As he tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her back fiercely, she thought that it was working again. She continued to kiss him until he pulled away and rested his hands on her upper arms to move her away and put a little distance between them.
"We really can't do this," he says. He lets her go and walks to the living room.
She follows him and sits down on the couch, "would you care to explain why?"
"You know why, Steph." He's standing by the window, looking outside instead of at her.
"I really don't, Lindsey. I don't understand any of this. I don't know why this is happening. I don't know why you don't want me anymore and I certainly don't understand why you don't love me anymore," she wipes her eyes and sighs a little to herself. She really didn't want to cry in front of him.
He's still not looking at her, but he shakes his head, "I never said I don't want or love you anymore."
"You didn't have to. I can tell by your actions."
"We broke up for a reason and that reason still remains. For once, I don't think falling into bed with you is going to fix everything," he finally looks at her, but she doesn't glance at him this time.
"We didn't really try to fix things this time though, did we? One day you woke up and you weren't happy and you left. You didn't give me a chance to make things better," she stares straight ahead and wills herself not to cry anymore.
"I didn't expect to have to give you a chance to not treat me like shit!" Lindsey raises his voice, finally getting her to look at him.
"Can you shut the fuck up before you wake Max?" Now, she was getting angry too.
Lindsey folds his arms and looks away again, "I've been thinking about moving out of town; outside the city."
Stevie doesn't have words for him for a moment, "excuse me?"
"Do you have any idea how hard it is to be around you and want you and love you when I know that I can't have you? I know it would be disastrous, and it still kills me every time I have to pull away when you kiss me."
"You can have me, Lindsey! Jesus Christ, you don't have to move away from me," she was the one shouting now. She had so many feelings hitting her at once. She didn't know what to do with them.
"You're going to wake Max," he says quietly.
They don't speak for several minutes. There are too many emotions between the two of them right now.
Finally, Stevie says, "you can't just move away from your children."
"I would still see them," he says quickly.
"How do you expect to see our kids and not see me? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of you moving away?"
"No, I wouldn't see you. I would have someone bring the kids to me."
Stevie realizes that he actually planned this out. He thought about this to the point where he even knew how he would see their children and still be able to avoid seeing her. If she wasn't hurt by him already, she was dying inside now.
"Well, it sounds like you've got this all figured out," she says, as she gets up from the couch at the sound of Max crying for her.
Lindsey is almost out of the living room before he says, "stop. Go sit down. You're not supposed to be on your feet so much and you're not supposed to lift Max."
"Don't fucking tell me what to do," she says bitterly. She could almost feel herself shutting down.
Lindsey doesn't respond; he just heads upstairs to get Max. She can hear them over the baby monitor when Lindsey walks in and Max squeals in delight at seeing his father. She turns the baby monitor off because she knows as soon as she hears him talking to their son, she'll forget why she has a reason to be angry with him.
Stevie sits back down and really lets the conversation between her and Lindsey sink in. One minute he was moving out of their home and the next he was moving out of the city. He just kept leaving her and now she was chasing him. She was throwing herself at him and begging him to come home and he just wanted to get away.
Had things really come to this? Had she honestly treated him so badly that he felt he needed to move away from her in order to get over her? Why did he need to get over her anyway? People could change and she would do anything to be better so that he would stay.
She just wanted them to be a family. Was it really too much to ask to be with the man she loves and their children?
Apparently, it was. Apparently what would happen next is that she would bring their daughter into the world and then Lindsey would just leave again.
The worst part is that him leaving again was the thing she feared the most when she was pregnant with Max. Through everything with Lizzie, she never once worried that she wouldn't have Lindsey by her side. Now he was gone; gone from their bed, from their home, from their children, from her, maybe even from the city. He knew she needed him, yet he still made these choices. She still didn't really know why, or what his true logic behind all of this was.
All she knew was for the first time, their love hadn't been enough for him.
Author's note: thank you guys for being so patient. I started a new job and I have been so busy and exhausted. I literally go to work, come home, marathon the x files with my fiancé and fall asleep, lol. Also, shout out to my lovely Laceandpaperflowers for once again getting me through this chapter. I seriously can't thank her enough for this one because I had the worst writers block and she is the only thing that got me through it. You're my best friend and my muse and I don't know what I would do without you! I love you!
Chasing Pavements
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