23. CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 23
Rose
H e was fluffing the pillows in the Coral Reef room when I finished giving Malou a bath and convinced her to eat half a biscuit with jam and butter. After settling her in her armchair with a cup of mint tea, watching the Atlantic, I went looking for Gray.
He was fluffing the pillows! I kid you not.
He looked up at me and waved a hand around the room. He'd made the bed, he'd freaking vacuumed, and there were dirty towels on the floor.
"Did I do an okay job?" he asked like a kid wanting to know if he'd been good.
Who was this man?
"Thank you for helping, Gray." I meant it.
When I told Malou what Gray was doing, she laughed. I loved that the woman could still give out one of her big belly laughs. It was unfair of God to take her away when there was so much to live for.
"You're welcome. I already finished Mariner's Rest. You wanna check it?"
I shook my head. I wanted to walk up to him and give him a big hug. I wanted to hold him. I wanted to tell him that I was done being in a snit, and we should just go home.
I also was afraid to be that weak because our marriage was not, as my therapist said, meeting my needs.
"You have anything else for me to do? I'm at your service."
He looked too good to be cleaning bathrooms, I thought. Gray was a handsome man. He was tall, well-built, and at forty-two, there was some white mixed in with the blonde, and it looked real nice on him. I thought he had a lot of Paul Newman going for him with his piercing blue eyes and that impressive jawline. Jude looked like Gray with blonde hair and blue eyes, while Willow was a brunette with brown eyes, like me. Unlike my hair, which came below my shoulders, Willow had cut it to her chin and styled it in a bob. She looked so chic and beautiful. Our children were better looking than both of us. But maybe that was how most parents felt about their kids.
"Babe?" Gray prompted as he picked up the soiled towels. "Anything else you need done?"
I was so confused with this new Gray.
"I have to make lunch," I blurted out. "I…lunch."
"Okay. I'll drop these off " —he pointed to the towels— "and come and help you. I can chop, wash…whatever you need."
He took the towels to the utility room, and I closed the bedroom door and stood, unmoving, staring after him.
When he came back, he looked quizzically at me.
"What are you up to?" I asked suspiciously. "Why are you here? Why are you doing this?"
He walked close to me and brushed some hair off my face. "I'm here to win the love of my life back."
Tears, unbidden, filled my eyes. This was not fair. He couldn't say things like this now when I had found the courage to leave him.
A tear fell, and he wiped it, his eyes moist with emotion as well. "I'm here to show my wife how much she means to me and convince her to take me back."
I shook my head as more tears streamed down my face.
He kept wiping them. "I'm here to tell my wife that I was a fool. That I was buildin' an empire and forgot to take care of my queen."
He leaned down and brushed his lips against my forehead. "I'm here to make you, Rose, fall in love with me again and give me a chance to make right all the wrongs."
I stood frozen.
I couldn't imagine the man who was always impatient with me, always in a hurry, was now standing here, telling me all the things that I hadn't dared dream he would ever say.
I gave myself a mental head slap and snapped out of the fantasy Gray was weaving.
The love of his life? I didn't think so.
"I don't feel loved by you," I spat at him with more venom than I expected. Blackness coiled around my heart, which he'd broken with his callousness and carelessness. "I…can't do this."
I ran from him. Scurried down the stairs to the kitchen—my sanctuary. Just like it had been in our home in Atlanta.
He followed me, and if I expected him to continue our conversation, I was either disappointed or relieved; I wasn't sure which. Because he didn't.
"What are we doing for lunch?" he asked instead, casually.
"I was going to make sandwiches. The other guests don't have lunch here," I told him. "But now…I just need to prep for dinner first."
"What's for dinner?" He leaned against a kitchen counter, his hands on the counter, his posture relaxed, like we hadn't had the emotional conversation we'd just had.
"I'm going to serve a Szechuan-style salmon with green beans on a bed of rice. Malou's stomach handles rice best so I'm including it in more of my menus." What was I doing talking about mundane nonsense like food? We needed to sort this out. He'd said he didn't want me to be alone for Christmas. That was two days away. But then he'd also said he was here for six months. Six months ? What the hell did that mean?
"Sounds delicious."
"Dev and Geeta don't eat beef; and I found this recipe I wanted to try. I'm not going to make it too spicy or anything." Gray didn't like food that was too spicy, and when I'd experimented with some Indian recipes, he'd complained a lot .
"I'll eat anything you make, Rose. I love your food."
Oh please!
"Since when?" My voice rose a few octaves. "You complained about everything. Why is this not cooked medium rare? Why is this so salty? Why does this have too much butter? Damn it, Gray, now that I'm gone, you can't show up and say such shit."
He nodded. "I think you're an amazing cook. I'm sorry I nitpicked—I really do love your cooking, Rose. I promise. I bragged about it to everyone all the time."
