"Willow, we promised each other we'd never go to bed angry. What exactly are you so upset about?"
When I still didn't answer, he leaned down and pressed his mouth hard against mine.
Back when things were good between us, he used to say there was nothing a night together couldn't fix.
My mother had been buried today. And he wanted—
Nausea surged through me. I shoved him off and slapped him across the face.
"Get out!"
Curtis ran his tongue along the inside of his cheek. His patience finally snapped.
"Fine. Just don't come crawling back to me on your knees!"
That was one of only two fights we had in six years.
The first was during our second year together, when I insisted he take me along to visit his family's graves on Memorial Day.
"Willow, I'm with you three hundred and sixty-four days a year. Can't I have one day to myself?"
We didn't speak for three months after that.
I was heartbroken, miserable, drifting through my days in a fog. One afternoon I missed a step on a staircase.
The tiny life I hadn't even known about yet was gone, just like that.
Curtis rushed to the hospital the moment he heard. He stayed up all night, tending to me with a gentleness I'd never seen before.