Chapter 22
Kristen
Kristen walked back across the sand to the cottage. She felt nervous and on edge.
She hadn’t anticipated Theo turning up here. She didn’t know how she felt about that. She wasn’t ready. She hadn’t thought through what she would say when she saw him next.
She had no idea what she wanted.
She’d been so angry the night she’d left, but the heat had cooled and left only sadness.
She wasn’t capable of hiding her feelings. She was sad, and she knew the sadness showed. And maybe that was all right. The years they’d spent together would have been diminished if she hadn’t felt sad. Overall, they’d been good years.
She lifted her hand and scraped her hair back from her face. Her usually carefully styled hair was windblown and tangled. She wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. Her flip-flops were dangling from her fingers and her skirt flapped against her legs in the breeze. Maybe this was what it came down to. Them being their most basic selves, devoid of artifice.
“Theo.” She kept her voice steady. “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be working.”
“I found someone to cover for me.”
Her mouth almost fell open. He’d asked someone to cover for him? She couldn’t think of a time when he’d done that. “Why?”
“Because I needed to see you. To talk to you.”
“How did you find me?”
“I tracked your phone. Don’t be angry. It’s the first and only time in our marriage that I’ve done such a thing and if you want me to leave right away then I will.”
“Why didn’t you just call and ask where I was?”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t answer. I was afraid you wouldn’t want to speak to me.” He took a breath. “And I wouldn’t have blamed you if that was the case.”
He seemed nervous around her. Theo, the calmest most in control person she knew, was nervous to be talking to her. His hair was ruffled and a couple of buttons on his shirt were undone, as if he’d dressed in a hurry and hadn’t bother glancing in a mirror.
“You could have come after you’d finished work.”
“I was afraid that might be too late,” he said. “Seeing you was my priority, and despite what you may think, you are my priority. Our marriage is my priority.”
She couldn’t quite believe he’d asked someone to cover for him. It made the hurt inside her feel a little less raw. “What did you want to say?”
He glanced at her and then at the beach. “Can we walk for a bit?”
“If that’s what you want.” She stood still and waited as he walked toward her and then she turned and retraced her steps. There was no sign of her mother, so presumably she was back inside the cottage.
They walked side by side in silence for a few minutes, the only people on this stretch of sand.
Finally, he stopped. “Those things you said to me the other night—”
She wasn’t going to apologize, and she wasn’t going to take any of it back. “I meant every word, Theo.”
“I know. I’ve had time to think about it, and everything you said was true. I wasn’t there when Todd was born, and I should have been. I was in the middle of a difficult surgery, and I made a bad choice. I thought I could finish the tricky part of the operation and still get to you in time. I was wrong. I regret it, but nowhere near as much as I regret not being there when your father was brought into hospital...” He waited a beat, choosing his words. “Despite what you think, it wasn’t because you weren’t my priority. It wasn’t because I didn’t care.”
She waited, saying nothing and Theo turned to look at her.
“I never felt as if you really needed me, Kristen.”
She frowned. “Theo—”
“Let me finish, because this isn’t easy to explain.” He rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “You’re the most competent, capable person I know. You are perfectly in control of every aspect of your life. There is nothing you can’t handle. Or so I thought. As I said, my default is to assume you don’t need me.”
She stared at him. He thought she didn’t need him?
He carried on talking. “The people I deal with at work—they need me. I do what I can to make a difference. And I can handle it because I cut out emotions. To be an effective surgeon I have to be able to block out the knowledge that the relatives are in the waiting room, relying on me to save their loved one. I have to block out feelings altogether.”
“I know this, Theo. And I know you’re a gifted surgeon.” She couldn’t stay silent on that. “I’ve always known that.”
“What I’m saying is that I learned how to switch it off and that became second nature to me. What was harder,” he said slowly, “was being able to switch it back on. I’d programmed to stay detached. When your father died, you were bereft. For the first time ever you seemed to need me, and I had no idea how to comfort you. I had no idea how to fix it for you. I have never felt so useless. The one time you desperately needed me, and I was failing. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, Kristen. It was never that I didn’t care. I cared deeply, and that was the problem.” He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You said that I seem to be able to handle everyone’s emotions except yours, and that’s true. But that isn’t because you’re not important to me. It’s the opposite. I can handle other people’s pain because I can detach myself emotionally. Even with Michael, when he was miserable about his marriage, I was able to maintain a degree of emotional detachment. That’s second nature. But with you? I’ve never been able to detach, and when your father died—your lowest moment—I was left trying to deal with emotions I had no idea how to handle, both my own and yours.”
She looked into his eyes and what she saw there made her heart turn over.
