7. Luciana Creed #4
Maddox let out a soft laugh. The sound carried the kind of exhaustion that came from holding too much for too long.
“I don’t know…” He rubbed a hand across his beard. “I just know I ain’t had it since I found out.”
Nobody spoke after that.
There was nothing to argue with and nothing to defend. Peace wasn’t an attack against me. It wasn’t rejection. It was a man admitting he was drowning.
Dr. Reynolds looked between us.
“Do you see the difference?” Neither one of us answered. She didn’t even seem surprised. “Luciana is focused on getting her marriage back.” My stomach tightened. Her attention shifted to Maddox. “You’re focused on surviving the pain.”
The truth settled over the room immediately.
She was right.
I was trying to save us while my husband was trying to figure out how to live with everything that he’d learned.
Two people…
Two completely different battles…
No wonder we couldn’t find each other.
The therapist closed her notebook and folded her hands together.
“I don’t think either of you are in a position to make permanent decisions right now.”
Maddox’s expression remained unreadable.
Mine probably wasn’t much better, though.
“One of you is grieving,” she said, glancing toward him. “The other is carrying an enormous amount of guilt.” Her eyes moved between us. “Neither one of those emotional states are ideal for making life-changing decisions.”
Silence filled the air… Neither, me nor my husband said anything, but we damn sure didn’t disagreed.
The last few weeks had been nothing but emotion, anger, hurt, shock and regret.
Nobody knew what tomorrow looked like.
Hell, I wasn’t even sure what next week looked like.
Dr. Reynolds gave a small smile.
“I’d like to see both of you again.”
“Okay…” The answer slipped out before I even realized I’d spoken.
There was never going to be another response from me. Not if there was even the slightest chance of saving my marriage.
My attention shifted to Maddox.
I waited for his response, holding my breath. Praying.
For a few seconds, he didn’t say anything. He just sat there staring at the floor, thinking, processing, being Maddox.
Finally, he then nodded. “A’ight.”
That one word somehow felt like the biggest victory I’d had in weeks. It didn’t fix our marriage, and it certainly didn’t guarantee we’d find our way back to each other.
What it did mean was that Maddox was still here. Still trying. Still willing to come back.
Right then, that had to be enough.
A few minutes later, the session came to an end. There was no miracle waiting on the other side of the office door.
We walked out carrying the same problems we’d walked in with.
The difference was those problems finally had names.
Grief.
Guilt.
Loss.
Dr. Reynolds had given words to emotions neither one of us had been able to explain on our own.
The walk back through the office was quiet. It wasn’t uncomfortable, but neither one of us seemed to know what to do with everything that had been said.
When we stepped into the parking lot, the afternoon sun immediately hit my face. I paused for a second, letting the warmth settle against my skin while trying to clear my head.
The effort was pointless.
Nothing felt clear. My marriage felt uncertain. My future felt uncertain. Hell, I wasn’t even sure who I was anymore.
The sound of Maddox unlocking the truck pulled me from my thoughts. A second later, he opened my door.
The gesture caught me off guard.
Opening doors had always been second nature to my husband, but seeing him do it now hit differently. After everything we’d been through, after all the hurt and disappointment, he was still doing the small things.
My chest tightened as I climbed inside.
The ride started the same way the session had ended—quiet. Neither one of us rushed to speak, and neither one of us pretended therapy had magically fixed anything.
It hadn’t.
Therapy wasn’t some damn fairy tale. One appointment wasn’t undoing nine years. We both knew that.
Still, something had shifted.
I wasn’t ready to call it better, but it felt different.
Maddox reached over and turned the radio down.
That immediately caught my attention.
The man hated silence. Most days, he’d fill every second of a drive with music, conversation, or whatever random thought crossed his mind. Today, he’d spent nearly the entire ride sitting quietly beside me with his eyes remained fixed on the road.
“How you feeling?”
The question surprised me enough that I didn’t answer right away.
The answer wasn’t the problem.
The question was.
I hadn’t expected him to ask.
The concern wasn’t wrapped in affection or love, but it was there. After weeks of feeling like I was losing him, I’d take whatever pieces of my husband I could get.
I looked down at my hands.
“Like shit…”
A small huff escaped him, the closest thing to a laugh I’d heard all day.
“Yeah.”
I glanced over at him. “You?”
For a moment, I thought he might avoid the question. Maddox had never been the type to sit around discussing his feelings. Half the time, getting him to tell me what he wanted for dinner felt like an interrogation.
“Tired.”
The honesty caught me off guard.
“Tired of what?”
His grip tightened around the steering wheel. The answer was obvious. I could see it in his face, in the tension sitting across his shoulders, and in the exhaustion behind his eyes.
“All this shit.”
I nodded slowly.
No explanation was necessary. I understood exactly what he meant. The lies. The fallout. The endless conversations. The guilt. The disappointment. The feeling that our lives had been split into two chapters, one before the truth came out and one after.
Silence settled between us again, though it didn’t feel uncomfortable. The truth was, we were both exhausted. For the first time in weeks, we weren’t standing on opposite sides of an argument. We were sitting in the same truck carrying the same reality.
Neither one of us said another word during the drive home.
The truck rolled to a stop, but neither one of us rushed to get out. We sat here for a few seconds with the engine still running, both of us staring ahead through the windshield.
The silence reminded me of the one outside the therapist’s office earlier. Something about this one felt different, though.
Maddox finally shut off the engine.
A few seconds passed before he turned and looked at me.
My heart stumbled.
It had been so long since he’d willingly held my gaze for more than a few seconds that something as simple as eye contact felt significant.
“You hungry?” he asked me.
I batted my eyes. “What?”
“You ate?”
For weeks, we’d been communicating like people trying to survive the same disaster. We talked about the boys. We talked about schedules. We talked about whatever needed to be handled around the house.
Everything except us.
For the first time in a long time, Maddox wasn’t asking me about a problem.
He was asking about me.
The old Maddox would’ve already known the answer. He would’ve made sure I ate, especially while pregnant, especially when I was stressed, and especially when he knew I wasn’t taking care of myself.
This version of Maddox didn’t know.
Somewhere along the way, I’d pushed him so far away that he could no longer see the things he’d once noticed without trying.
I swallowed hard.
“No.”
He nodded once before opening the door. “I’ll order something.”
I sat here for a few seconds after he got out, watching him walk toward the house. Watching the same man I’d loved for years. The same man I still loved. The same man I might lose anyway.
That reality hurt, but for the first time since this nightmare started, I wasn’t confusing progress with forgiveness.
Therapy hadn’t fixed us. One conversation hadn’t healed us. Maddox wasn’t magically over what I’d done.
The damage was still there.
The hurt was still there.
The grief was still there.
None of that had changed.
What had changed was the fact that neither one of us spent the day running from it. Maybe that was enough for now. Maybe healing didn’t start with forgiveness or trust. Maybe it started with two broken people finally sitting in the same room and telling the truth.