15. Nina #2
“And none of that fancy Newport bullshit. I want a burger. A real burger, from a place that doesn’t put truffle oil on everything.”
“I know a place.”
“Good.” He closes his eyes, exhausted from even this much conversation. “Wake me up when they call my name.”
***
Three hours later, we’re sitting in a diner on Thames Street, eating burgers that drip grease onto paper-lined baskets.
Cole eats slowly - the treatment kills his appetite, he explained, but he’s trying to keep weight on - and I eat slowly because it feels wrong to finish before him.
“Can I ask you something?” I say.
“You’re going to anyway.”
“What was she like? Before me, I mean. When you first knew her.”
Cole sets down his burger, considering the question.
“Fierce,” he says finally. “That’s the first word that comes to mind.
She was nineteen, working three jobs, sleeping on a friend’s couch because she couldn’t afford her own place.
And she was fierce about everything. About surviving.
About making something of herself. About refusing to let the world tell her she wasn’t good enough. ”
“She’s still like that.”
“Yeah, but it’s different now.” He wipes his hands on a napkin. “Back then, the fierceness was all she had. It was armor. Protection. The thing that kept her from falling apart when everything else was trying to break her.”
“And now?”
“Now she’s got more to protect. More to lose.
” He looks at me directly. “She’s got you.
Or she did. And that baby. And this whole life she built that she never thought she’d have.
” He pauses. “When you packed that suitcase, you weren’t just threatening to leave.
You were threatening to take all of it. The future she’d finally let herself believe in. ”
The words settle into me like stones.
“How do I fix it?”
“I don’t know if you can.” Cole picks up his burger again. “But if you’re going to try, you’d better mean it. Because she won’t survive another betrayal. Not from you.”
“I mean it.”
“We’ll see.”
It’s exactly what Nina said. We’ll see.
I deserve that.
***
Nina
He shows up for the next appointment.
It’s a routine checkup, nothing dramatic - blood pressure, weight, fetal heartbeat - but he’s there, sitting in the waiting room when I arrive. He doesn’t make a big deal of it. Doesn’t comment on the boundaries or try to negotiate for more.
He just stands when he sees me, offers a small smile, and waits for me to decide how close he’s allowed to get.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
“I brought you this.” He holds out a paper cup - tea from the shop I like, the one that does the lavender honey blend I’ve been craving. “The nurse said you’d be a few minutes, so I walked over.”
“Thank you.” I take the cup, and our fingers brush. The contact is brief, barely a touch, but I feel it all the way down to my bones.
Stop, I tell myself. He doesn’t get to do this yet. He doesn’t get to make you feel things.
But my body doesn’t seem to be listening.
We sit in the waiting room together, not quite touching, the tea warming my hands. He asks about the cottage. About whether I’ve finished the nursery painting. About how I’m sleeping.
Normal questions. Careful questions. The questions of a man who’s learning to ask instead of assume.
When the nurse calls my name, he stands with me.
“Can I-” He stops. “I mean, if you don’t want me in there, I understand.”
“You can come.”
Relief floods his face. He follows me back to the exam room, sits in the chair beside the table, and holds my hand when the nurse draws blood.
His palm is warm and steady. His thumb traces circles on my wrist. And I hate how much I’ve missed this - his touch, his presence, the simple comfort of having him near.
“Let’s take a look,” the doctor says, squirting gel onto my stomach.
The ultrasound wand moves across my belly, and the screen fills with the familiar blur of gray and white. But it’s different now from what it was at eleven weeks. The baby is bigger. More defined. More obviously human.
“She’s measuring perfectly,” the doctor says, pointing at the screen.
“She?” Adrian’s voice cracks.
“Oops.” The doctor smiles. “Did you not know the sex yet?”
I look at Adrian. He looks at me.
His eyes are wet. His hand has tightened on mine until it almost hurts.
“A girl,” he whispers.
And despite everything - the broken trust, the boundaries, the walls I’ve built around my heart - I feel something loosen in my chest. Something that might be hope.
“A girl,” I agree.
***
He stops asking when I’ll come home.
He stops pushing for more than I can give. He starts asking questions instead - about the cottage, about my plans for the nursery, about what the baby’s going to need that he can help with.
He shows up for Cole’s treatment appointments. Not because I ask, but because Cole mentions once that Adrian drove him last week and it was actually “not terrible.”
“He’s trying,” Cole tells me one afternoon, when Adrian’s gone to get us coffee from the cafeteria. “I don’t know if he deserves another chance, but he’s definitely trying.”
“I know.”
“Do you want to give him one?”
I watch Adrian through the window of the treatment room, watching him wait in line at the coffee kiosk, his shoulders slightly hunched with the weight of everything he’s carrying.
“I don’t know yet,” I say honestly. “But I’m starting to think I might.”
***
“If you want another chance,” I tell him one afternoon on my porch, “you start over. Ten years don’t count anymore.”
The sun is setting over the harbor, painting everything gold. Adrian is sitting on the porch steps, a careful distance away, watching the boats come home.
He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t remind me of everything we’ve built. Doesn’t try to cash in his decade of history for something he didn’t earn.
“Okay,” he says. “Then I’ll earn it again.”
“It might take years.”
“I have years.”
“You might do everything right and I still might not be able to trust you.”
“Then I’ll do everything right anyway.”
I study his profile in the fading light - the strong jaw, the gray at his temples, the lines around his eyes that weren’t there when I married him.
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why is this worth it to you? All the work. All the uncertainty. You could walk away. Find someone easier. Someone who doesn’t come with a decade of baggage and a best friend with cancer and a cottage full of secondhand furniture.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. When he speaks, his voice is rough.
“Because you’re the only person who’s ever made me feel like myself.
Not the Moretti name. Not the money. Just...
me.” He turns to look at me, and his eyes are bright.
“I lost that for a while. I got so caught up in fear and suspicion that I forgot who I was with you. But I remember now. And I’d rather spend the rest of my life earning back what I lost than spend a single day with someone who doesn’t make me feel like that. ”
I don’t respond. I can’t. The words are too big, too much, too close to everything I’ve been afraid to hope for.
But I reach out, and I take his hand, and I let him hold on.
For the first time, I believe he might actually earn it.