CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TRISTEN
Six months of sleeping alone had taught me that loneliness wasn't about the absence of people. It was about the presence of someone you couldn't touch.
I could hear Aubree moving around in the master bedroom across the hall.
The soft pad of her footsteps on the hardwood.
The creak of the closet door. The muffled sound of her talking to Everly in that sing-song voice she used for bedtime routines.
Every night, the same sounds drifted through the walls, and every night, I lay in the guest room bed listening to them like a man dying of thirst beside a river he wasn't allowed to drink from.
We had settled into a rhythm that was comfortable and devastating in equal measure.
Morning coffee together while Everly babbled in her high chair.
Tag-team diaper changes and midnight feedings.
Weekend trips to the park where we pushed the stroller side by side and looked, to anyone watching, like a perfectly happy family.
But we slept in separate beds. We didn't kiss. We didn't touch except in the small, necessary ways that raising a child together required.
And I was slowly going insane.
Not because I deserved anything different.
I knew I didn't. I had spent months earning Aubree's trust back through consistent action, through honest communication, through putting her first in every decision I made.
I had turned down business trips that would have taken me away from her.
I had restructured my entire schedule around being present for family dinners and bedtime routines and the small, ordinary moments that I used to miss because I was too busy managing everyone else's problems.
But I still couldn't hold my wife. I still couldn't kiss her goodnight. I still couldn't reach for her in the darkness and feel her body curl against mine the way it used to.
I missed her so fucking much it felt like a physical wound that wouldn't heal.
Tonight was different, though. I could feel it in the air, in the way Aubree had looked at me over dinner, in the charged silence that had fallen between us after we put Everly to bed together.
I found her on the back patio, wrapped in a cardigan against the cool summer evening, a glass of wine cradled in her hands. The sunset painted the sky in shades of orange and purple, and she was staring at it with an expression I couldn't quite read.
"Mind if I join you?" I asked from the doorway.
She glanced over her shoulder at me, and something in her eyes made my breath catch. "Please."
I settled into the chair beside her, leaving a careful distance between us. The evening air smelled like jasmine from the garden Aubree had planted last month, the one she'd spent hours designing and tending while I watched from inside, aching to help but not wanting to intrude.
"Everly went down easy tonight," I said.
"She was exhausted from the park. All that crawling wore her out."
"She's getting so fast. It won't be long before she's walking."
"And then running." Aubree smiled, but there was something bittersweet in it. "And then running away from us completely."
"Not for a while yet, I hope."
"No. Not for a while."
We sat in comfortable silence for a few minutes, watching the colors fade from the sky.
I could feel her presence beside me like a gravitational pull, and I had to physically restrain myself from reaching out to touch her.
Six months of practice had made me good at keeping my hands to myself, but it never got easier.
"Can I tell you something?" Aubree asked quietly.
My heart stuttered. "Anything."
"I've been watching you. These past six months. Watching the way you've changed."
I stayed very still, afraid to move, afraid to breathe too loudly in case it broke whatever fragile thing was building between us.
"You're different now," she continued. "Not in big, dramatic ways. In small ones. The way you check in with me before making plans. The way you tell me things even when they're uncomfortable. The way you put Everly and me first without making a production out of it."
"I'm trying," I said carefully. "I know I still have a long way to go."
"That's the thing, though." She turned to look at me, and the fading light caught the blue of her eyes, making them seem almost luminous. "You're not trying to impress me. You're not doing it for credit or forgiveness. You're just doing it because it's the right thing to do."
I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly tight. "It's what I should have been doing all along."
"Yes. It is." She took a sip of her wine, her gaze drifting back to the horizon.
"I've been thinking a lot about what went wrong with us.
Not just the Oakleigh stuff, but before that.
The way we stopped talking about anything real.
The way we got so focused on having a baby that we forgot to take care of our marriage. "
"That was my fault."
"It was both of us, Tristen. I shut you out too. I was so consumed by my body failing over and over again that I stopped letting you in. I stopped trusting you with my pain because I thought I was protecting you from it."
The words hit me like a punch to the gut. I'd spent so long focused on my own failures that I'd never really considered hers. Never thought about the ways she might have been keeping secrets too, building walls between us out of the same misguided instinct to protect.
"I should have pushed harder," I said. "I should have noticed you were struggling and made you talk to me instead of just letting you carry it alone."
"Maybe. But I should have told you instead of waiting to be asked.
" She set her wine glass down on the small table between us and turned her body to face me fully.
