Chapter 12 Midst of Storm #2
He takes the hit without defending himself. "I thought if I could solve everything first, I could come home and tell you it was handled."
"And when it wasn't?"
His mouth tightens. "I stayed away longer."
The simplicity of it hurts. I look down at the blanket wrapped around my legs. "So I was good enough to come home to once you had a success to report."
"Sera..."
"But not good enough to be there while you were failing."
His head drops and the fire pops behind us.
For a few seconds, neither of us says anything.
Then he says, "You were the person I least wanted to disappoint."
I let out a laugh that doesn't feel like one.
"Congratulations. That worked beautifully."
He closes his eyes, and for one stupid second the old instinct rises in me. I know that look. I know exactly when something has reached him, and there was a time I would have softened immediately, reached for his hand, found some way to make the truth easier to carry.
I curl my fingers into the blanket instead.
That was part of the problem too.
"You said Marisol was easier." His eyes open. I don't repeat the rest of that night. I don't need to. We both know where the sentence came from now. "Why?"
Rafael's gaze drops to his hands.
"Because with her, the conversation stayed where I put it."
I wait.
"If a buyer said no, we talked about another buyer. If the numbers were bad, we talked about what could be changed. There was always another task waiting, so I never had to stop long enough to look at what any of it was doing to me."
Something in the way he says it makes the anger inside me shift.
Not disappear.
Just settle somewhere heavier.
"And with me?"
He takes a breath before answering.
"With you, I couldn't hide inside the work."
The rain beats harder against the glass.
Rafael rubs his thumb along the side of his hand, staring at the movement as if the words might be easier if he doesn't look at me.
"You would've known I wasn't sleeping. You would've heard it in my voice if I said I was fine. You would've asked why I kept coming home after midnight and why I was pretending none of it scared me."
"I did ask."
"I know."
"And you still lied."
His jaw tightens. "Yes."
That answer lands differently than the others.
There is no defense in it. No attempt to soften what he did.
I look at him and remember a boy climbing the wall at my parents' estate because he'd fought with his father and couldn't wait until morning to tell me.
I remember Rafael at seventeen, angry and humiliated, sitting on the ground beneath my window while I whispered down to him so my parents wouldn't wake.
He used to come to me with the things that frightened him before either of us had words for what we were to each other.
Now I had to drag a buyer's name out of him.
"I used to be the person you came to first."
His face tightens. "I know."
"You didn't care whether you looked impressive then."
"No."
"So what changed?"
Rafael is quiet for so long that I hear another gust of wind push rain against the side of the cabin. "When we were younger, I never thought I had to prove anything to keep you."
My throat tightens. He looks at me then.
"After we married, I wanted to give you a life that made you feel like choosing me had been the right decision. Then the estate started going wrong, and every problem felt like proof that maybe I wasn't the man I thought I was supposed to be."
I stare at him. "I already chose you."
"I know."
This time, the words sound almost painful.
"I forgot that choosing me once wasn't the same as asking me to perform for you forever." He leans back slightly, exhausted by the admission. "I kept trying to become someone you could rely on, and I managed to become someone you couldn't reach."
His hand moves along the bench between us. Not toward me exactly.
Just closer. I look at it.
The old version of me would have taken it without thinking.
I don't.
"I wasn't asking you to impress me. I was asking you to come home." His fingers curl slightly against the wood. "To tell me when something scared you instead of letting me find out from someone else. To let me stand beside you before everything was fixed."
Rafael finally looks at me. His eyes are wet. "I understand that now."
There is enough weight in those two words now that I don't need him to say them again. I turn toward the fire because my own eyes are burning.
For a while, neither of us speaks.
The storm keeps battering the cabin, but inside it is warm enough that I can feel the blanket loosening around my shoulders.
"You made knowing you feel like the problem," I say.
The sentence comes out quieter than everything before it. Rafael goes still.
Deep down, I want to believe him. I want to so badly it hurts. But I've been here before, hoping things would change, only to end up alone at a dinner table with food going cold.
"The night of our anniversary." I force myself to say it, to name the thing that's been sitting between us since I left. "I cooked for hours. I wore that dress you like. I lit candles and set the table and waited. And you never came."
