6. Killian
— ? —
Killian
The porch light cast a yellow glow over the empty driveway, and I couldn’t make my feet move.
She’d heard me. She’d heard the worst possible fragment of a conversation I’d been having with my brother, and she’d taken it as confirmation of every fear she’d been carrying for months.
I’d seen it in her face, the moment the words landed.
I’d watched her heart break in real time, and I’d been too slow and too stupid to stop it.
The back door slammed, and suddenly my whole family was on the patio.
“What the hell happened?” Mom’s voice cut through the night air. “We heard shouting. Where’s Sabrina? Where’s Ivy?”
I turned around. They were all staring at me. Mom with her hands on her hips, Dad with that quiet disappointment he’d perfected over a lifetime, Tessa with her arms crossed and fury in her eyes. Sully hung back near the door, clearly wishing he could disappear into the climbing roses.
“What did you do?” Mom demanded.
“I fucked it up.” My voice came out shredded. “I fucked everything up.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“She heard me talking to Sully. She heard part of what I said, and she thought I meant that I regret marrying her.”
“Do you?”
“No! Of course not. I was trying to say that I’ve been a terrible husband, that I’ve failed her, that she deserved better than what I’ve given her. But she only heard the part about maybe she’d be happier without me.”
Tessa made a sound of disgust. “Jesus Christ, Killian.”
“I know.”
“Do you? Do you actually know how badly you’ve messed this up?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think you do.” She stepped closer, and I could see tears in her eyes. “She’s been falling apart for months. She’s exhausted and scared and lonely, and every time she reaches for you, you’re not there. And now you’ve basically told her that you think the marriage was a mistake.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you said. It matters what she heard.”
I wanted to argue. I wanted to explain that my brain had been making connections between thoughts faster than my mouth could express them, that I’d been spiraling through a chain of logic that started with my own guilt and ended somewhere completely different from where it sounded.
But none of that mattered. Tessa was right.
The only thing that mattered was what Sabrina heard.
“I need to go after her.”
“No.” Tessa stepped in front of me. “Absolutely not.”
“She’s my wife.”
“She’s also my friend, and she asked you not to follow her. You need to respect that.”
“How can I fix this if she won’t let me talk to her?”
“Maybe you can’t fix it.” Tessa’s voice softened slightly. “Maybe some things are too broken to fix with one conversation.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“It doesn’t matter what you believe. It matters what she believes. And right now, she believes you don’t want her anymore.”
The words landed square in my chest. I’d spent the last two years watching Sabrina grow more distant, more tired, more closed off, and I’d told myself it was temporary, a phase that would pass once work calmed down, once Ivy got older, once we found our footing again.
I’d been an idiot. A complete and total idiot.
“I love her,” I said. My voice cracked on the words.
“I love her more than anything. I know I’ve been useless at showing it, but she’s the only person who ever made sense to me.
She’s the only person who looked at all my weird obsessions and strange fixations and decided they were endearing instead of annoying.
She saw the best parts of me when no one else could. ”
“Then why haven’t you been showing her that?” Dad asked quietly. It was the first time he’d spoken, and his voice carried a lifetime of learning how to keep a marriage strong.
“I don’t have an answer that isn’t an excuse,” I said. “That’s the problem. Every reason I’ve got is just a politer word for choosing wrong.”
“That’s not an excuse,” Mom said. “That’s a pattern. And patterns can be changed if you actually want to change them.”
“I do want to change them.”
“Then prove it where she can see it, every day, until she stops flinching.”
I looked at Tessa. “What do I do? You know her better than anyone. Tell me what to do.”
“Give her space. Don’t push. Don’t show up at wherever she’s going with flowers and grand gestures. She doesn’t need that right now.”
“I hate that answer.”
“I don’t care if you hate it. It’s the right answer.”
“But it’s not true that I don’t want her. It’s the opposite of true. She’s walking away thinking I regret our marriage, and she’s living with a lie for every second I don’t correct it.”
Tessa stepped closer and put her hand on my arm. Her touch was gentler than her voice.
“Something must have been wrong for a long time if she believed it that fast,” she said quietly. “Think about that. Think about what’s been happening in your marriage that made her ready to hear the worst possible interpretation of your words.”
I thought about it. All the dinners I’d missed, the bedtimes I’d been late for, the times I’d promised to be present and then gotten sucked into a project that felt urgent in the moment and meaningless afterward.
Sabrina’s face when I came home to find Ivy already in bed, the resignation in it, the way she’d stopped asking me to come home earlier because she’d learned not to expect anything.
I’d done this. I’d built this distance brick by brick, night by night, broken promise by broken promise.
“You’re an idiot,” Tessa said, and there was no heat in it now. Just exhaustion. “Go sit somewhere and think about what an ass you’ve been. And tomorrow, when you’ve actually processed what just happened, figure out how to make it right.”
She walked back inside. Mom followed her, pausing to squeeze my shoulder as she passed. Dad just looked at me for a long moment, and his expression told me he knew exactly what I was feeling because he’d felt it himself at some point in his own marriage.
“She’s right,” he said finally. “And you’ll want to start tonight, because the version of you that starts tomorrow has already lost a day.”
He went inside. Sully started to follow, then stopped.
“I’m sorry, man. I should have told you to shut up when you started talking about her maybe being happier without you. That was never going to sound good no matter how you meant it.”
“None of this is on you.”
