63. Fiona
Fiona
Fiona sat in the car outside her apartment for a long time, hands still on the steering wheel. The engine had been off for ten minutes, maybe longer. She didn’t know. Time had started slipping sideways again.
She could still taste him.
Her lips were sore in the best possible way. Her chest ached in the worst.
It had been easy to forget—when his mouth was on hers, when his hands cradled her like something precious—just how thoroughly he’d broken her. How precise his betrayal had been.
Because it hadn’t just been a thoughtless mistake.
It had been sustained. Strategic. Cruel.
The account had been a joke, he’d claimed. Just something light. Something harmless. But it hadn’t felt harmless when she’d seen her words—her sincere, hopeful, sometimes silly words—framed like they were beneath him.
It had been humiliating.
Worse, it had been clarifying.
Because the man she loved, the man she had married, had looked at her joy, her work, her soft optimism—and decided it was worth mocking.
He’d laughed with his friends. Let them call her stupid, unimportant, laughable. He’d played the part of the loving husband in private, but in public he’d rolled his eyes. Shrunk her down so he wouldn’t feel small himself.
But then—he’d changed.
He didn’t just apologize. He dismantled his whole life.
He contested the divorce just to give her more—his apartment, his savings, money she hadn’t asked for and wouldn’t have taken if the gesture hadn’t been so clear: You are worth more than I ever let myself show.
He drove to Sweetwater. He handed her a foil-wrapped plate of homemade cookies and asked nothing in return.
He’d stood in front of his glittering, hollow crowd—the people who once laughed at her to her face and then harder behind her back—and told the truth. Not the clever version. Not the brand-safe version. The raw, unvarnished truth. That he’d been wrong. That she mattered.
The anonymous donation to her classroom fund. The volunteer strategy consultant who’d been helping the district apply for education grants. She hadn’t even known it was him at first.
Because that version of Dean—the one who didn’t need credit—was new.
And terrifying.
Because now she had to ask herself: What if he really did change?
And what if she still loved him?
Because she did. God, she did.
Even now. Even after everything. She could still feel the echo of that kiss like it had rewired her heartbeat. She could feel the touch of his hands when he’d handed her the cinnamon rolls—awkward and flour-dusted, like he didn’t know how to offer tenderness unless he baked it into something.
And still. Still.
She loved him.
God, she did.
The ache of it curled around her ribs.
She pressed a hand over her chest like that might calm the riot inside it.
You’re allowed , Emma had said.
You’re allowed to forgive him , Marcy had told her.
Fiona let that settle. Like a permission slip she could finally sign for herself.
She was allowed to want him back.
She was allowed to be happy.
But what if the path to that happiness was tangled and messy and nothing like the life she’d imagined for herself? What if it meant loving someone who could never respect her?
Fiona wandered through the apartment like a ghost haunting her own life. Everything was exactly as she'd left it, but it felt different now. Changed. Like she was seeing it through new eyes.
She found herself in the living room, staring at the bookshelves. Her books were still there—the teaching guides, the child development texts, the binders full of lesson plans she'd accumulated over the years. Dean had left them all exactly where they belonged.
She pulled out one of her favorite resources, and a piece of paper fluttered to the floor. Dean's handwriting, in his careful block letters.
Fiona's breath caught. She bent to pick up the paper, then noticed more—sticky notes tucked between pages, loose sheets of paper covered in Dean's writing scattered throughout her books.
She pulled out another book. More notes fell out.
Fiona sank onto the couch, papers scattered around her like fallen leaves. Her hands shook as she read note after note, each one a revelation.
The notes weren't just research. They were apologies written to no one, realizations scrawled in margins, a man trying to understand the woman he'd married.
Fiona's vision blurred. These weren't the thoughts of a man who saw her as beneath him. These were the desperate scribblings of someone trying to understand something magnificent he'd almost lost.
There were dozens of them. Tucked in every book, every binder, every resource she'd ever used. A paper trail of his awakening, his growing respect, his awe.
The last note was on a separate piece of paper, stuck inside her lesson planning binder:
She's brilliant. She's been brilliant this whole time, and I was too stupid and insecure to see it.
