Chapter thirteen
Atlas
November
It's funny how your mind can just lie to you.
Or maybe it's you lying to your mind, rationalizing your own behavior because it feels safer, more comfortable, than facing the truth head-on.
A thousand tiny justifications stacked on top of one another, forming a story you can live with.
Because the truth fucking hurts.
The truth that your wife can exist in one moment, so perfect and wonderful and beautiful. You're struck dumb that this amazing woman chose your dumbass out of all the men in the world; she chose you.
She loves you.
She gives you two amazing kids, raises them, makes them into these silly and incredible little people, and is such a loving, wonderful mother.
She's gorgeous, so goddamn sexy, especially after having those kids, that it sets your blood on fire. You desire her near constantly, so much so that you have to jump her in her morning shower because you feel like you'll die if you don't get a taste of her.
And you stay awake while she gets much-needed sleep, just looking at her and knowing that you would rip apart anyone or anything that ever tries to take her from you.
Then she has a brain aneurysm and doesn't wake up.
Or she dies in a house fire.
Or she slips on ice, hits her head hard enough to pass away.
Or she is murdered.
Or she gets sick with cancer and withers away.
Or she...
One minute, this perfect, wonderful woman is yours, and the next moment she's gone.
There's nothing you can do to stop it—no amount of love, no amount of vigilance, no amount of strength or money or sacrifice can save her if the universe wants to take her from you.
That's the truth I've been trying to swallow for the past year, ever since my sister-in-law died.
And now I face the even more horrifying truth that my wife wants to divorce me because I've been a shit dad and a shit husband for the past year.
It's even worse because it's not that she's stopped loving me, it's because I created a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm terrified to lose her, and I'm losing her anyway.
I stare at my wife, sitting in the dim light of our living room, looking like a goddamn vision of beautiful fury, and I want to fall to my knees and beg and plead.
Isn't it funny?
I've spent the last year purposefully removing myself from my family and now I want to sink myself under her skin, hold on, and not let go.
But how can I tell her the truth of why I've been so absent, when naming it would make it real?
"Sit, Atlas," Wendy snaps again, pointing to the chair across from her like I'm a disobedient dog. Her voice cuts through the air, sharp and commanding. "We need to talk."
I don't move toward the chair, I shake the papers clutched in my hand. I'm an animal backed into a corner, so my voice comes out as a desperate, fearful snarl.
"Wendy, what is this?"
She looks at me and... laughs.
Not her humor-filled belly laugh that I adore, not even that sexy chuckle that unmakes me when I rasp that she just killed me after riding me during sex.
This sounds empty, no warmth, no humor—nothing.
"You've said more words to me just now than you've said to me in months."
That lands like a kick to my stomach, because I do remember the last words I spoke to her, vicious and mean. Right after she was just trying to comfort me, after she pulled me out of my night terror, not realizing she was the star of it.
With shaky legs, I walk over to the chair and sit down. My heart tightens when I see her left hand. She's not wearing her wedding ring.
How long has she not been wearing it? I glance down at my own left hand, ringless because of my job. Instead our wedding date is there in Roman numerals.
The grease and oil on them have muddied the numbers, making them indecipherable.
"You blindsided me," I rasp, the words scraping their way out of my throat. "You didn't even talk to me about this before you filed. Why?"
She tilts her head.
"And how does it feel?" she whispers.
"What?"
"How. Does. It. Feel?" She bites out, enunciating each word. "To be left in the dark. To be shut out. To have a decision made for you. How does it feel, Atlas?"
My fingers curl and crush the papers in my hands even more, smearing even more oil on the legal papers. I barely resisted the urge to tear them apart on the ride home, knowing it wouldn’t make them any less real.
"And talk to you... when? Do I need to track you down on the weekends with Trace at whatever house you're working at? Do I need to corner you in the office at the garage? Even if I did track you down, you wouldn't listen. You haven't listened to me for a whole fucking year!"
"Wendy—" I start, moving to rise from my seat and drop to my knees in front of her.
"Ah!" She holds up a finger, stopping me before I can move. "I'm not done, Atlas. You will have your turn when I'm done. I need you to listen to me."
Closing my mouth, I nod. I owe her this much.
"I don't think you truly grasp how much you have neglected this year. Not only me, but your sons as well. Your sons, Atlas!" she shouts those words, hammering them into my skull. The volume and fierce tone paralyzes me.
