Chapter 39
Three months earlier
“Pass the salt?”
Liam looks up, blinking, as though surprised to see me on the other side of the kitchen table, before passing the saltshaker and returning his gaze to his phone.
We rarely eat together anymore. When we do, it’s like this. Silent.
I can’t even remember the last time we had a real conversation, one more substantive than if the dishes in the dishwasher are clean or dirty, or if the other can pick up milk on the way home.
Every interaction feels like we’re on edge, one misstep from starting a fight.
Though frankly I wish we would fight—at least that would be better than painful cycles of silence and avoidance.
But anytime it feels like we’re on the brink of a real fight, Liam ends the conversation, or makes an excuse, and we go right back to avoiding each other, reminding me that whatever we used to have has crumbled under the weight of grief and anger and resentment and all the things we’re not talking about.
We continue to eat in silence until finally Liam says, “So, I’m going out of town tomorrow.”
I jerk my head up, frowning. “Where?”
“Portland, for a few weeks. There’s this lab and—”
“A few weeks?”
He nods and suddenly everything goes out of focus.
Are things so irreparably broken between us that he didn’t think this was something I needed to know?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I ask, sitting up straighter.
He pauses, his fork hovering over his plate of leftovers. “Things haven’t exactly been good between us lately. We haven’t even slept in the same bed in ages.” His eyes dip below the table’s surface before he adds, “I figured it wasn’t a big deal if I was gone for a while.”
A hot whoosh of unease slams against my chest. He’s right.
We’re barely talking, haven’t slept together in months.
It’s not like his absence will be missed.
But something about this feels final. Proof of the sneaking suspicion that’s lived in the back of my mind for months.
That it’s over—has been over—and our marriage has become nothing more than a holding pattern.
“So you just weren’t going to tell me?” I ask.
“I’m telling you right now,” he says, his features sagging with a kind of bone-deep weariness, like this conversation has already drained him. “But if you don’t want me to go, I’ll see if I can get a colleague to go in my place.”
“It’s not about Portland,” I say tightly. “It’s about the fact that our marriage has fallen apart, and you don’t seem to care.”
“Of course I care.” He licks his lips, his gaze shooting down then back to me before he says in a quieter voice, “I’ve been trying. But you keep pushing me away.”
The same frustration that’s been simmering below the surface for months creeps up the back of my throat, hot and potent.
“You’re trying?” I repeat. “When? When you sleep at the research center three nights a week? When you’re gone all the time? When you come up with excuses to avoid being with me? Or when you tell me to see a therapist so they can fix me?”
He scrapes a palm across his cheek, hurt flashing behind his eyes. “I’m not trying to get someone to fix you. I just don’t see why you won’t talk to a professional.”
“I can talk to a professional, Liam. But that’s not the point. Why won’t you talk with me?”
We’re back to the same fight we’ve had over and over. But it’s like poking a bruise to see if it’s still sore.
His lips fold together, the skin around his eyes creasing as he looks to the door then back to me. “I told you, I’m not good at these conversations.”
There’s a flash of regret in his eyes, like maybe it’s not just an excuse.
But I’m too hurt, too angry to hear his words as anything other than merciless blades, unyielding and precise, knowing just where to target for maximum impact, and whatever thinly veiled composure I’ve been operating under snaps like a toothpick.
I stand up, shoving my chair back with enough force that it scrapes the wood floor. “You never even tried! Where were you the last few months? When I needed you? When my mom died? Where the fuck were you, Liam?”
I’m crying now, but I don’t bother to wipe the tears away. My words thunder between us, and I wait, almost feverishly, wondering if this is the moment his composure will break and the mask will finally fall.
He lowers his head to his hands, and my heart skips a beat.
This is it, I think. I’ve finally gotten through to him.
We’re going to fight. He’s going to tell me he loves me.
That he’s here for me. That he’s sorry. I’ll say it too.
Then he’ll gather me in his arms and take me upstairs and make love to me. The way he’s supposed to.
Instead, he stands up, his expression weathered and worn down, like stone that’s spent too much time in the elements, and moves toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask, my voice drawn like a weapon.
He pauses, but he doesn’t turn around. “To Kevin’s. I have a long drive tomorrow, and I need to get some sleep.”
Everything in me clenches.
