of her head. I’m sure she felt a lot of shame for feeling a way that no one could possibly understand—especially if she couldn’t explain it to begin with.”

He let out a heavy sigh.

“What I’m trying to help you understand here is that no one is to blame. Not even her. Mental illness is a fucking bitch, and in Sarah’s case, it won.”

Listening to Carter explain what he’d learned from Sarah’s goodbye message after only one listen brought me to my knees.

He’d been able to pick up on her struggles, whereas I was focused on the why. I’d listened to that same message on a fucking loop every single day since I found it, and I still couldn’t answer my own questions.

“Why couldn’t she at least try to tell me?” I sobbed into my hands, and before I could even get the next word out, Carter was by my side, holding me against his chest in a tight embrace. One that brought me back to the last time he had to talk me off a ledge.

“Why didn’t she trust me enough to know that I would do my best to understand what she was going through? She didn’t have to be fucking ashamed of anything when it came to me. Why, Carter?” I cried. “Why the fuck couldn’t she just tell me?” The words came out in a muffled scream behind my hands.

“I wish I had those answers for you.” His voice was strained, as if he was doing his best to hold back his own tears.

“How the hell am I going to get through this? It hurts so bad,” I sobbed in defeat.

There was this tiny sliver of me that was happy that after all these years, I got the opportunity to be reminded of what her voice sounded like. I got to see her through the screen as if she were real and not just the image in my head. I have something that holds the memory of her all these years later. For one last time, I got to hear her tell me she loved me and missed me. Words I’d only ever dreamed of hearing her say.

But even that sliver of happiness did nothing to weigh out the heavy weight on my chest and the voice screaming inside of my head to join her. That it would be easier to stand by her side than to get through this alone.

And as if Carter knew exactly where my thoughts were headed, in a low voice, he whispered the three words I needed to hear the most, “You’re not alone.”

Physically, I may not be alone, but mentally, I’d been in solitary confinement since the day my wife left this world. Some days, I just did a better job at pushing it all down than others. Then I’d gotten to a point in life where so much time had passed that shoving the feeling down just felt like a way of life.

There wasn’t a single piece of me that guessed I’d come across an old video of her and let out seventeen years’ worth of emotions.

The silence was deafening around us. There wasn’t a sound to be heard except my sobs mixed with his.

Carter had picked me up in my lowest moments. He’d been there with me through it all. Somehow, he was able to get through to me when no one else could. He had the ability to let his words be the ones that sank in. I didn’t know how he did it, but even through the dark abyss, I was able to see a shimmer of light. I just needed to get myself there.

After what felt like hours of Carter holding me up while I let the pain and guilt wreck through my body, he was finally able to get me back on my own two feet and into the kitchen as he looked for something he could throw together for us to eat.

“So, what’s going on with Andi?” Carter’s eyes flashed to me as he diced up some vegetables. “I ran into her at work the other day. She said you two got into some sort of disagreement.”

A different kind of guilt than I had felt earlier clawed at my insides.

“If I had to guess, that was her way of not airing my dirty laundry.” I shrugged, feeling a little defeated.

“So, you’re just going to let her be the one who got away then, huh?”

Fuck.

I didn’t know how he did it. But it’s almost as if he was a fly on the wall for every conversation her and I had ever had. And he was a damn spy invading my mind, too.

“No, I never wanted that to be our fate.” I rested my forehead against my hands, letting out a frustrated sigh. “She’s the only other woman I’ve ever wanted in the same ways I wanted Sarah. I just don’t know how I could possibly come back from what happened.”

“Well, you gonna give me the details? Did you ghost her when you found the video or something?”

“Technically, now I have, yeah.” I nodded. “I haven’t even charged my phone to see if she’s tried to reach out. But she, uh … she was actually here the night I came across the video. Long story short, because my head fucking hurts to think about it, we were watching the game that was recorded on that tape. At the exact fucking time that the recording cut off and changed to Sarah—because the devil is out to get me or some shit—she told me she loved me.” I shook my head, wincing at the pain of the memory.

“I didn’t have it in me to face her when Sarah showed up on that screen. The sight of her took my fucking breath away and broke my heart at the same time. I felt like an asshole for being with another woman. From being two seconds away from telling her I loved her too. The guilt still eats me up inside every fucking day.” I briefly closed my eyes and tried to squeeze away the sound of defeat in Andi’s voice that was impossible to forget.

“I don’t know how we could move forward if I feel guilty for loving her. After I’d blatantly chose my dead wife over her when I kicked her out of my house and never spoke to her again because I was too busy wallowing in my own pity.”