Sorry
SARAH
I had no idea what to say to this, what to say, to what he had just told me.
"Cullen, I..."
"No," he says quickly. "You don't have to say anything, please. Don't say anything. I know, I am apologising. I know. I am so deeply sorry and... yes, I do want you to forgive me. I so fucking want you to forgive me, but I know you can't forgive me that easily. I know it doesn't work that way... I know, even if you wanted to, you could just say it, but it won't be coming from that place that I need it to come from. It won't be real. And I want it to be real, Sarah. Okay? I want it to be real."
"Then what do you want, Cullen?"
"I just want a chance for you to open your heart to forgive me. That's all I'm asking for...a chance for you to be willing to forgive me. Please. I will do anything. Please just give me a chance to prove to you that I'm not the man you married. Not that. I am brand new now. And I want you to forgive me. I want to prove to you that I can be that man. I want to prove to you."
"Wait, Cullen, I... our marriage is over. That's done."
"No, it's not," Cullen says quickly. "We haven't signed the annulment yet. Our marriage is not over. It's not over yet. I know your dad and mine created this contract of theirs where they didn't want us to be together, but we didn’t sign the annulment. You didn’t, right?" he asks.
"I haven’t signed anything. Not that I can remember ..."
"Yes!" Cullen said "You see...we are still married. Please, you can do this," he says.
"A chance," he says. "All I'm asking for is a chance to prove myself. Please."
"No," I say, shaking my head.
"Please don't do this," he says, holding both of my hands in his.
"Maybe I will learn to forgive you one day. I don't even blame you, really. Because both of us were forced into that marriage. We both didn't want that marriage."
"Yes, I know," Cullen says. "But at least you tried. You wanted to see if it could work. You were ready for it. And you tried... But I was an asshole. That's what I was. I was bad to you. I was really bad. And I regret every single thing about it."
"Where is this even all coming from? Please stand up," I say.
As I walk away from him, luckily for him he immediately lets me go. I go and sit in the chair in my room. Cullen stands and comes to stand in front of me, but leaves a distance between the two of us.
"This is coming from the fact that I got to see you. I got to see the real you at the hospital. Spending time with you. Watching you and your dad. The way you would look at me. The way that we would take those few minutes when your dad was out. And the two of us would talk. And I realised that had we been given that chance—for you and me to get to know each other, then I would have fallen for you. I could have gotten that marriage that I have always wanted."
I swallow.
"You didn't want to. It's not that you weren't given a chance to see where our marriage could go. You just didn't want to give our marriage a chance, so it died."
"No. Don't say that."
"It's the truth!" I shout.
"I know you're angry, and you have every right to be. And I'm not saying that 'you saying I didn't give us a chance is a lie.' The lie... the lie you said was that our marriage has died. It hasn't. I know you felt it too—before the memories came back. I know that you liked me and you enjoyed those times with me. I know that you felt something. And that's the only thing I'm asking for, for us to explore that."
I shake my head. "That will never work. My dad wants us to break up. He wants me to sign the annulment. He wants me back home."
"I know what your dad wants. But what about you?" he asks, his voice softer, but stronger at the same time. "What do you want? Do you really want to stay here and die a spinster? Because that's what's gonna happen. Your dad, as far as my father told me, doesn't want you to ever leave his side again. And if that's gonna happen, it means you're gonna die all alone. Is that what you want? Without ever experiencing love?"
He pauses. Then his voice drops a little as he goes on.
"Because you know what I realised the minute my father told me about our annulment?" he says. "I was still caught up in the fact that you were not going to be my wife again. That it was over between the two of us. And then five days later, my father calls me... and tells me that he's arranging another marriage for me. With some Mexican."
I take such a breath. I don’t know why but it actually kind of stings.
The fact that they’re already finding another woman for him to marry?
Like… who's this Mexican bitch?
"Don't look at me like that. I don't want to marry her," he says. "I am not marrying her. The only person I want to marry is you, and I am right about that. I know when I heard about marrying you, I was… fine, I didn't want to marry you. That's the truth. But I..."
He swallows and keeps going.
"The first time I saw you, really saw you, I saw how beautiful you were, and it scared me. Okay? It scared me. I didn't want to go through the whole phase that I had with Bella. You scared me...I have to admit that there was a part of me in my brain that knew that if I gave you a chance, I would fall. That's why I never gave you the time of day or even tried to get to know you, because I knew that if I got even a little bit closer, you would swallow me whole."
He stops, exhales.
"So I was scared. I am weak. That's what I am. And I tried to hurt you to make myself feel better, and I'm just... I'm a bad person. I have learned my lesson. I'm asking you to please...."
"Why are you even asking me for a chance? A chance to do what, Cullen?" I cut in. "You can't undo the things that you have done. Those things are ingrained in me, etched into my brain."
"They are not," Cullen says, almost desperately. "You were able to forgive them, to forget them—for months you forgot. I'm not saying that you should forget them. I'm just saying... I'm not that man anymore. I have changed, and I just need you to give us a chance. Please....I'm sorry."
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