Chapter 3
kelsey
We retreated into silence, but it wasn’t peaceful.
It was the kind of quiet that pressed against your eardrums, made you hyperaware of every sound.
The way he breathed through his nose when he ate.
How I set my glass down too carefully, trying not to make noise.
The storm outside providing a percussion backdrop to our mutual discomfort.
I took small, methodical bites, chewed thoroughly, tried not to remember all the times we’d shared this exact meal under more pleasant circumstances.
Teddy cleared his plate first—he’d always been a fast eater, something that used to drive me up a wall when the kids were small and I was trying to teach them table manners.
I watched him drag the last piece of bread through the remaining sauce, sopping up every last bit like he might never eat again.
On autopilot, I pushed my chair back and moved toward the kitchen.
“Coffee?” The word came out before I could stop them, habit overriding common sense.
Teddy grunted again—his default response to most questions—and I bit back the urge to throw the coffee pot at his head. Some things, it seemed, were eternal. Death, taxes, and Theodore Riggs communicating primarily through caveman sounds.
I went through the motions anyway, finding filters in the cabinet above the coffee maker, measuring grounds with the same care I’d once used to measure formula for midnight feedings. The familiar ritual calmed something in me, even as my skin prickled under the weight of his stare.
I scanned the mugs, the corner of my mouth twitching as I selected one for him that said, “Sleigh Queen.”
“Haven’t been to the store yet,” I called over my shoulder as it began brewing. “So, you’ll have to drink it black.”
“Since when have you known me to drink it any other way?”
Never. He’d never taken cream or sugar, not once in the entire time I’d known him. I’d gotten so used to experimenting with my own coffee since living on my own that it must have slipped my mind.
“Right.” I kept my tone neutral, focusing on the slow drip of coffee into the carafe. “Black it is.”
“Unlike some people, I haven’t changed.” There was an edge to his voice that made my molars grind together. “Still the same boring, predictable bastard you divorced. Must have confused me for your new man.”
I spun around to face him. “Excuse me?”
Teddy leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, studying me through narrowed eyes. “Just wondering if that’s why you forgot.”
“You’re fishing.” I turned back to the coffee, my shoulders instinctively tensing when his chair scraped against the floor.
“Come on, Kels,” he said, leaning against the fridge like he was trying for nonchalant and missing by miles. “You can’t expect me to believe you haven’t been with anyone since the divorce.”
The coffee maker sputtered, matching my inability to form words. Did he really think—after everything—that I’d moved on? Found some nice accountant or teacher to shack up with?
“That’s none of your business.”
He pushed off from the fridge, closing the distance between us. “So that’s a yes.”
“No, Teddy. It’s a mind your own business.” The coffee maker gave one final gurgle, and I grabbed the carafe with shaking hands, sloshing hot liquid onto the counter as I tried to pour.
“Careful,” he muttered, reaching out to steady my wrist.
I jerked away from his touch. “I’ve got it.”
“Right. My mistake. You’ve always got it.” His laugh was bitter, hollow. “Perfect Kelsey, handling everything on her own.”
“Someone had to. Here.” I shoved the mug at him. He frowned at the inscription before taking it but didn’t move from the doorway.
“Maybe if you’d spent more time at home than at the clubhouse, I would have remembered how you take your coffee.
” The words were out before I could stop them, years of resentment distilled into a single sentence.
I hated how any attempts to be the bigger person went out the window as soon as he was within six feet of me.
Teddy froze, mug halfway to his lips. “Seriously? We’re fucking doing this now?”
“I’m simply pointing out that your absence was so notable, I’ve forgotten basic details about you.” I gripped my own mug tighter, needing something solid to anchor me.
“My absence.” He set his coffee down with deliberate control, the kind that meant he was seconds from losing it. “Right. ‘Cause I was the one who checked out. Not you, with your gym obsession and your sudden need to ‘find yourself’ after—”
“After our son died?” My voice cracked on the last word. Levi’s name remained locked up in my throat, because if I let it loose—if I said it out loud—everything I’d worked so hard to rebuild would come crumbling down.
“Yes, Teddy, I joined a gym. Shocking behavior, really. I should have been more like you and just run off to the clubhouse every night.”
“At least there, no one jumped my ass over every little thing.” His voice rose, filling the space between us with decades of accumulated frustration.
