He couldn't do this now. I knew he hated me for leaving, but hell, I was almost out the door, and now he decides to try to convince me to stay?

Like yelling at me was going to do it, telling me I was running away. So what if I was?

He ran away every day, every fucking day, to bury himself in work and film our lives like some story, like it was all fiction and he wasn't a part of it.

It was time someone told him what a hypocrite he was, and I was going to be the one to do it.

Hell, I was probably the only one who could get off saying something like this to him.

I hated to say it. I knew how much it hurt him.

I didn't let him see how much it hurt me.

But I felt like it was something he needed to hear.

Yes, I was angry at him. Yes, he could be a stubborn son of a bitch sometimes, and yes we said things to each other that neither of us meant.

But he needed to know. He needed to.

Maybe it was just my anger talking.

But his spoke right back.

Yeah, way to remind me that I was going to die. Way to fucking go. Poor you, you're going to live past the age of thirty, poor fucking baby.

And then all of a sudden, I saw everything there in his eyes, his hurt because I was leaving, leaving him, his self-hatred for being the one always left behind, and his black fear of being left alone.

And when he still tried, despite it all, to get me to stay, not for him, but for her, I nearly broke inside. Even after all this, he's still the most unselfish person I know.

No more. Please. I'm supposed to be the strong one. That's why I'm leaving, you know, so that you can't see that I'm not, that it's you, it's always been you.

But I still couldn't keep my mouth shut. You had to cross that last line, didn't you?

But I could see in his eyes, that same fear, and that desperate trying to be strong. He was hiding all that pain and fear and sadness with anger… just like me.

And then, gone, running away before they could see my tears, because I'm supposed to be the strong one. But they never knew that I was only ten minutes away before I pulled over and cried.

I honestly thought I'd never go back. I couldn't, not after all that.

But after a month and a half of heartbreaking homesickness and swearing I saw familiar faces around every corner, I couldn't stay. I had to go back.

And when he welcomed me back with open arms, I knew that he knew, he knew everything, and it may have taken a month and a half to get there, but we'd both changed, and it only made us closer.