"They don't ask about their father anymore, and when they do, Liam's... Liam sounds so tired and angry. Noah learned quickly not to bother with you anymore, but Liam still mentions you, and it's not good. It's like you're a stranger to them, Atlas."
Her words make me flinch as I think of my sons. My sons. Our boys. Both so goddamn perfect, and the year that I've missed because of that fucking truth.
To hear that I've failed not only Wendy, but them, scalds somewhere deep in my chest.
I had rationalized it in my head, figuring that they would be fine; they had their mother, she was the one who ran the ship anyway.
My absence didn’t matter. I'd make money, the bank account would remain filled. They would have everything they needed.
And I would be able to stop seeing their mother dead in my arms at night.
"You can check out on me, that's fine," Wendy says, her full lips trembling. "But you checked out as a father. And that's on both of us. I allowed this to go on for too long. But you—you abandoned me, and you abandoned them."
She pauses, taking a couple of breaths, but I can't seem to catch mine. She's laying out my failures in front of me, stripping me raw and lashing me over and over again with just how much I've fucked it all up.
"So what I need to know is—why?" she says, her shoulders dropping, her voice breaking. "Why?"
"Wendy, baby—" I say, watching her face crumble at the petname. I can't help it. She's my baby. She's always been, always will be. That's our thing; we're Wendy and Atlas. That's the truth of it. "I... I don't..."
Even now, with separation papers in my hand, with my wife in front of me begging me to speak to her, I still can't say it out loud.
I'm a goddamn pathetic piece of shit.
I think back to that night a month ago, the sound of her sobbing next to me while I pretended to be asleep. Crying because I snarled at her when she was trying to help me.
It took everything in me not to spin around, crush her to me, kiss her all over her face, and beg for forgiveness.
I wanted to tell her, "I love you, I love you, I love you..." and hold her tightly, rocking her back and forth and never letting go.
But that's what caused it in the first place.
She had gone to sleep that night, and when I knew she was under, deeply asleep, I couldn't take it anymore.
Slowly, I wrapped my arm around her, just like how we always used to sleep. I pressed myself right up against her back, locked my arm around her waist, buried my face in her sweet-smelling hair.
Everything inside of me eased into peace.
I knew I would pay for it if I wasn't careful, but at that moment, I didn't care. It had been too long without holding my girl in my arms. I had planned to give myself an hour—just an hour—of holding her.
But I had fallen asleep.
And it happened again.
◆◆◆
I open my eyes slowly and see that I'm in our bedroom.
The early morning light gently peeks through the windows. It catches my beautiful wife's hair, turning the red locks to fire. She's facing away from me, covers pulled down to her waist, showing me her gorgeous naked back.
My wife isn't short, she's long-limbed and lithe and so damn stunning it always knocks the breath from my lungs whenever I see her, even after all these years.
Her naked back catches my attention, and I try to remember how we got here, my mind sluggish and foggy from sleep.
Did we have sex last night? Must have, not exactly uncommon since we have a healthy sex life, but we stopped sleeping naked when we had the boys... unless they're at a sleepover.
Maybe they're with their grandparents and we can have a slow morning. My mouth already waters with the thought of eating Wendy, my favorite meal.
Grinning at that idea, I reach for my wife and pull her to me. "Good morning, baby..."
I freeze when I touch her skin.
She's cold.
She's so cold and hard.
"Wendy?"
She looks like she's asleep, eyes closed, face completely slack in peace... but she's so goddamn cold.
Why is she so cold? Does she need more blankets? I'll cuddle her close, I'll use my body heat to warm her up. She always runs a little cold, which's why I usually wake up to find her plastered to me.
But she's never like this. Why is she this cold? I pull her flush toward me, but her body is stiff; there's no flexing of her arms or legs.
She's stiff. Why is she so stiff?
"Wendy..." I choke out, pulling her toward me and rubbing her arms, her torso, her face. "Baby, no..."
There's only one reason why someone would be that stiff. My brain rejects it even as my soul knows.
"No. No. Please don't go..." I beg her, my hands cupping her cold face, shaking her and willing her to open up those beautiful green eyes, to look at me, to smile at me, to see me, to forgive me for everything I didn't do right.
But she doesn't, no matter how hard I shake her, no matter how much I beg and plead.
She's dead.