7. Luciana Creed #3
Dr. Reynolds nodded. “What kind of secret?”
The muscles in Maddox’s jaw tightened. Immediately, I knew he hated talking about this. Hell, I hated hearing it, but neither one of us had a choice.
“I found out I got a daughter.”
The therapist’s eyebrows lifted slightly.
“Recently?”
“Yeah…” A brief pause passed before Maddox added, “She’s nine.”
The room got quiet.
Even Dr. Reynolds looked caught off guard by that, and honestly, I couldn’t blame her. Most people had the same reaction.
Nine years wasn’t a secret.
Nine years was a lifetime.
“And your wife knew?”
Maddox laughed, but there wasn’t anything funny about the sound. It was cold. Painful. The kind of laugh that came from a place that still hadn’t healed.
“That’s why we here,” he said.
The words hit me square in the chest because despite everything, hearing it said out loud still hurt.
Dr. Reynolds turned her attention to me. There was no judgment in her expression. No harshness. Just patience. Space—space to explain.
My fingers twisted together in my lap as I forced myself to speak.
“I found out about the pregnancy years ago.” The admission felt just as ugly now as it had the first time I said it. “I was young. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do.”
Maddox immediately looked away. He didn’t roll his eyes or interrupt. He just looked away, and somehow that felt worse. Anger was something I could fight. Silence was killing me.
Dr. Reynolds slowly nodded. “What were you afraid of?”
The question should’ve been easy, but it wasn’t.
My eyes drifted toward Maddox before falling back to my lap.
“Everything,” I admitted, the word barely above a whisper. “I was afraid he’d leave. Afraid another woman was carrying his child. Afraid everything we’d planned would disappear overnight.”
For the first time since the session started, Maddox looked at me. There was no anger in his expression. No resentment. No bitterness. Just… exhaustion.
That hurt more than if he’d screamed, because a man could come back from anger, but I wasn’t so sure he could come back from this.
The therapist slightly leaned forward. “And now?”
My throat tightened instantly.
Because now… Now I was sitting in a room with my husband trying to save a marriage I wasn’t sure I’d already destroyed.
“Now I’m afraid I lost him anyway.”
The words lingered in the room long after I said them. Nobody rushed to fill the silence—not the therapist, not Maddox, not even me. Once the truth was out there, there wasn’t much else to say.
Dr. Reynolds sat back in her chair and studied us for a moment before shifting her attention toward Maddox.
“What does hearing that make you feel?”
His expression didn’t change. It didn’t soften or harden. If anything, he looked tired—the kind of tired that had nothing to do with sleep.
For a few seconds, I thought he might not answer. Then he finally spoke.
“I believe her.” My heart immediately clenched when he said that. “I believe she was scared.”
The confession caught me completely off guard. After everything that had happened, I wasn’t expecting him to give me that much grace.
Dr. Reynolds nodded and said, “But?”
Maddox leaned back in his chair and rubbed a hand across his beard. “I can understand why she did it and still hate that she did it.”
The truth settled over the room immediately.
Those two things could exist at the same time. Understanding didn’t erase the damage. Love didn’t erase the damage…
…nothing erased the damage.
“You know what’s fucked up?” Maddox asked and the therapist gestured for him to continue. “For years, I thought I knew exactly what my life looked like. I knew who my wife was. I knew my family. I knew what my future looked like…. But turns out I didn’t know shit.”
The words landed hard. Maybe harder than he intended.
Maybe not.
At that point, I honestly couldn’t tell.
Dr. Reynolds remained calm. “What changed?”
Maddox looked over at me and said, “Everything.” The answer was simple, brutal, and painfully true. “I found out my daughter existed.” His jaw tightened. “I found out my wife knew.” The muscle ticked harder. “I found out people I trusted made decisions for me and that shit hurt.”
Silence settled over the room again.
This time, I noticed the therapist writing something down. Part of me wanted to know what she was writing. The other part wanted no parts of it.
None of this sounded good when it was spoken out loud.
Dr. Reynolds looked up from her notebook. “You sound angry.”
Maddox laughed again, the same humorless laugh from earlier.
“I was angry.”
The distinction immediately caught my attention, and apparently, it caught hers too.
“You said was.”
Maddox nodded. “Yeah.”
She waited a moment before asking, “So what are you now?”
The question seemed to hit all of us at once.
Whatever answer came next mattered.