Fiona set the papers down with trembling hands.
The man who'd written these notes didn't think she was naive or simple or beneath him. He thought she was extraordinary.
Her breath caught on a sob that cracked her ribs open.
This wasn’t just love.
This was respect.
She curled her knees to her chest, arms full of his notes, her heart aching in the most unexpected, radiant way.
She felt safe in her love for him.
And all at once she knew, with quiet certainty, that everything— everything —was going to be okay.
Fiona sat on the bed, knees tucked up, the city quiet outside her windows. The phone felt warm in her hand. Familiar, but heavy tonight.
There were no drafts. No rehearsals. Just her, and the words waiting in her chest.
She opened the app. Tapped her profile. @missfionasays. Still hers. Still soft, still earnest—still her .
And she typed:
I want him to be mine again.
I want to be his.
She stared at the screen. Two lines. Embarrassing, maybe. But not shameful. Not when it came from her. Not when it was posted on her terms.
Let them laugh if they wanted to. The trendy crowd, the clever people who thought sincerity was na?ve.
She was done hiding.
She hit "Share."
The post blinked into place, neat and quiet.
Fiona set her phone down on the windowsill, screen glowing in the dark.
Dean wouldn’t see it tonight. But maybe he’d see it in the morning.
She wondered what he’d feel when he did. If he’d know that her heart—finally, fully—was again his.
And what he would do about it.
The banging startled her awake.
Fiona sat up too fast, heart pounding, the blanket tangled around her legs. It was still dark—barely morning. The city outside was hushed, breathless. And someone was at her door.
No— in her apartment.
Her hallway light flicked on as she stumbled toward it, adrenaline and confusion crashing through her sleep-heavy body.
Dean.
He was there. In the hallway. Chest rising hard, shirt clinging to his back, keys still dangling from the doorknob.
He looked wild—completely, beautifully wild. Hair unkempt, eyes bright with something dangerous and bright.
And then he saw her.
“Fiona,” he breathed, like a prayer and a vow in one.
She didn’t even have time to respond before he was there, in front of her, close enough to touch.
His hands cupped her face. Warm. Steady. Desperate.
And then his mouth was on hers.
The kiss was heat and urgency and devotion. Like he was kissing her with everything he didn’t say during those weeks apart. His thumb stroked her cheek, his other hand cradling the back of her head like she was precious.
Fiona let out a breathless sound and melted into it—into him—into this .
She barely registered the words at first. He was kissing her, but he was also saying things, broken between kisses:
“Marry me—Jesus, Fiona— marry me —I love you—I love you so much—I’m sorry—I’m so sorry?—”
And then?—
He dropped.
Right there in the hallway, on one knee.
He looked up at her, completely undone.
“I was a damn fool,” he said, voice shaking.
“I thought I knew how to be a husband. But I didn’t know a thing.
I didn’t know how to protect you, how to honor you.
I thought marriage was about being impressive.
But it’s not. It’s about choosing someone.
Over and over. It’s about being able to love you on your terms.”
Fiona’s breath caught.
“I don’t deserve to ask,” Dean whispered. “But I’m on my knees anyway. To beg you—please let me try. Let me spend the rest of my life loving you the way I should have from the start.”
This was a man who had burned his whole world down and come back with the ash in his hands, asking to build something new from the ground up.
And it was him . Her husband. Her idiot. Her broken, reformed, still-trying husband.
She carded her hands through his hair, studying his face as he knelt before her. This close, she could see everything—the exhaustion etched around his eyes, the way his breath caught when she touched him, the desperate hope.
He looked wrecked and beautiful and completely, utterly hers.
Suddenly the distance between them was intolerable. She needed to be in his arms. She dropped to her knees, too—right there in the narrow hallway—and kissed him again. Fierce. Certain.
“Yes,” she whispered against his lips. “Yes.”
His hands trembled as they came to rest on her waist. “Fiona?—”
She kissed him again.
"I love you," he whispered against her lips.
She pulled back just enough to meet his eyes, her own shining with tears and joy and everything they'd been through to get here.
"Good," she said.