23. Blair #2
We stood there in the middle of the restaurant, the documents crushed between us, and I could feel it shifting.
Some final barrier coming down, some last resistance crumbling.
I’d spent months being angry, being hurt, being righteously certain of my own innocence.
And now I knew what it felt like to be the one jumping to conclusions.
To be the one seeing betrayal where there was only love.
“We should probably go,” Will said eventually. “The staff is starting to stare.”
“Since when do you care about making a scene?”
“Since I realized that making scenes in public is actually kind of liberating.” He pulled back, wiped his face with his hand, and I realized he’d been crying too.
We were both a mess, standing in an upscale restaurant with tears on our faces and legal documents clutched between us.
“Come on. I know a curb on Thames Street that’s perfect for emotional breakdowns. ”
We walked there together, hand in hand through the Newport streets.
The evening air was cool and salt-tinged, the last light of sunset painting the sky in shades of pink and gold.
We passed the galleries and the shops and the tourists taking photos of architecture.
We passed couples walking to dinner and families heading home and all the ordinary business of a Friday night in summer.
The curb he’d mentioned was outside my gallery, in a quiet spot where the streetlight cast a warm glow on the cobblestones.
My name was still on the door, the gold lettering catching the light.
Inside, the walls were bare, the sold paintings already delivered to their new owners, but the space still felt like mine. Still felt like possibility.
We sat on the curb. The stone was cold through my dress, but I didn’t care. I leaned into Will, and he wrapped an arm around me, and we watched the last of the sunset fade into twilight.
“We’re both idiots,” I said finally.
“Thoroughly. Completely.”
“I can’t believe I thought you were divorcing me.”
“I can’t believe I thought you were cheating on me.”
“We’re a matched set.”
“We really are.” He laughed, a quiet sound, almost surprised. “Dr. Reyes is going to have a field day with this. She keeps telling me that I need to practice asking for clarification instead of making assumptions. I thought she meant me. Turns out it’s genetic.”
“It’s not genetic. We’re not even related.”
“It’s contagious, then. You caught my worst habits.”
“I already had my own bad habits. I didn’t need yours.”
“And yet here we are.”
We sat in silence for a while, just existing together, watching the street lights come on and the stars begin to emerge. A couple walked past with a dog. A car drove by, music drifting from its open windows. The ordinary sounds of an ordinary evening, and nothing about this was ordinary at all.
“The house is really mine?” I asked.
“Really yours.”
“The prenup is really gone?”
“Gone. Torn up. Marguerite said she’d never watched a man work so hard to give away the very thing that was supposed to protect him.” He paused. “My family was appalled. Beaumont men don’t hand their houses to their wives, apparently. It simply isn’t done.”
“But you did it anyway.”
“I’d have given you everything. Every penny, every property, every investment.
If that’s what it took to show you that I’m serious.
” His arm tightened around me. “I’m not my father, Blair.
I’m not going to spend thirty years holding assets over my wife’s head to keep her trapped in a marriage she doesn’t want. ”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to know.” He turned to look at me, his face serious in the lamplight. “I wanted you to know that I’m not hedging my bets. That I’m not keeping an exit strategy in my back pocket. That I’m all in, completely, no matter what happens next.”
“Will.”
“You can still leave me. You can still decide this isn’t working, that the damage is too deep, that you’d rather start over with someone who doesn’t come with all this baggage.
But if you do, you’ll have the house, and the security, and everything you need to build whatever life you want.
I’m not going to hold anything over your head.
I’m not going to make you dependent on me.
I’m just going to try, every day, to be someone you want to stay with. ”
I looked at him. This was a man who had spent months destroying our marriage and was now spending months rebuilding it, with no guarantee of success. At the husband who had asked me an unforgivable question and was now trying to earn forgiveness through action instead of words.
“I want to come home,” I said.
His whole body went still.
“Blair.”
“I want to come home.” The words felt right as I said them.
True. “Not because of the house. Not because you gave me something. Because I miss you. Because I love you. Because I’m tired of sleeping alone in Nan’s guest room when the person I want is right here, offering me everything I ever needed. ”
His arm tightened around me. I could feel him trembling, just slightly, the way he did when he was trying to hold back strong emotion.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
“But…” I pulled back to look at him. “We’re going to do this right. I’m not moving back in tonight. We’re going to keep dating. Keep rebuilding. Keep doing the work of figuring out who we are together after everything that happened.”
“Whatever you need.”
“And when I come home, it’s going to be because we’ve both earned it. Not because of the house. Not because of the baby. Not because it’s easier than staying apart. Because we’ve actually built something strong enough to last.”
“I can do that.”
“I need you to keep being this person.” I held his gaze. “The one who does therapy and builds shelves and gives away houses because he wants me to feel safe. The one who shows up even when it’s hard. The one who fights for us instead of against us.”
“I can do that.”
“I need you to keep showing up. Every day. Even when I’m difficult. Even when the work of staying together seems harder than the alternative.”
“I can do that too.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” He took my hands in his. “Blair, I promise you. I’ll spend the rest of my life being this person. The person you deserve. The person I should have been all along. The person who would have believed you from the start if he hadn’t been so scared.”
I looked at his face. At the tears still drying on his cheeks, at the hope and fear and love all tangled together in his expression. At the lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there a year ago, the evidence of everything we’d been through.
I believed him.
Finally, I believed him.