“You’re just leaving?” I call after him. “Again? Like you always do?”
He hangs his head, his back still to me. “Maybe we need some space, Roslyn.”
Rage and something deeper, more painful, rises inside me like volcanic lava, ready to spew everywhere.
It’s not just about Portland. Or the fact that he’s running away. Again.
It’s everything.
It’s every night I went to bed alone, every night he wasn’t there for me.
Every night he let us slide further and further apart as I tried to convince myself things would get better.
That this was just a rough patch. But it’s not and it never was, the reality now washing over me in thick, painful waves.
“The last nine months of space haven’t been enough?” I ask.
I wait for an answer, for him to turn around.
To show me the chinks in his armor. To show me something, anything.
But the longer we stand there, the more aware I am of the truth.
That the cracks between us aren’t just cracks anymore.
They’re gaping, bloody wounds. Deeper than perhaps either of us has recognized.
Suddenly, I’m furious. Not just with him, but with myself.
For trusting him with something as fragile as my heart.
For lowering my walls. For needing him. For fruitlessly hoping things would change when over and over again he’s proven to me that my grief is too much.
That I’m too much and whatever glue used to hold us together has splintered, flaking into a flimsy, crumbling mess, unable to withstand the weight of the last year.
When I speak, my voice comes out stronger, more confident than I feel. “If you’re going to leave, then don’t bother coming back.”
Liam turns back to face me, his dark eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that we’re done.”
For a long minute, Liam just stares at me, a range of emotions crossing his face. First, confusion, then hurt. Finally, exhaustion. Not just tired, but worn down, stripped of his life force, like it’s taking everything in him to even look at me.
“Is there someone else?” he finally asks.
Bile rises in my throat. Tears sting my eyes.
“I know you don’t think much of me right now, but if you seriously believe I would cheat on you, then we have much bigger problems than I thought.”
He rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. “I didn’t say that.”
“But you asked.”
“Of course I’m asking,” he says, exasperated. “We haven’t slept together in months. Everything I do only seems to push you further away, then you say it’s over. What the fuck am I supposed to think?”
I shake my head, anger and buried hurt colliding like cars on a speedway. “I’m unhappy, Liam! We both are!”
As I stand there, tears now flowing freely down my face, I silently plead for him to fight with me.
To tell me he doesn’t want it to end. That he’ll do anything to prove he loves me, that I’m his, the way he used to.
But he doesn’t. And with each passing minute, the words hovering in the back of my throat grow firmer.
More resolute. Shifting from hazy and improbable to sharp and immediate.
When I first met Liam, I was a cautiously hopeful romantic.
I was afraid of heartache, of giving myself to someone who would break me.
Afraid of ending up in a relationship like one of the dozens I’d seen my mom in, so I protected myself with tall walls.
But little by little, Liam broke down those walls. He made me feel safe, wanted, enough.
He made me believe that not only was happily ever after real, but it was something I could have. With him.
But the man standing in front of me is no longer that man.
He’s not the man who danced with me in the kitchen, who asked me to marry him with tears in his eyes, promising he’d always be there for me.
He hasn’t been that man for a while, and maybe I haven’t been that woman either, but I can’t do this anymore.
I can’t wait for things to get better.
I can’t keep lying to myself.
I can’t end up like my mom.
So I take a shaky breath and tell Liam the truth: “I want a divorce.”
For a long moment he holds my gaze, my words reverberating across his features like ripples in still water.
When finally he speaks, my heart is thundering so loud against my ribs, I’m surprised I even hear his terse response.
“Fine.”
That’s it. Fine. A single syllable that breaks me with one swift, precise blow.
Suffocating silence follows. My ears ring. My pulse pounds. Every muscle clenches.
I wait for one of us to take it back, to confess we didn’t mean it, that this is a mistake. But either that’s not true, or neither of us is brave enough to say it, because the silent seconds stretch into a painful minute before he finally turns and goes upstairs.
Ten minutes later, I watch him walk out the front door. The lock clicks, followed by the rumble of his car in the driveway, then I drop to my knees, throat raw, chest tight, body crushed in unimaginable pain.
Ten minutes, I think. Ten awful minutes is all it took to wipe away nine years with the ease of an Etch A Sketch. For Liam to leave with just a duffel bag, like he’s taken everything he wanted, and it didn’t include me.