“Nobody gave me shit about what needed fixing in the house, or how loudly I was breathing, or chewing, or existing. They were just happy to be in my company. Didn’t need me to be someone I wasn’t.
Didn’t look at me like I was failing some test I didn’t know I was taking. ”
My stomach pitched, every insecurity I’d buried deep clawing to the surface.
There was no mistaking, they were the club girls.
Young. Uncomplicated. Draped over every surface of the clubhouse in tiny shorts and tank tops that left nothing to the imagination.
Women who were down for anything and everything.
Women who didn’t have stretch marks from three pregnancies or crow’s feet from decades of squinting into the sun at soccer games.
The mug nearly slipped from my hands. I set it down carefully, taking a second to arrange my face into something that didn’t scream You may as well have just gutted me with a butter knife.
“Makes sense.” I forced a laugh. “Why deal with your grieving wife when you could have twenty-somethings serving you beer and hanging on your every word? Good for you.”
Teddy rubbed at the back of his neck, and when he looked at me again, there was something raw in his expression. “That’s not—Christ, Kels. That’s not what I meant. I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what? Didn’t mean to let it slip that you found comfort with women half your age while I was home trying to hold what was left of our family together?
Didn’t mean to admit to—” I couldn’t say it.
Couldn’t put words to the fear that had haunted me for years, the one that whispered I wasn’t enough, wasn’t young enough, wasn’t fun enough to hold his attention anymore.
My cheeks burned with humiliation, remembering all those nights I’d waited up, wondering if he’d come home at all. Wondering if the distance between us was grief or something else. Someone else.
I pressed my palms flat against the counter, needing something solid to keep me from either throwing my coffee at him or dissolving into the kind of tears that would prove I still gave a damn.
“Never cheated on you, Kels.” His voice was low, intense. “Not once. Not ever.”
I wanted to believe him. God, I wanted to believe that whatever broke us, it wasn’t that.
But the way he’d said it—they were happy in his company—kept echoing in my head.
The casual cruelty of it. The implication that I hadn’t been happy with him, hadn’t wanted his company, when the truth was, I’d wanted it so badly I’d made myself sick with it.
“It hardly matters now. We’re divorced. You’re free to screw whoever you want to,” I said, proud of how steady my voice sounded when everything inside me was collapsing. “Just like I am.”
The lie came easily. There hadn’t been anyone else.
Hadn’t even been the desire for anyone else.
I’d been too busy trying to remember how to exist with the weight of his and Levi’s absences pressing down on me.
But he didn’t need to know that. Didn’t need to know I’d taken to sleeping in the middle of the bed just to make it feel less empty.
Teddy shook his head. “Jesus, can’t even share a meal without it turning into World War Three.”
“You’re right.” I studied the pattern in the granite.
If I looked at him, he’d see everything written on my face—the hurt, the humiliation, the pathetic fact that I still cared what he’d done or hadn’t done with other women.
The pathetic fact that I didn’t want to be alone. “We can’t. Which is why you should go.”
“C’mon, Kels—”
“Please.” The word cracked down the middle. “Just go.”
I heard him shift behind me, the floor creaking under his weight. Heard him pick up his mug, set it back down. The hesitation in every movement, like he was fighting himself.
“Ain’t how I wanted this to go,” he said quietly.
I would have laughed if I didn’t think it’d come out as a sob. “How did you want it to go, Teddy? What exactly did you think would happen when you showed up here?”
“In my defense, I didn’t know you’d be here.”
“But if you had?”
Silence. Then, so soft I almost missed it, “I don’t know.”
The honesty of it somehow hurt worse than anger would have. At least anger was familiar. This—whatever this was—felt too much like grief. Like mourning something that was already dead but kept trying to claw its way back to life.
“We’ll figure out how to split time with the girls when they get here.
” I finally turned around, needing the conversation to move toward logistics, something safe and manageable.
“They mentioned some elaborate schedule. Christmas Eve dinner with me, Christmas morning with you, but Christmas dinner with me, I think. I’d have to go back and look at the text again to be sure. ”
“Surprised there’s not a color-coded spreadsheet.” He chuckled before adding, “Bet you anything, Addie’s the mastermind behind this.”
