19. Jillian
— ? —
Jillian
The band had shifted to a slow tune, one that seemed to pull the remaining guests together like a gentle tide.
I watched Trevor cross the ballroom toward me, and even after everything that had happened tonight, the public apology, the exposure, the dance, the balcony, my heart still stuttered at the sight of him.
Three and a half years, and he could still do that to me.
“Last dance,” he said, holding out his hand. Not a question. A hope.
I took it.
He pulled me closer than he had during our earlier dance, closer than he’d held me in months. My cheek found the space between his shoulder and his jaw like it had been waiting there for me, and I felt his exhale, deep, unsteady, against my hair.
“Jillian.” My name, nothing more. But the way he said it held everything.
I closed my eyes and let myself feel it: his hand warm against my lower back, his fingers threaded through mine, the slow sway of our bodies moving together in a rhythm we’d learned years ago and somehow never forgotten.
The room faded, the glittering chandeliers, the whispered conversations, the curious glances of the remaining guests who’d witnessed everything tonight. None of it mattered.
There was only this. Only him. Only us.
The music began to fade, and Trevor’s arm tightened around me, as if he could hold onto the moment by holding onto me.
“Come home,” he whispered against my temple. “Please, Jillian. Come home.”
I pulled back just enough to see his face. The vulnerability there still startled me, this man who’d been raised to hide every emotion behind perfect manners and polished smiles. His eyes were wet. His jaw was trembling.
“Yes,” I said.
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Yes, Trevor.” I reached up and touched his face, feeling the rough edge of his jaw beneath my fingertips. “I’ll come home.”
He kissed me then, soft and reverent, right there on the dance floor with whoever remained watching. I didn’t care. I was too busy trying not to cry.
***
We gathered my wrap and said our goodbyes, Harper hugged me so tight I thought she might crack a rib, and Margot pressed her hand against my cheek and said nothing at all, which somehow said everything. But before we reached the car, I stopped.
“Wait.” I touched Trevor’s arm. “There’s a thing I need to tell you.”
His expression tightened with fear, and I hated that I’d put that reflex in him. Hated that my words had become a thing he braced for.
“It’s not bad,” I said quickly. “At least, I don’t think it is.”
We stepped into a quiet alcove near the coat check. Trevor searched my face, waiting.
“I called Diana this morning,” I said. “My lawyer. Before the gala, before I knew what you were planning tonight.” I took a breath. “I asked her to stop the divorce proceedings.”
Trevor went very still.
“I didn’t do it because of tonight,” I continued.
“I didn’t do it because of the apology or the dance or any of that.
I did it because…” My voice caught, and I had to pause.
“Because I finally believe that the man who hurt me, the man who made me feel invisible for so long, is gone. You’ve been showing me for months, and I was too scared to see it.
Too scared to trust it. But this morning I woke up and I just… knew.”
He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. I watched the weight of it hit him, really hit him, and then his knees seemed to give out. He sat down hard on the narrow bench against the wall, his hand pressed to his mouth.
“Trevor…”
“I’m okay.” His voice was wrecked. “I just…” He looked up at me with tears streaming down his face, making no move to hide them. “This morning? You called her this morning?”
I nodded, sitting down beside him.
“Before you knew about any of it. Before I apologized, before Chloe…” He stopped, shaking his head. “You chose this. You chose me. When you didn’t have to.”
“I did.”
He broke down then, really broke down, the way I’d never seen him do in all our years together. His shoulders shook, and I wrapped my arms around him and held on while he cried. The coat check attendant very pointedly looked elsewhere. I didn’t care about that either.
“I don’t deserve you,” he finally managed.
“That’s not for you to decide,” I said. “It never was.”
***
The drive home felt strange. The same roads, the same leather interior of Trevor’s car, the same city lights blurring past, but everything was different. I’d left for the gala from Harper’s apartment, my temporary refuge for the past several months. I was coming home from it with my husband.
My husband. The word felt new in my mouth.
Trevor’s hand found mine across the center console, and I let our fingers intertwine.
Neither of us spoke. We didn’t need to. The silence was comfortable in a way it hadn’t been in so long, not the dense, suffocating quiet of two people with too much to say and no courage to say it, but the peaceful hush of two people who finally had time.
I watched his profile as he drove, the way the streetlights played across his features. He glanced over and caught me looking, and his mouth curved into an almost shy grin.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing.” I squeezed his hand. “Just remembering how to do this.”
***
When we pulled into the driveway, I steeled myself.
The house had never felt like mine, Margot had decorated it before we’d even moved in, all cold marble and severe angles and furniture that seemed designed to discourage actual sitting.
I’d tried to love it because Trevor loved it, but it had always felt like living in a museum exhibit about someone else’s life.
Trevor opened my door and helped me out, then hesitated at the front entrance.
“There’s a thing I should probably prepare you for,” he said.
My stomach tightened. “What?”
Instead of answering, he unlocked the door and guided me inside.
I stopped breathing.
The foyer was transformed. Gone was the severe console table with the abstract sculpture that had always looked vaguely hostile.
In its place stood an antique writing desk, the kind with delicate carved legs that I’d admired in that shop in Charleston on our honeymoon.
There was a soft rug underfoot, warm ivory and pale blue, and the walls, the walls were painted in a shade of sage green I’d mentioned once, maybe twice, years ago.
