7. Chapter Seven #2
Gideon leaned back a fraction, though the movement looked forced. “Canal Works isn’t the only thing I’m offering. We can leave the city for a while. Go anywhere you want. No staff, no events, no Hale obligations.”
“A vacation.”
“Time alone.”
“And when we come back?”
“I’ll protect our evenings. Dinner every night if that’s what you need. Weekends. I can change my schedule.”
“You offered me that on the phone.”
“Because I mean it.”
“You mean it because you’re scared.”
His eyes met hers. “Of course I’m scared. My wife left me.”
The rawness in his voice pulled at her. For one dangerous second, it almost turned his fear into proof that she’d been wrong about everything else. He loved her. He was exhausted. He was suffering. The old measures lined up, familiar and easy.
But his pain wasn’t repair. His fear didn’t give her back the years she’d spent becoming easier to neglect.
“What do you want from me today?” she asked.
“Tell me what I have to do to bring you home.”
The answer hurt more than she expected.
“You still want me to give you a list of things you should do,” she said.
“I want to understand what you need.”
“I’ve told you what I needed for years. Dinner. A phone call. One evening. An hour at the ball. Read my proposal. Listen when I say I’m lonely. You want me to gather every lesson you ignored and turn it into a plan you can complete.”
“I can’t change anything if you won’t tell me what change looks like.”
“Then pay attention.” Her voice cracked. “Think about me when I’m not in front of you asking to be thought about. Make one choice without forcing me to explain how. I can’t manage your redemption, Gideon. I spent six years managing your absence.”
He looked away. The silence stretched. This time she didn’t rescue him from it.
“I watched your speech,” he said at last.
Warmth opened in her chest before she could lock it down.
“When?”
“After the flowers came back. I found the recording.”
She pictured him watching her beneath the stained-glass dome, his empty chair bright in the camera’s view. She hated how badly she’d wanted him to hear those words. She hated that part of her was glad he finally had.
“You looked at my empty chair,” he said quietly.
Ophelia’s eyes burned. “I thought you might come in late.”
“You told everyone I supported you.”
“Someone had to protect your name.”
“You shouldn’t have had to.”
“No.”
“You said a home should be a place where someone is safe, wanted, and remembered.”
His voice caught on the final word. Ophelia looked at him despite herself. The scar through his left eyebrow made the strain in his face seem sharper. He looked less like the man who could control a room and more like the man she’d once trusted with every soft part of herself.
“I remember what I said,” she whispered.
“I didn’t give you that.”
The admission reached her. She didn’t want it to, but it did.
“I also started reading the Canal Works proposal,” he continued. “The full one. Not the summary.”
“Started?”
“I’m still reading it. I don’t want to pretend I’ve done more than I have.”
That honesty made the unwanted warmth worse.
“I read your statement about housing,” he said. “About how a home can shape who someone is allowed to become. I should’ve read it weeks ago. I should’ve asked you about it months ago.”
Ophelia’s grip eased on her coat. “Yes.”
“I’m listening now.”
“For a few days.”
“I know that isn’t enough.”
“Do you? Because you keep asking what you can do to bring me home as if this meeting is the first step in a short process.”
“I don’t know how to sit here and accept that I may have destroyed our marriage.”
“Then learn. I had to sit in it while I was still living with you.”
He flinched, but he didn’t defend himself.
Ophelia rose before the softness in her could become a promise. Gideon stood too, then caught himself behind the low table. He was close enough to reach her if he stepped around it. He didn’t.
“Do you love me?” he asked.
The question stopped her. It would’ve been easier to refuse it. Easier to tell him he had no right to ask. But she had spent too long cutting her feelings into polite shapes. She would not lie now to make the boundary stronger.
“Yes,” she said.
Hope flashed across his face, sudden and painful to see.
“Love isn’t the problem, Gideon. Loving you became the reason I accepted too little. Every time you gave me one good night or remembered one small thing, I used it to excuse the next month. I kept thinking love meant I should understand. I understood myself right out of my own life.”
His hope dimmed, but he held her gaze.
“I’m not telling you I love you so you’ll feel safe,” she said. “It isn’t permission to touch me. It isn’t a promise that I’ll come home. It isn’t an answer about our marriage.”
“What is it?”
“The truth. That’s all.”
He nodded once. His hands stayed at his sides.
“I love you too,” he said. “I know that doesn’t fix anything.”
No defense. No request hidden inside it.
Ophelia put on her coat. Gideon watched, exhausted and silent, while she fastened it.
“Thank you for meeting me,” he said.
“I heard your apology.”
“Even though I ruined it.”
“You explained it away and tried to turn it into a plan.”
“I did.”
She waited for him to ask when he could see her again. He didn’t. She waited for him to cross the small space between them. He didn’t do that either.
“Goodbye, Gideon.”
His throat moved. “Goodbye, Ophelia.”
She walked out alone. He didn’t follow her outside. He didn’t touch her arm or call her name. The closed door between them hurt, but for the first time since she’d left, it didn’t feel like something he’d forced her to accept.