“No, but I could have helped. I just sat there like an idiot while you dug yourself into a hole.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Go home. Sleep. I’ll check on you tomorrow.”
He left, and I was alone on the patio with the sound of crickets and the distant crash of waves.
***
I drove to our house. It sat at the end of a quiet street, a gray-shingled cottage with white trim and a porch swing I’d been meaning to fix for as long as we’d owned the place. The lights were on inside.
I let myself in through the front door. Sabrina was in the living room, standing by the window with her arms wrapped around herself. She’d changed out of her dinner clothes into worn jeans and an old sweater of mine. Seeing her in my clothes made my chest ache.
She turned when she heard me come in. Her eyes were red and swollen, but her face was calm. Too calm. The calm of someone who’d already made a decision.
“I told you not to follow me.”
“I know. I had to see you.”
“There’s nothing to see. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re crying.”
“I was crying. I’ve stopped now.”
I stepped closer. She didn’t step back, but I could feel her tense.
“What I said to Sully, it came out wrong. I wasn’t saying I regret marrying you.
I was saying I regret what I’ve done since then.
I’ve been a terrible husband, and I’ve watched you grow tired and sad, and I’ve wondered if you’d be happier with someone who could actually show up for you the way you deserve. ”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to explain.”
“It doesn’t explain anything.” Her voice was steady, but I could hear the tremor underneath. “It just tells me that you’ve been thinking about whether I’d be better off without you, which means you’ve been thinking about us not being together.”
“That’s not what it means.”
“It’s what it sounds like. And Cordelia is on the island, and you never told me about her, and I’m starting to wonder what else you haven’t told me.”
“Cordelia is nothing. That was finished before I ever met you. She’s irrelevant.”
“Then why is she here? Why now?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know she was coming.”
Sabrina laughed, and there was nothing happy in the sound. “So your ex-girlfriend just happens to show up on the island where we spend our summers, right when our marriage is falling apart. That’s quite a coincidence.”
“It is a coincidence. I haven’t talked to Cordelia in years. I don’t want anything to do with her.”
“Was she the plan?” Sabrina’s voice cracked. “Was she going to be your backup option when you finally admitted you don’t want this anymore?”
“No.” I crossed the room and stopped in front of her, close enough to touch but not touching. “No. Listen to me. There is no plan. There is no backup option. There is only you, Sabrina. There has only ever been you.”
She wanted to believe me. She was too hurt to let herself, and I could see her holding the line.
“I want a divorce.”
The words knocked the breath out of me.
“No.”
“I’ve left a message for Victoria Pryce. She’ll handle it.”
“Sabrina, please. Please don’t do this.”
“I can’t do this anymore, Killian.” Her voice broke. “I can’t keep waiting for you to choose us. I can’t keep hoping you’ll walk through the door and actually be present instead of distracted. I can’t keep pretending that everything is fine when it’s been falling apart for months.”
“Then we’ll fix it. We’ll go to therapy, we’ll make a plan, we’ll do whatever it takes.”
“You’ve said that before. You’ve said it so many times, and nothing ever changes.”
“This time will be different.”
“How? How will it be different?”
I didn’t have an answer. I had promises and good intentions and a history of failing to follow through on both.
Sabrina shook her head.
“Ivy and I are going to a rental in ’Sconset tonight. I found one online while you were at your parents’ house. We’ll stay there until I figure out the next steps.”
“You can’t just leave.”
“I can, actually. I’m an adult. I can make decisions about where I sleep and where my daughter sleeps.”
“Our daughter.”
“Yes. Our daughter. The one I’ve been raising mostly alone for the last two years.”
I reached for her. My hand brushed her arm.
She stepped back.
“Don’t,” she said, and her voice was quiet and final. “I can’t let you touch me right now. I can’t let you close enough to change my mind.”
“I don’t want to change your mind. I want to fix this.”
“Maybe it’s too broken to fix.”
She walked past me to the hallway and picked up a bag I hadn’t noticed sitting by the stairs. Ivy lay asleep next to it, wrapped in her elephant blanket.
“Sabrina.”
She stopped but didn’t turn around.
“I love you,” I said. “I know that doesn’t mean much right now.
I know I’ve done a terrible job of showing it.
But I love you. I’ve loved you since the night we met, when you refused to be impressed by a single thing about me.
You’re the only person who ever saw me clearly, and I’ve spent every day since terrified that you’d wake up and realize you could do better. ”
The silence stretched until it hurt. Then she gathered Ivy into her arms, picked up the bag, and walked to the door.
“Don’t follow us,” she said. “I mean it.”
She walked out into the night. I heard the car door open and close, heard the engine start, heard the crunch of gravel as she pulled out of the driveway.
I stood in the doorway and watched the taillights disappear down the dark street.
She was gone. Ivy was gone. The house felt empty in a way that went beyond the absence of people.
I’d lost her. The only person who had ever made sense to me, the only person whose mind fit with mine, and I’d let her slip away through a thousand small failures that added up to this moment.
I walked back inside and sat down on the couch. The house was silent except for the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway, the one that had been in my family for generations.
My phone was dead, drowned in wine. I had no way to call her, no way to text, no way to reach her at all.
Maybe that was for the best. Maybe Tessa was right, and space was what she needed.
But space felt too close to surrender, and I’d never been good at giving up.
I leaned back against the cushions and stared at the ceiling.
Tomorrow I would figure out how to fight for her. Tonight I would sit with the weight of what I’d done.