"The point is, we both made mistakes. We both contributed to the distance that grew between us.
And I've been so focused on what you did wrong that I never really acknowledged what I did wrong. "
I didn't know what to say to that. I didn't want to dismiss her accountability, but I also didn't want her to take responsibility for my failures.
"Aubree, what I did with Oakleigh was inexcusable. The secrets, the prioritizing her comfort over yours, the way I let her publicly humiliate you while I stood there like a fucking coward. That's not on you. That's entirely on me."
"I know. And I'm not saying it isn't." She reached out and placed her hand on my forearm, and the contact sent electricity shooting through my entire body.
I couldn't remember the last time she'd touched me voluntarily, outside of passing Everly back and forth or brushing past each other in the kitchen.
"But I'm saying that I understand now why you made those choices.
Not because they were right, but because I know what it's like to be so scared of losing something that you do exactly the wrong thing to try to protect it. "
My vision blurred with sudden tears. I blinked them back, but one escaped anyway, sliding down my cheek before I could stop it.
"I thought protecting our future meant protecting the pregnancy," I said, my voice rough with emotion.
"I convinced myself that keeping you in the dark was an act of love.
That managing Oakleigh's behavior without involving you was somehow keeping you safe.
" I took a shaky breath. "I never realized our future was you.
Not the baby, not the pregnancy, not any of the things I told myself were more important.
You were always our future, and every decision that made you feel alone was my failure. "
Aubree's hand tightened on my arm, her fingers pressing into my skin through the fabric of my shirt.
"I'll spend the rest of my life making sure you never have to wonder where you come first," I continued. "Not because I'm trying to earn your forgiveness, but because you deserve it. You've always deserved it. I was just too stupid and scared to see it."
"Tristen."
"I'm not asking you to take me back." The words came out rough, scraping against the tightness in my throat.
"I'm not asking for anything. I just need you to know that I understand now.
I understand what I did wrong, and I understand that no amount of apologizing can undo it.
All I can do is keep showing you, every day, that I'm different.
That I will never make those choices again. "
She was crying now too, silent tears tracking down her cheeks in the fading light. I wanted to reach out and wipe them away, to pull her into my arms and hold her until all the pain I'd caused dissolved into nothing.
But I didn't. Because this wasn't about what I wanted. It was about what she needed.
"I've been so scared," she whispered. "Scared that if I let you back in, you'll hurt me again. Scared that the man I fell in love with doesn't exist anymore, and I've just been fooling myself into believing he might come back."
"He exists," I said. "He's sitting right here. He never left, Aubree. He just got lost for a while."
She studied my face in the twilight, searching for something I hoped she would find. I let her look, didn't try to hide anything, just sat there with all my flaws and failures on display and prayed it would be enough.
"I want to try," she finally said. "Really try. Not just living in the same house and raising Everly together, but being married again. Partners again."
The hope that surged through me was so intense it was almost painful. "Are you sure? I don't want you to feel pressured. I can wait as long as you need."
"I know you can. That's part of why I'm ready.
" She reached up and cupped my face in her hands, her palms warm against my cheeks.
"You've been so patient, Tristen. So consistent.
You've shown me every day that I matter more than your comfort, more than your pride, more than anything else.
And I think maybe I'm finally ready to believe it. "
I turned my head and pressed a kiss to her palm, letting my lips linger against her skin. She shivered at the contact, and I felt an answering tremor run through my own body.
"I love you," I said against her hand. "I have always loved you. I will always love you."
"I know." She leaned forward, slowly, giving me time to understand what she was doing. "I think I'm ready to start loving you again too."
Her lips met mine in a kiss that was soft and tentative and absolutely devastating.
I let her set the pace, let her control the depth and the duration, let her decide how much she was willing to give.
My hands stayed at my sides even though every nerve in my body was screaming at me to pull her closer.
When she finally drew back, her eyes were bright with tears and something that looked almost like wonder.
"Come to bed with me tonight," she whispered. "Not for sex. Just to sleep. I miss having you beside me."
"I miss it too." I pressed my forehead against hers, breathing her in. "More than you could possibly know."
We sat there on the patio until full dark fell around us, her hand in mine, our foreheads touching, the silence between us finally filled with something other than grief and distance.
It wasn't a fairy tale ending. We still had work to do, conversations to have, trust to rebuild one small act at a time. But for the first time since that awful night at the gala, I believed we were going to make it.
Not because I deserved a second chance.
But because I had finally learned how to earn one.