His hands tightened on her shoulders. “You are the person I love most in the whole world. The person I care most about. I love the kids, obviously, but it begins with you. My whole job is to help people, that’s what I do, but after your father died—” he swallowed “—do you know how it feels to not be able to help the one person you want to help? I felt impotent watching you grieve. Helpless. I had no idea what to do or say to make it better. I had no idea how to comfort you. I had no idea how to fix things.”
She didn’t know what to say so she let him talk.
“Despite my job, I had no experience dealing with grief,” he said. “I break bad news and then I’m out of there, leaving someone else to handle the fallout. It wasn’t until we lost Michael that I had some understanding of how it felt to lose someone you love. It made me realize that no one can make the pain go away. You can’t rush a grieving person to surgery and fix it. The best you can do is be there for them, as you were for me. I’d wake up in the night and you’d be there beside me holding my hand. And when I was sad, you’d rub my shoulders and bring me a cup of coffee. It wasn’t what you said. It was just the fact that you were there, and you made sure that I knew you were there.” He paused. “You taught me that support doesn’t always mean fixing things. Sometimes it means just staying close to someone and supporting them through all the bad things that they’re feeling. I wish I’d known that sooner.”
She felt her own throat thicken.
“Theo—”
“I’m not good at that, so I focus on what I am good at. You said I need the applause and the limelight, but that isn’t true. What I need is to feel that I’m making a difference. That my contribution matters. That’s why I work more than I should. Because I feel I’m making a difference. But somehow, with you, I didn’t feel I could help. I should have sat down and talked to you. I should have asked you what you needed, what I could do. You were so busy all the time, so full on, I assumed you were fine. And that’s no excuse,” he said quickly. “Those things you said to me were hard to listen to, but the hardest thing was hearing you say you’d forgotten how it felt to be happy. That for a short time another man had made you happy.”
“I didn’t have an affair, Theo.”
“I believe you. It doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not losing us and what we have over that. I don’t care. I only care about the fact that being with me wasn’t making you happy. Of everything you said, those were the words that hit hardest.” His hands tightened on her shoulders. “I didn’t go to bed that night. I sat on the bottom stair where you’d been sitting when I came home, and I thought back over our marriage. You said I’d chosen my life and my priorities, but Krissy you’re my priority. Nothing is more important to me than your happiness. And if you’ll give me another chance, I’ll prove it to you. I can’t ever make up for not being by your side in the hospital the night your father died, and not being there for you afterward in the way that you needed, but if you’ll give me another chance I swear I will be there for you from this point on.”
She heard the love and sincerity in his voice and knew that he meant what he was saying.
But that didn’t mean she believed he could do it.
On the other hand, he’d delegated work to someone else and driven out here to talk to her, so that told her something.
“We can’t change who we are, Theo.”
“Change?” He paused. “No. You’re right. We can’t change. Not completely. This is who I am. But can I do better? Yes, definitely. Can I make you happy? I believe I can, Krissy, if you’ll give me that chance.”
She respected the fact that he wasn’t promising to change into a different person. And she wouldn’t have wanted him to change who he was. Just the way he acted on occasion.
And the fault wasn’t all his, she could see that now.
“You’re right that I do try and hold everything together. I’m not good at saying when I’m not coping.” Why hadn’t she talked to him properly, before they’d reached the point of explosion? “I need to tell you how I’m feeling, instead of expecting you to read my mind.”
He gave a tentative smile. “Given how bad I am at reading your mind, that would be helpful.”
“And I need to put more things into my life.” She thought about her mother, stepping forward into a new life so bravely. It was never too late to change things. “I don’t know what yet. I haven’t thought that far. But I can see that I let my life with my father consume me. It’s time to broaden my horizons.”
“Maybe we can think that through together. Maybe it’s time we both broadened our horizons. What do you think?”
Together.
He was asking her if they could have a second chance and she thought about Trisha, who would have done anything to have a second chance with Michael. And her mother, who had forgiven her father the affair and gone on to have a long and happy marriage.
“Let’s try it,” she said finally. “Take it day by day.”
“I’m on probation?”
“Maybe. To keep you on your toes.” She smiled. “We’ll see how many times you leave me stranded in a restaurant over the next month, and then reassess.”
He grabbed her and hugged her tightly, muttering words into her hair that she couldn’t quite make out. And she hugged him back, because it felt good to be held by him without a gaping distance between them.
They stood like that for a moment, locked together, and then eventually she pulled away.
“We should go back to the cottage. You must be tired after your drive. I’ll make you coffee.”
“Coffee would be appreciated. What is this place, anyway?” He glanced over his shoulder to the cottage and she smiled.
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you another time.”
Because there would be another time, she already knew that. She’d try again, and he’d try again, because that was what people did when they loved each other and she did love Theo and she believed that he loved her, too.
For now, that was enough.