Maybe more than anything he’d said all day.
Maddox stared straight ahead before slowly shaking his head. “I don’t know.”
For the first time since we’d walked into the office, his voice sounded heavier. Realer. Less controlled.
“I don’t even think angry is the right word anymore.”
My chest tightened.
The direction of this conversation was becoming painfully clear.
The therapist stayed quiet, giving him room to think.
Finally, Maddox released a long breath, like the answer physically hurt to say.
“I’m grieving.”
The admission knocked the air from my lungs. Not because it was loud or dramatic, but because it was honest.
Painfully honest.
Maddox swallowed hard before continuing.
“I’m grieving nine years I can’t get back.”
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Then the therapist let his words settle before asking, “What does grieving those nine years look like for you?”
“Pictures of Christmas mornings.”
His voice remained steady, but I could hear the hurt underneath it. The kind of hurt that sat too deep for tears. The kind that changed people for good.
“I got years worth of pictures now.”
The confession felt personal. Raw. Like something he’d been carrying around by himself for far too long.
“I sit there looking at them wondering what she sounded like when she was missing those front teeth. Wondering what she was excited about when she won something. Wondering if she was looking around for me at school events and didn’t even know it.”
The room felt suffocating.
Not from yelling, because there wasn’t any.
Every word came out calm, measured, and honest. Somehow, that hurt worse.
Maddox rubbed a hand across his beard before continuing.
“I ain’t grieving one moment.” His eyes finally found mine. “I’m grieving thousands of them.”
Tears immediately burned my eyes. Hearing him say it here felt different. There was nowhere to run from it. No excuses. No way to convince myself that what I’d done wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
The truth was, it sounded exactly as bad as it was.
The therapist turned toward me. “What are you feeling right now?”
Shame…
Guilt…
Regret…
Self-hatred…
Every damn thing at once…
I swallowed hard and shook my head.
“I don’t know how to fix that.” My voice cracked. “I can’t give him those years back.”
The words felt useless the second they left my mouth, but they were true. No apology could fix it. No amount of therapy could fix it. No amount of crying could fix it.
Nine years was nine years.
The therapist nodded slowly.
“Maybe the goal isn’t fixing it.” Both Maddox and I looked at her. She folded her hands together. “Some things can’t be fixed.”
That truth landed hard as hell, for the both of us.
“So what are we doing here then?” Maddox asked.
The question wasn’t disrespectful. It was just honest. Dr. Reynolds didn’t even seem offended.
“In my experience, people spend so much time trying to undo the past that they never learn how to move forward.” She paused. “You can’t get those years back.”
Maddox looked away and I looked down.
Neither one of us needed convincing.
We already knew that.
“But you do get to decide what happens next.”
That part lingered.
For the first time since we’d sat down, the conversation had shifted from the past to the future, and honestly, that scared me too.
The therapist glanced between us before asking, “What do you want moving forward?”
The question landed differently. Up until that moment, we’d been talking about everything that had already happened—the lies, the hurt, the damage we’d caused each other. Now she wanted us to look ahead.
I turned to look at my husband.
He stared straight ahead, and for the first time all session, I realized neither one of us actually had an answer.
Not yet.
That was probably why we were sitting in that room in the first place.
Nobody spoke for several seconds. The therapist allowed the silence to settle instead of rushing to fill it, and somehow that made the question feel even heavier.
“What do you want moving forward?”
The question sounded simple.
It wasn’t.
Wanting something and believing you could actually have it were two completely different things.
My fingers twisted together in my lap as I stared down at them before finally answering.
“I want my husband back.” My confession came out in a low voice.
For the first time since the session started, I didn’t care how desperate it sounded or how pathetic it made me look.
I was tired. Tired of pretending I wasn’t terrified.
Tired of pretending I wasn’t hurting. Tired of pretending I wasn’t sitting here fighting for the most important relationship of my life.
Slowly, I looked over at Maddox.
His eyes were already on me.
Something flashed across his face, but it disappeared before I could figure out what it was. A second later, he looked away.
The therapist gave him a moment before asking, “What about you, Mr. Creed?”
Maddox leaned back in his chair. His gaze drifted toward the window, then the floor, settling anywhere except on me. I watched his jaw tighten. Watched him think. Watched him struggle with an answer he clearly didn’t have.
Finally, he exhaled.
“I want peace…”
The therapist nodded. “What does peace look like to you?”