Thanks for the reviews over the past few chapters. I have a little more written, but there may be a bit of a delay following this chapter. I'm working on my ideas, but sometimes they don't look as good on paper as they were in my head...

Chapter 25

He could tell that she had been crying, but she seemed quite calm by now. He slowly approached her table, hoping that she would want to talk to him. She brushed her hair out of her face and looked at him. She closed her eyes for a moment before she spoke to him.

"Kevin," she began, but he interrupted.

"No, Beth, before you say anything, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that."

Beth shook her head, "Kevin, this isn't working. We aren't moving forward. I think we should spend some time apart." He started to interrupt again, but she stopped him. "I'm not moving here with you. I'm going to stay in Connecticut, at my job. We can tell your parents that we want to keep the house up there in case things don't work out here. You can get an apartment here or whatever, but I'm not coming with you. At least not now."

Kevin stared silently out the window after she finished. He didn't want to believe what she had just told him. Wasn't it just this morning that she had promised that they would work on these problems that they both openly acknowledged? His entire life was falling apart in front of him, and he had absolutely no idea how to stop it. He was unable to even answer his wife as he sat across the table from her. Objections were screaming in his mind, but he was utterly unable to vocalize them. Finally, he spoke, "Let's not tell anyone today."

His words hit Beth like a slap to her face. She recoiled from the force of the statement. He hadn't argued with her or tried to convince her that she was making a mistake. The possibility that he would simply agree with her had barely even crossed her mind. She had sat in the coffee shop, waiting for him to find her, but also considering their next move. It had been her hope that he would fight her, that he would press for the relationship, but the fact that he hadn't made her realize that maybe they did need to spend some time away from one another to contemplate the next move, the right move.

She stood and he followed her to the door. They covered the distance back to the house without speaking. He looked like he might break down at any moment, but he held himself together as they entered to rejoin the family. Annie jumped up to greet Beth, and Joan handed both Kevin and Beth a cup of coffee. The rest of the family was eating lunch, and Kevin noticed that they had been gone for nearly three hours. Annie told them that the airline had called and would be able to offer them a seat on a plane leaving that evening. She and Clark were only going to be able to stay a little while longer. Everyone was acting extremely normal, so Kevin assumed that Luke and Joan hadn't said anything about his fight with Beth to the rest of the family. Beth sat down beside her sister to eat, but Kevin refused lunch. He was trying to keep himself together, at least until he could go upstairs to his room.

Everyone sat around the table following the meal, and that's when Kevin took his leave. He excused himself, stating that he was feeling a little tired, and moved toward the front stairs. Beth stood and asked if he needed anything. He didn't answer her, but continued up to his room. He went into the bathroom before the bedroom. He looked in the mirror and finally allowed himself to cry. Losing Beth again was something he would not ever be able to face. He'd counted the losses in his life, and he was not prepared to watch her walk out of his life again. He had to find a way to show her that a separation was wrong, but right now he was too emotionally exhausted to do anything. He entered the bedroom and transferred from the chair to the bed.

He took the bottle of Valium off of the night stand and shook the contents into his hand. He stared at the seventeen pills in his hand. He'd been here before, in his room contemplating whether or not it was worth it to go on.

The first days at home had been the worst of his life, even more terrible than finding out the consequences of the accident. At least in the hospital and in rehab there had been so much going on and so much to do. Then he was home, and all he could do was sit there. His mom and dad had worked it out with the board of education so that he could finish up the semester without going back to school. A tutor came by a couple of times a week, but he didn't really care about it anyway. He had kept his grades up to be able to play ball and so that he would be eligible for college scholarships. That didn't matter anymore. He wasn't planning on college as an academic pursuit. It was a place to develop his skills until he could enter the draft as a college junior. His parents were hoping for a college education, but he just wanted to work with a pitching coach and face some better hitters. Luke usually did his homework for him. He had offered, and Kevin hadn't said no, so that was settled. So it wasn't like he even had school to worry about. He just sat there. He didn't want to watch TV. He couldn't even get out of his bed by himself, take a shower, drive. His family tried to be supportive, but he couldn't stand the looks and the hushed tones when he came into a room. He absolutely could not sleep without taking something, and it was just easier for him to keep the prescriptions in his room. More than once he had sat there, before he went to bed or in the morning before his mom came in to check on him, with a handful of assorted capsules and tablets, trying to decide what to do, if his life would ever be good enough to warrant not taking them. His mom walked in one day without knocking. Startled, he dropped the Valium. She bent to pick up what she thought was one dose, and found more than 20 capsules on the floor. She looked up at Kevin with a horrified expression on her face.

"What is this?" she asked him. He tried to cover by saying he hadn't been able to get the bottle open and that she had walked in just as he spilled it on the floor. She shook her head, placed the pills back in the bottle, and set it on the stand beside his bed. He looked up at her. They were both on the verge of tears at this point. She sat beside him, and placed her arms around his neck.

"Kevin," she began, "I know this is hard, but that is not the answer, ever. I love you, and for a moment after the accident, I was terrified that I was going to lose you. I know this isn't the life you imagined, and if I could do anything to change it, I would do so in a second. I would take your place, and I will do anything in my power to make this life as good as it can possibly be for you. Please, we'll find you someone to talk to, someone to help you. But this isn't an option, not one that I want to even think about."

Kevin cried into his mother's arms for the first and only time during the entire ordeal. He apologized and assured his mom that he didn't need to talk to anyone, and that it had just been a difficult day and a fleeting idea that had crossed his mind, that he wasn't really serious. She had believed him but still kept a close eye him for a couple more weeks. By that time, he had started acting a little more social with the family. Then they moved to Arcadia, and the entire family was uprooted and displaced and a little depressed, so he thought he would get a little less notice. Following that, Joan had started acting really strange. They found out that she was sick, and by that time he'd gotten a job, a girlfriend, and was well on his way.

It had been years since the feelings of depression had crept back into him, not even after they had lost the baby. But imagining his life without Beth in it brought him all the way back to the beginning of his journey. And he was still sitting on his bed with a handful of pills. Ten years later, it wasn't any better of an idea than it had been back then. He put sixteen of the capsules back, swallowed one, and laid his head back on the pillow.