"I remember." He doesn't turn away as he did when I first tried to ask about his late nights. "I failed you. I'm not going to make excuses for that."
"I sent you one message." I can still remember checking the screen beside my plate. "Dinner is ready. Are you coming home? I read it back before I sent it to make sure I didn't sound angry. Can you imagine that? It was our anniversary, and I was trying not to inconvenience you."
"You shouldn't have had to ask." He looks at the floor between his feet. "I knew when dinner was. I let you keep waiting."
"When your mother came, I was glad someone would eat with me." I blink hard, trying to hold his face in focus. "Then I felt embarrassed. Not because she did anything wrong. Because she could see exactly how long I'd been waiting."
Rafael closes his eyes. "She told me she sat with you. She wouldn't let me pretend that night was only about what happened at the office."
"She helped me clear it away." I wipe my cheek with the edge of the blanket. "I kept thinking I'd made that meal because I knew what you liked. I couldn't work out when knowing you had stopped helping me."
"Sera." He opens his eyes, and they're bright with something that might be tears. "I am so sorry. I know that doesn't fix anything. I know words aren't enough. But I need you to know that I see it now. What I did to you. How I made you feel."
"Do you?" I don't mean for it to sound as bitter as it does. "Because I've heard apologies before. I've heard promises. And then I end up right back where I started, waiting for someone who's already forgotten I exist."
"I told myself you understood." He starts to shift closer, then stays where he is. "That I'd make it up to you when things settled down. I didn't ask how much longer you could bear that."
"I did wait." My voice cracks. "I waited for months. And then you stayed with me in the workshop that Saturday, and I thought we were getting somewhere. I let myself enjoy it."
"I enjoyed it too." His eyes move to my discarded bag of blossoms. "I wanted to be there with you. Then I acted as though one afternoon could make up for all the others."
"You're only saying this because I left." I hate needing an answer, but I do. "If I'd stayed, would anything have changed? Or would you still be at that office right now, with Marisol, forgetting I exist?"
"I don't know." The honesty in his voice stops me. "I want to say yes, I would have realized. I would have seen what I was doing. But the truth is, I might not have. It took losing you to make me understand what I had."
I turn back toward the fire. My anger hasn't gone anywhere, but I no longer have to push past his excuses to make him hear it. I don't know what to do with the quiet that leaves.
"I missed you." The words slip out before I can stop them. "Even when I was furious with you, even when I couldn't stand to be in the same room, I missed you. I missed who we used to be."
"I missed talking to you." He lays his hand open beside mine. "I kept putting it off until I had better news. As though you were only there to hear the good parts."
I put my hand in his. His fingers close around mine, warm now, familiar in a way I haven't let myself think about. How many times have we held hands like this? How can I miss something this ordinary so much?
"I don't know if I can trust you again." I watch his fingers resting between mine, knowing I could pull free and unwilling to do it. "I want to. But every time I think about letting you back in, I remember all the times you let me down."
"Then let me earn it." He squeezes my hand gently. "I'm not asking for forgiveness. I'm not asking you to forget what happened. I'm just asking for the chance to show you I can be different."
"I can't keep teaching you how to notice me." I look down at our hands, at the way his thumb has stopped moving while he listens. "I don't want to make a list of things you can do to get me back. Then I'd have to wonder whether you only did them because I told you."
"You shouldn't have to." He loosens his hold enough that I could move away. "I can listen when you ask for something without making you responsible for everything I don't think to do."
I sit with that for a moment. He hasn't asked whether finding me counts in his favor. He hasn't told me how frightened he was to make me feel sorry for him. I am tired, and my eyes sting, and I still want to rest my head on his shoulder.
Why does wanting him have to feel like an argument I am losing?
It isn't. I can want him and still remember why I left.
"Rafael." I say his name like I'm testing it, seeing how it feels in my mouth after everything that's happened.
"Yes?" He's watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.
I don't have words for what I want. I'm not even sure I know what I want. But I'm tired of being angry, tired of being careful, tired of holding myself at a distance from the person I used to trust more than anyone.