“Oh, it’s definitely Addison,” I agreed. “Sky’s the hopeless romantic. Addie’s the planner.”
For a moment, we almost smiled at each other. Almost connected over our daughters’ night-and-day personalities.
Teddy shrugged on his kutte and boots before moving toward the window, studying the storm that had graduated from sleet to something meaner. “This is worse than they predicted.”
“It’ll pass.” I didn’t know if I meant the storm or the unbearable tension between us.
“Maybe.” He turned from the window, and his expression made my stomach drop. “But if it doesn’t—if it keeps up—there ain’t gonna be a morning flight.”
The possibility of getting snowed in alone on Christmas made my skin crawl.
Not just without the girls, but truly alone, with nothing but a rental cabin and whatever ghosts had stowed away in my suitcases.
The kind of alone that echoed in your chest and made you do desperate things like drink the contents of the wine cabinet and booty call your ex-husband just to remember what it felt like to be touched.
“They’ll make it,” I said, more to myself than him. “They have to.”
“When’s the last time you spent Christmas alone?”
Never. The answer came immediately. There’d always been someone—my parents, then Teddy, then our kids. Even that first horrible Christmas after Levi, we’d all been together in our misery, stumbling through traditions that felt like swallowing glass.
“I’ll be fine,” I lied.
He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “Sure you will.”
I walked him to the door, careful to keep some distance between us. Outside, ice coated every surface, turning tree branches into crystal sculptures that would have been gorgeous if they weren’t so dangerous. The porch light caught the falling sleet, like static on an old TV.
“Drive careful,” I said, because someone had to say something to end this nightmare of an evening.
“Always do.” He lingered, neither in nor out, letting cold air flood the entrance. “Kelsey...”
“What?”
He shifted his weight, jaw working like he was chewing on words he couldn’t quite spit out. Then, finally, “You look good. Really good.”
The compliment hit me sideways, unexpected and unwanted. The corner of his mouth tipped up in that barely-there smile I’d fallen in love with as a teen.
“Guess all that money I had to pay you in the settlement went to good use,” he added.
The warmth that had started to bloom in my chest withered and died. Of course. Of fucking course he couldn’t just leave it at something nice. Had to twist the knife, remind me that our divorce had cost him—as if I hadn’t paid in ways money couldn’t measure.
“Goodnight,” I gritted out as I reached for the door.
His hand caught the frame, stopping me. “That came out wrong.”
“Bullshit. It came out exactly how you meant it.”
“Kels—”
I slammed the door in his face. Not my finest moment, but better than the alternative, which was doing something monumentally stupid like crying or admitting that everything I’d changed about myself had been an attempt to become someone who didn’t miss him.
I leaned against the door, forehead pressed to the wood, listening to his footsteps on the porch.
Waiting for the sound of his truck starting.
It took longer than it should have, and I wondered if he was sitting in the driver’s seat, staring at the cabin like I was staring at the door.
Two idiots separated by walls we’d built ourselves.
The engine finally turned over, the familiar rumble of his ancient Bronco that had survived longer than our marriage. I stayed pressed against the door until the sound faded, until I was sure he was gone, until the burning in my eyes faded and my legs started to ache from standing still.
The cabin immediately felt larger without him in it. Emptier. Like his presence had briefly filled all the hollow spaces before leaving them to echo.
My phone buzzed from the pocket of my cardigan.
Addison
Looks like the weather’s getting worse up there. Do you have everything you need?”
I looked around the cabin—at the remains of our dinner, at the two coffee mugs on the counter, at the dining room chair Teddy hadn’t bothered to push back in when he got up. Evidence of an evening that shouldn’t have happened.
How could I explain that their father had just left? That their elaborate plan had already started its spectacular collapse.
Me
I’ll handle it tomorrow. I just checked, and the bands of heavy snow aren’t supposed to move in until after mid-afternoon. Hopefully, you’ll be here long before then.
Love you both. Stay warm.
The sleet continued its assault on the windows, promising a long night ahead. I could clean up, wash the dishes, pretend this was just another evening in my new life. Or I could pour myself a glass of wine and admit what I’d known the moment I saw Teddy standing in the driveway.
Some doors, once opened, were impossible to close again. Even if you slammed them in someone’s face. Even if you leaned against them with all your weight, trying to keep the past from flooding back in.
Especially then.