“Trevor,” I breathed.
He led me into the living room, and I pressed my hand to my mouth.
The cold leather sectional was gone. In its place sat a deep, comfortable sofa in cream linen, the kind you could actually sink into.
There were bookshelves now, real ones, filled with books.
A piano stood near the window, not a grand piano for show, but an upright, well-loved and warm.
The art on the walls was different, softer, pieces that felt like they belonged in a home rather than a gallery.
“How…” I couldn’t form the question.
Trevor stood behind me, close but not touching.
“Do you remember, on our honeymoon, you told me about the house you imagined growing up? The one you’d design for yourself someday?
” His voice was quiet. “You described it in so much detail. The writing desk where you’d do your correspondence.
The books everywhere. The upright piano because you always wanted to learn.
The colors…” He gestured around us. “Sage green in the living room. Blue in the bedroom. Yellow in the kitchen, like your grandmother’s. ”
I turned to face him, tears blurring my vision.
“I wanted it to feel like yours when you came back,” he said. “I had to believe you would.”
I couldn’t speak. I just stepped into his arms and held on.
***
We never made it past the living room floor.
Trevor kicked off his shoes, and I abandoned my heels somewhere near the new sofa, and we sank down onto the soft rug together. He loosened his bow tie. I unpinned my hair. He produced a bottle of wine from the kitchen and two glasses, but we barely touched them.
Instead, we talked.
Really talked, for the first time in what felt like years.
“I was so lonely,” I told him, and my voice cracked on the words I’d been too afraid to say. “Even when you were right beside me, I felt invisible. Like I was a prop in your life instead of a person in it. Like you’d married an idea of a wife rather than me.”
He absorbed this with his jaw tight, his eyes never leaving mine.
“I started to believe that maybe I deserved it,” I continued. “That maybe I wasn’t interesting enough, or accomplished enough, or Anderson enough to warrant your actual attention. That I should just be grateful for what I had and stop wanting more.”
“Jillian…”
“No, let me finish.” I took a shaky breath.
“I lost myself. I gave up my work because it seemed easier than fighting for it. I let your mother decorate our home because I didn’t think my taste mattered.
I shrunk myself down to fit the space you all made for me, and I hated every minute of it, but I didn’t know how to stop. ”
Trevor was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was raw.
“I never felt like enough,” he said slowly, like he was discovering the words as he spoke them.
“For my family, for the Foundation, for any of it. There was always another expectation, another standard, another legacy to uphold. And somewhere along the way, I learned that the safest thing to do was just… stop feeling anything.”
He looked down at his hands.
“If I didn’t let myself feel, I couldn’t disappoint anyone. I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t hurt.” He swallowed hard. “But I also couldn’t love. Not really. Not the way you deserved.”
“Trevor…”
“I shut you out because letting you in felt too dangerous. If I really let you see me, all of me, the parts that weren’t polished and perfect, you might realize what a fraud I was.
So I kept you at arm’s length and told myself it was enough.
Told myself you were happy.” His voice broke.
“And I lost you anyway. I lost you by trying so hard not to.”
We sat with that for a long time. The house was quiet around us, this new house that he’d rebuilt with his bare hands and broken heart.
“I don’t want to be arm’s length anymore,” I whispered.
“Neither do I.” He reached out and took my hand. “I want to be terrified with you. I want to feel everything, even when it hurts. I want…” He exhaled. “I want to be your husband again. Your real husband. Not just the man who shares your bed and your name.”
“Then be him,” I said. “Be him, and I’ll be here.”
We talked until my voice went hoarse, until the candles burned low, until the first hints of gray light began to touch the windows. And somewhere in the middle of it all, mid-sentence, mid-confession, my eyes grew heavy.
“You’re falling asleep,” Trevor said softly.
“‘M not,” I mumbled against his shoulder.
He shifted so I could lean against him more comfortably, and his lips brushed against my hair.
“Stay,” he whispered. “Just stay.”
I did.
For the first time in months, I slept without dreaming.
***
I woke to cold.
The spot beside me was empty. The rug beneath my cheek was unfamiliar, and for one terrible, lurching moment, I thought I’d dreamed it all, the gala, the dance, coming home. My heart hammered against my ribs as I sat up, disoriented, my dress wrinkled and my hair a disaster.
Then I smelled coffee.
And other things, butter, maybe, and a hint of sugar. And beneath it all, the unmistakable sound of someone singing very, very badly.
I followed the noise to the kitchen, the new kitchen, with its yellow walls and copper pots hanging from a rack I didn’t remember seeing before, and stopped in the doorway.
Trevor stood at the stove, barefoot and rumpled in his untucked dress shirt and suit trousers.
He was frying up French toast and absolutely butchering what sounded like an attempt at a jazz standard, his voice cracking on every high note and wandering off-key with cheerful abandon.
The morning light caught the silver at his temples, the laugh lines around his eyes.
He looked ridiculous. He looked beautiful.
He turned, still humming, and saw me. His face softened into a tenderness that made my chest ache.
“Hi,” he said.
I crossed the kitchen in three steps, took the spatula from his hand, and set it on the counter.
“I missed you,” I said.
His arms came around me, pulling me close. His lips brushed my forehead, my cheek, the corner of my mouth.
“Show me,” he said.