40. Avery #2
“No. I did that.” Declan says it flat, and there is nowhere in the sentence for Sasha to stand.
“She didn’t make you get into bed with her.”
“I chose it.” He looks at me rather than the pond, making himself watch what the admission does.
“She didn’t make you come home and touch me.”
Declan’s face tightens, and he answers without trying to soften it. “I chose that too.”
I stop before asking about his intent gives him somewhere to hide. He came home from Sasha and let me touch him without the truth. Whatever tenderness I remember from those nights belongs beside that fact now, and he does not get to separate them for me.
“Did you enjoy lying to me?” I ask. “Not the sex. Not being admired. Did you enjoy knowing something I didn’t?”
He looks past me toward the pond, where the old man has abandoned the sign and the geese are following him down the path. I wait until Declan brings his attention back. He no longer gets to look away and let me fill the gap with a kinder answer.
“Yes.” He hates the admission enough that I believe it.
“I hated when you asked where I had been. I hated making up details and wondering whether you caught the wrong one. But I enjoyed getting away with it. I enjoyed walking into our house and knowing you believed me. Every time you believed a lie, I felt clever enough to keep both lives. If I tell you I hated the deception, I make myself sound trapped by something I maintained on purpose.”
I remember the night he came home late with rain on his shoulders and kissed me against the refrigerator while I complained that dinner had gone cold. He smiled when I asked whether the route ran long. I thought the smile meant he missed me. Maybe it did. He also knew the lie had worked.
“I held your face in our kitchen and told you I was pregnant,” I say, pressing both hands beneath my stomach when the baby shifts. “For the time before I opened that door, I thought every terrible month had led to the best morning of my life. Were you going to stop after I told you?”
Declan’s eyes close for a moment, then open. “I want to say yes.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” I shift on the bench until the baby’s weight stops pressing on one hip, refusing to let physical discomfort hurry an answer I have waited months to hear.
“No.” His shoulders lower as if the truth has weight, and he doesn’t ask me to carry it for him.
“I probably would have sworn it ended that day. I would have meant it while I held you. Then the club would need another transfer checked, Sasha would call, and I would tell myself I had to meet her once more to close it and keep the routes covered. If she praised me or touched me, I might have chosen her again and come home with another reason it was the last time.”
The baby moves beneath my hands, alive inside the future Declan knew we were trying to create while he risked my body for the life he hid. “So what would have stopped you?”
“Getting caught. Sasha threatening you. A disease. A pregnancy. Somebody dying. Something bad enough that I could no longer pretend I controlled it.” The answer stops where the facts stop, with no promise attached about who he wishes he had been.
“I had chances to stop every day. I didn’t use them.
If you hadn’t opened that door, I don’t know how long I would have continued, and telling you anything kinder would be another lie. ”
My anger has nowhere new to go. It has lived in court filings, STI tests, burned cabinets, separate accounts, a gun safe, a nursery Declan saw only after I invited him, and the space beside me at appointments where his body did not belong until I pointed to a chair.
Yet this answer reaches the part of me that kept searching for one simple answer that would make the man I married less capable of what he did.
“Did you love me?” I ask, though he has answered before and I hate myself for needing it again. “During those six months. Not before. Not after you were caught. While you were inside her and coming home to me, did you love me?”
“Yes.” Declan says it carefully like something he has to hand over.
“I loved you every day, and I treated that love like permission to keep hurting you. I believed loving you meant I could not truly lose you. I thought the marriage would wait while I took whatever I wanted, then I would come home and be the husband who loved you. I used love as ownership instead of an obligation to protect your choices.”
“Then your love was worthless to me.” My voice stays low, and Declan takes it where he sits.
“It didn’t stop you. It didn’t make you tell the truth.
It didn’t keep my body safe or protect one fucking memory in our house.
I would almost rather you had stopped loving me.
Then I could believe love mattered and ours simply ended. ”
“I know.” Declan does not reach across the table or ask me to believe that knowing now repairs anything.
“No, you know I am angry. I need you to understand what I’m saying.
” I slide my bag closer. I do not plan to leave yet, but I need to feel how easily I could leave.
“If there is ever anything between us again, you don’t get to build it on ‘at least I loved you.’ I will never accept that sentence as proof that you were mine underneath the affair.
You were not mine when you were lying to me, and I was not yours to keep while you did it. ”
Declan looks down at his bare ring finger. “Then I won’t ask you to trust what I feel. I’ll keep showing you what I choose.”
“That is the only reason I believe you now.” The admission costs enough that I have to look toward the path, where one of the mothers bends to fix a blanket while her friend keeps both strollers from rolling.
Ordinary care. No speeches. Somebody notices what needs doing and does it.
“You told me answers that made you harder to forgive when you could have given me prettier ones.”
“The prettier answers kept me married for six months longer than I deserved.”
The anger stays, and so does the relief I resent. Nothing missing in me drove him toward her. He had every reason to stay home. He betrayed me because he convinced himself my love would excuse his selfishness and guarantee I would still be there when he finished.
I can believe his explanation without forgiving the choices it explains. I can stop repeating the questions whenever I’m afraid to decide what access he earns next.
“My next appointment is Friday at nine thirty,” I say. “You may attend. The invitation covers that appointment only, under the same rules as the last one.”
Declan’s eyes lift to mine, wet but steady. “I’ll be there.”
His phone vibrates on the table before either of us can turn the invitation into a moment it has not earned. Cruz’s name fills the screen. Declan leaves the phone face-up on the table until I nod at it.
“Answer. I’m not asking the club to stop existing while we talk.”
Declan takes the call on the bench where he is sitting.
“What happened?” He listens, his gaze moving toward me once before returning to the table.
“Friday morning where? What do you mean, my seat?” Another pause stretches while his fingers close around the phone.
“Tonight, then. I’ll come to the table and hear the full offer. ”
He ends the call, opens the message Cruz sent, and turns the screen toward me instead of hiding the conflict until he knows which choice looks better. Interstate sit-down. Friday. Nine. A chance to resume Enforcer duties if Declan helps secure the eastern route.
My appointment reminder rests above Cruz’s message on the same screen.
“Go hear the offer,” I tell him, standing with one hand on the table when the baby’s weight pulls at my back.
“Then tell me the truth about what it costs. I will not make this easy by pretending the choice means nothing, and I will not sit here scoring you against an answer I refuse to say out loud.”
Declan rises but leaves the table between us. “I’ll bring you every fact before Friday.”
“Good.” I pick up my bag and walk toward my car. Behind me, he remains beneath the shelter as promised, with the appointment and the Enforcer seat waiting at the same hour and no lie left to protect him from choosing.