32. Maren #2
“Don’t promise.” I hold up a hand. “Don’t promise me something you might not be able to deliver. Just, listen. When I’m scared, I need you to listen instead of telling me why I shouldn’t be.”
“I can do that.”
“Can you? Because that’s not how you’re built, Rhodes. You’re built to fix things. To see a problem and solve it. But sometimes I don’t need you to solve it. Sometimes I just need you to hear it.”
He’s quiet again, processing. I can almost see him rewiring something fundamental about how he approaches me, about how he approaches us.
“My biggest mistake,” he says finally, “was assuming you’d always wait. That your patience was infinite. That I could keep choosing work over you and you’d still be there when I finally had time.”
“And mine was being quiet instead of leaving or forcing you to see it sooner.” I swallow hard. “And hiding Rowan. I need to own that. I hid him from you for three and a half years because I was scared and hurt and convinced you’d find a way to take him or disappoint him. That was wrong.”
“It was.”
The acknowledgment lands heavy. He’s not pretending it didn’t hurt. He’s not dismissing it to make me feel better.
“I’m still angry about it,” he says, and his voice is careful, measured, like he’s choosing each word deliberately.
“I know you had reasons. I know I gave you those reasons. But three and a half years of his life that I’ll never get back-” He stops.
Breathes. “Reconciliation doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to still be angry. ”
“I know.”
“I’m working through it. I’m trying not to use it as a weapon. But it’s there, Maren. It’s going to be there for a while.”
“Okay.” It’s the only thing I can say. He’s right. He gets to be angry. I get to feel guilty about that. We get to hold both of those truths at the same time.
“I’m not choosing you because you checked every box on some redemption list,” I say. “You haven’t. There’s no list. There’s just-” I gesture vaguely. “This. Showing up, trying. Being honest when it would be easier to perform.”
“Then why are you choosing me?”
The question hangs there, enormous and terrifying in its simplicity.
“Because I love you,” I say. “I never stopped loving you, even when I hated you for making me love someone who couldn’t show up.
And because I see you changing. Not performing change for an audience, but actually working on the parts of yourself that broke us.
And because-” I take a shaky breath. “Because I finally believe we can build something different. Not the old marriage. Something new. Something we create together instead of you building and me just living in it.”
Rhodes’s eyes are bright. He doesn’t move from the couch, doesn’t close the distance between us, and I realize he’s waiting for permission. Still letting me lead.
“Come here,” I say.
He’s beside me in an instant, kneeling in front of my chair like he’s about to propose, but that’s not what this is. He takes my hands in his and just holds them, his thumbs moving over my knuckles.
“I’m going to mess up,” he says. “Not on purpose, but I will. I’ll work too late or forget something important or fall back into old patterns.”
“I know.”
“And when I do, I need you to tell me. Not adapt around it, not pretend it’s fine. Tell me.”
“I’m going to try.”
“Try hard.” His grip tightens slightly. “Please. Because I can’t fix what I don’t know about. And I want to fix it, not because I need to solve you, but because I love you and your happiness matters more than my comfort.”
I lean forward and press my forehead against his. We stay like that for a long moment, breathing the same air, not kissing, not moving toward anything physical. Just being present. Just being honest.
“This is going to be hard,” I whisper.
“I know.”
“We’re going to fight.”
“Probably.”
“And sometimes I’m going to be scared and sometimes you’re going to be angry and it’s not going to look like it does in the movies.”
“I don’t want the movie version.” His voice is rough. “I want the real version. With you. However hard that is.”
I’m about to respond when I hear it, the creak of a small door opening, the shuffle of tiny feet in the hallway.
“Mommy?”
Rowan appears in the living room doorway, rubbing his eyes with one hand and clutching Mr. Zorp with the other. His rocket pajamas are twisted, like he’s been tossing and turning.
“Hey, buddy.” I pull back from Rhodes but don’t let go of his hands. “What are you doing up?”
“Had a dream.” Rowan’s voice is sleep-thick and confused. Then his eyes land on Rhodes, still kneeling in front of my chair, and they go wide. “Daddy?”
It’s the first time he’s said it without hesitation. Without trying the word out to see how it fits.
Rhodes goes absolutely still beside me. His breath catches.
“Hey, buddy,” he manages. “Yeah. I’m here.”
Rowan looks between us, processing this scene with the straightforward logic of a three-and-a-half-year-old. Mommy in the chair. Daddy on the floor. Both of them holding hands.
“Are you having a sleepover?” he asks.
Rhodes looks at me. I look at him. And somehow, impossibly, I start to laugh.
“Something like that,” I say, and reach out my free hand toward my son.
It takes a while to settle Rowan back into his own bed. He wants water, then a full report on whether Daddy will still be here in the morning. I tell him yes before I let myself think about whether it’s true.
When I come back out, Rhodes is standing at the window with the city behind him. He turns. Neither of us pretends we’re going to keep talking.
“Come here,” he says this time.
I go.
He kisses me slow, both hands framing my face, unhurried, and maybe he does have all night. There’s none of the fury from the hotel in it. That was two people settling a score. This is two people deciding to stay, and it’s terrifying how different it feels.
He walks me back to the bed and lays me down and takes his time with the buttons of my dress, mouth chasing his hands, an apology he’s decided to make with his tongue instead of words.
By the time he peels my underwear down my legs I’m a mess, wet and shameless, my knees falling open before he even asks. He notices. Of course he notices.
“Look at you,” he says, low and wrecked. “Drenched already, and I’ve barely touched you.” Then his mouth is on me, and whatever I meant to say turns into a moan I muffle against the back of my hand.
He eats me like he’s been thinking about it for four years, patient and filthy, two fingers working in beside his tongue, and when I come apart it’s with my hands knotted in his hair and my hips chasing his mouth.
He stays through every last aftershock, in no rush, like he’d happily live down there.
“Enough,” I gasp, tugging him up. “I want you. All of it. I’m not going to break.”
“I know you’re not.” He lines up and pushes in slow, and the stretch of him has me clutching his shoulders, my mouth falling open. He watches every second of it. “God. You take me so well.”
“I love you,” he says, buried deep, holding still like he needs me to hear it more than he needs to move. “I never stopped. Not one day.”
I don’t say it back in words. I say it with my hips, with my teeth at his jaw, telling him to move.
He does, deep and unhurried, nothing like the furious thing at the hotel.
This time we keep our eyes open and nobody’s keeping score.
When I break for him again he goes with me, that word groaned into my throat over and over.
Afterward he won’t let me roll away. He tucks me into his chest and holds on, and for the first time in four years I let him, and I don’t brace, not even a little, for him to be gone in the morning.