“I can’t,” she breathed.
“Can’t what?”
“I can’t do this.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, disbelieving. He moved to take her free hand that lay at her side. She drew it away.
“You’re not listening; I can’t do this anymore, any of it. I don’t want to continue on pretending that everything is okay when it isn’t, pretending that you’re okay and that we’re okay when we aren’t,” she said, beginning to sob. “I can’t pretend that things are going to get better when I don’t know that.”
“I am getting better,” he replied, “I’m trying.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“I know you do, so why act this way? Why leave when I’m beginning to change? Why go when I am doing this for you, does none of it matter to you?” Kieran cried, “Is there nothing more that I can do to make me what it is that you want?”
“It is exhausting, waiting for you to get back to who you were, to see you struggle the way you do. I can’t watch you try and fail over and over again,” said Briar. “I can’t watch you decay and raise from the ashes only to see that you are what you are born from – that you have not changed at all.”
“Well what then, do you expect me to do it alone?”
“You’ll have to”, she said between tears as she stood. She turned lucidly and walked past the chair where he sat; leaving the television they had been watching to entertain itself. The door creaked as she heaved, and all too quickly, she was gone.