“You fucking killed our baby? You did this without speaking to me?” My heart bangs against my chest, and my temples throb.

               “Don’t you dare! I tried to speak to you. You’re the one who turned your back on me. You left me to be with her.”

               I have fought and killed men, and never stood in fear as I do now, with her words. “You know the truth. I told you why I had to push you away. I did it for-“

               “What? My safety? You pushed me away for my safety? You took my choice from me. You made me think that the two of you were together.”

               I know what I made her think but somehow, I felt that deep in her heart, she knew it was a lie. “That doesn’t excuse the fact that you didn’t tell me that you were carrying my baby.” I point at her, accusations flaring like flames ready to engulf us.

               “I tried to tell you. You fucking bastard.” Her voice cracks as tears stream down her face. “I tried…”

               I pace the floor and light a cigarette. “You didn’t try hard enough.” Had I known she was pregnant, there were so many things I would have done differently. So many fucking things.

               “You can’t put this entirely on me. I was on my way to college, you had left me for my sister. I hated any thoughts of the two of you together.” She walks in front of my path of destruction, holding me with her eyes when, just minutes ago, she held me in her arms. “That night, when I went to your house and you told me that you were back with her, I’d just found out I was pregnant. I was going to tell you. I begged you to look at me. But as usual, you turned away and left me on my own.”

               “But, why abortion? You could’ve had the baby.” I speak without thinking.

               “I would’ve, but mom told me to get rid of it. I felt I had no other choice. I had to move on with my life, without you.”

               Memories of that day, when I tried to give her the money before she left for college, flood back to me. “That was the doctor’s appointment your mother spoke about?”

               Confusion swirls over her face.

               “The day I tried to give you the money for college. You were on your way to kill our baby?”

               She bows her head and turns away.

               I grasp her shoulders and turn her around to face me. “Was it?”

               A lone tear falls to the ground. “Yes.”

               “Why didn’t you tell me then?”

               “I couldn’t then. I hated what you did, but I still loved you. I was hurt and in pain that you left me for her. I thought you would always love and be there for me.”

               “I was.”

               Her head whips up. “You weren’t. You left me.”

               “But I explained it all to-“

               “Yeah, months later when it was too late, and you pushed me away again.”

               “I did what I thought was the right thing to do for you, her, everyone. I sacrificed –“

               “You don’t know what true sacrifice is. I sacrificed it all for you. True sacrifice is watching the man you love be with the woman he thought he loved, and that woman isn’t you. I watched from afar, and I tried to be there for you as a friend.”

Now she begins to pace the floor as her words tumble out and hit me like bullets. “True sacrifice is picking that man up when he is down and beaten, and bringing him back to life again. Asking for nothing but his love in return.” She stops and points at me. “A sacrifice is when a man that you desperately loved tells you that he is leaving you for your sister. And you fight to not crawl on your hands and knees to beg him not to leave you. Because he is all you have in this world. But the sacrifice that’s worst of them all is the sacrifice of an unborn child, that you desperately wanted but knew you could not have. You don’t know what real sacrifice is, Manuel. You haven’t learned it yet.”

               Stunned, I stand immobile. I feel the depth of each word, all the way down to the syllable. But then a vision of the child we could have had together forms in my head. The love the child was created from, and suddenly I’m angry again.

               “I was there, you could’ve told me. You talk about me taking your choices away. You took away mine! I was there. You're selfish, just like your sister Demaris. Both of you thinking of yourself.” I feel the slap before I see it coming. My cheek burns and I glare at her.

               “I don’t deserve that.”

               “And I deserve all that shit you are dumping on me? I did what I had to do, and I would do it all over again. I would fucking take this goddamn city apart, brick by brick, before I see any harm come to you.” I tip her face up to look her in the eyes. “Baby, don’t you ever doubt that fact.”

               She turns her face away from my touch, and I lower my hand back to my side. The distance between us grows wider by the second.

               “I don’t doubt it. But you never had faith in us, or in me.”

               “I always had faith in you, and in us.”

               She spins around angrily. “How, when you didn’t even trust me with the truth? Had you told me the truth from the beginning, we wouldn’t be standing here having this argument.”

               Two steps forward, forty steps back. The story of my life. “We can’t seem to move past this, can we?”

               “We could if you would let us. In order to do that, you have to trust me.”

               “I trust you. I love you.”

               “Loving me doesn’t mean you trust me. I want all of you, Manuel. I want your secrets, because you know I would keep them. I want your pain, because you know I will swallow it and make it my own. I want your happiness because that’s when I love you most. I want your fears because we are supposed to fight those demons together. I want your love because that is what keeps me alive. Don’t you understand? I want it all, or nothing.”

               “Everything I do is for you, even when you don’t know it.”

               “Then let me in and trust me with everything.”

               “The same way you trusted me? You didn’t tell me about our child.”

               “This isn’t about the baby, and you know it. You are throwing smoke and mirrors to cover up the fact that you don’t know how to let me into your life. You give me snippets of you, but never the full you. It’s always this false version but not what you show to everyone else. Perhaps you were at your rawest self when Demaris left. That was you, the real you. I saw it, I felt it.” She waves her hand the length of my body. “But this is not you. This is just another part of you.” She turns around and searches for her clothes as I stand to watch her. A spectator in my own life.

               After she finishes putting on her clothes, she turns to face me. “Manuel Leon, I love you with all of my heart, my soul, and my body. But until you know how to love me the same way, don’t come back. I can’t do this anymore. I’m tired, I’m hurt, and I just can’t.” She wipes her tears from her face before she gives me one last look and disappears from my life. Again. This time, not from me pushing her away, but from her walking away. And that fucking hurt even more than I could’ve ever known.