"Oh, I'm sure you did." I couldn't stop the pain from tumbling out. "She's such a great cook, thank God for that, 'cause the rest is a work in progress. Your mama said that to me, and you just sat there and nodded like she made sense."
He came close to me then, and I steeled myself for whatever he was going to throw my way. He hated it when I complained about his mother and never let me get away with it—cutting me down so much that I eventually stopped saying anything and just found ways to navigate around his Mama.
He put his hands on my shoulders. "I should've defended you. I should never have let my parents treat you the way they did. I know that. The ugly truth is that I knew it then as well. But it was easier for me to keep the peace, so I did, knowing that you'd handle them."
I put my hands on his chest and pushed him away. He took two steps back. "Handle them? They were cruel to me. And you let them say things that made me feel small. Then, when they died, it's like my kids and you took over for them."
My chest heaved with rage.
"I'm not educated enough. I'm not sophisticated enough. I'm just fucking not enough . So, I left you. Go find someone who is enough." I was screaming now. "Maybe that assistant of yours that everyone thinks you're fuckin'. I know she wants you."
"No, Rose, I—"
"You're kiddin' me, right? She never let me talk to you. She never delivered my messages to you. Not that she should—because a decent husband would have read my texts and responded to me. But the thing is, Gray, you did read them; you just didn't reply until it had something to do with you ."
I waited for him to erupt. We'd have a fight in a situation like this when we were younger before I realized no one won a screaming contest and let it go. God, I let so many things go that I didn't even know who the fuck I'd become.
"I know." He spoke gently, and that irritated me even more.
"Then why did you do it?" My hands were rolled up in fists at my side, my body tight as a drum.
"Because I was takin' you for granted," he said, regret evident in his demeanor. "Because I was stupid and foolish. I thought we had a happy marriage because I was happy, so fucking happy being married to you. I love you, and I knew you loved me. We had good sex."
"But then we stopped having sex, Gray, because you started sleeping in the guestroom," I pointed out. "Any other wife would have thought you were fuckin' someone else."
"Did you?"
I wanted to lie and add to his sins, but I couldn't. I shook my head.
"Because you know me."
I nodded.
"I love you, Rose. No one else has ever…I've never…why the fuck would I? I had you at home, warm and willing, full of love. I was your darling Gray, and that filled me with such joy every day."
"Then why?" All the fight left me, and I was just about ready to collapse with the pressure of holding it all together. "Then why, Gray?" I asked pitifully.
He licked his lips. "We had sex that time when…I was home late; I had dinner at Marcel's. I wanted you so much. I took you, and you didn't come. I was in a rush, and I was embarrassed."
His face had gone ruddy, and he looked uncertain, a lot like Jude had when he'd apologized to me in this same kitchen.
"Why didn't you say something?"
"I felt like it wasn't the first time you didn't come. I got scared that I didn't please you."
"Scared? You?" Gray Rutherford was never afraid, never vulnerable.
He gave me a sheepish smile. "I didn't have the balls to talk to you; ask you if—"
"I never faked it with you." I wanted him to know that. "If it didn't happen, I never pretended. We were together twenty years, Gray, and it wasn't always about release. It was about intimacy. It was about—"
"Just us together," he finished for me.
"Yes, and you took it away, and that was the last thing holding us together."
"No." He took steps toward me. "No. I love you. You love me. That holds us together. Even if I could never fuck you again, though I'm too young to die celibate, I'd still love you."
I almost smiled at the celibate remark. Gray had a good sense of humor. Like I told Malou, it wasn't like all our twenty years together were bad—no, we had fun as a couple and a family. It was the last years when it all started to hit harder because the kids were gone, and we just didn't spend any time together. He may think he loved me, but if he did, I'd feel it, and I didn't.
"I don't feel loved by you," I repeated.
"And that's my fault. I intend to do better."
I shook my head. "You said you were going to sign the papers? What happened?"
"I don't want a divorce, Rose. I mean it. I'm here. I'm here with you."
I sneered. "You're here because the kids are here. You knew Willow was coming, so you decided to join them." I didn't know how to stop saying the things that made him wince. I didn't even realize I had so much anger inside of me, and it was all coming out.
"I want to spend time with you . They leave on the twenty-seventh, but I'm here for months after. I'm not going anywhere, Rose, not without you."
He seemed so determined that hope, which I'd crushed under a big rock, started to wiggle around. I sat down on that big rock to curb that same hope because it was a dangerous emotion, not good for my well-being.
"I don't believe you," I finally confessed.
I didn't trust my husband. That was the crux of it. He hadn't stood up for me against his parents. He'd let our kids talk down to me. He talked down to me.
"I know I've lost your trust. I'll earn it back."
He was so sincere that it hurt.
"I need to prep for dinner." I turned my back on him, and when he nagged me to give him something to do, I made him string a shit ton of green beans. He did as I asked without complaining.