23. Christine #2
“And I listen the first time,” he says. “Before you have to ask twice. Before you have to get loud.”
“Before I have to get loud.”
He nods. Once. Like a man signing something.
“Is that a yes?” he asks, and his voice isn’t steady at all now.
“It’s a yes.”
He doesn’t kiss me. He puts his forehead against my shoulder and breathes, and I put my hand in his hair and let him, and below us the party goes on without either of us for a while.
On Monday morning I call my lawyer and tell her to withdraw the petition.
Not because everything is fixed. Because we’ve finally agreed on how we’re going to keep fixing it.
***
Thursday morning Isabella is weighed and measured and screams at a stranger with a stethoscope, and Benedict is there for all nine minutes of it, holding her feet.
At half past ten he sits down on my mother’s kitchen floor with his back against the dishwasher and the phone on speaker, and he says four sentences in forty minutes. The last one is that the board should back Grayson, because Grayson is right and he has read it twice.
They back Grayson. He keeps the division, and the jobs, and his job.
Benedict puts the phone in a drawer and asks me what I want for lunch, and I have to go stand in the bathroom for a minute.
***
Two weeks later, we pack. The boxes aren’t heavy, but they feel like they weigh a thousand pounds.
I stand in the middle of my mother’s living room, Isabella on my hip, watching Benedict carry the last of our things to the car. Three suitcases. A box of baby supplies. The diaper bag that’s seen better days, its seams held together by determination and a safety pin I found in Mom’s sewing kit.
That’s it. That’s our whole life, packed up and ready.
It should feel like more. It should feel bigger, somehow - this moment of leaving, of returning, of choosing to rebuild something I thought was irreparably broken. Instead it just feels like breathing. Like the most natural thing in the world.
Clara stands by the window, arms crossed, pretending she’s not crying.
“Sweetheart, you don’t have to-”
“Mom.” I cross to her, shift Isabella so I can pull her into a one-armed hug. She smells like lavender and the particular warmth of home, and my throat tightens despite myself. “We’ll be twenty minutes away. You’ll see us all the time.”
“It won’t be the same.” Her voice wavers. “I was getting used to having you here. Both of you. Waking up and knowing my girls were down the hall.”
“No. It’ll be better.” I pull back, smooth a strand of hair from her face. “You’ll have your living room back. Your bathroom. Your sanity.”
She laughs, wet and unconvincing. “I liked the chaos.”
Benedict appears in the doorway, hesitant in that way he’s learned - not assuming he belongs in our moments, waiting to be invited. But Clara waves him in without hesitation.
“Come here.”
He comes. She has to reach up - way up - to cup his face in both hands, this small woman holding the jaw of a man who once commanded empires.
“You take care of them.”
“With my life.”
“You take care of yourself too.” Her eyes are fierce now, the tears burning off into something harder. “No more disappearing. No more drowning alone. You call me. You hear me? When it gets hard - and it will get hard - you call.”
Benedict’s throat works. I watch something crack open in his face.
“Yes, Mom.”
Clara pulls him down and kisses his forehead. The gesture is so maternal, so accepting, that I have to look away before I start crying too.
Then she turns to me and takes Isabella from my arms, pressing her face into the baby’s soft curls.
“Grandma loves you, my darling. So much. So much.”
Isabella babbles happily, grabbing a fistful of Clara’s hair with the particular violence of the very young. My mother doesn’t even flinch.
We say goodbye three more times. At the door. At the car. On the sidewalk, where Clara stands waving until we turn the corner and I lose sight of her in the side mirror.
I watch her disappear - this woman who held me together when I was falling apart, who gave me a place to land when my whole world collapsed - and feel something shift in my chest.
Not sadness.
Beginning.
***
The penthouse looks different.
I haven’t been back since the night the paramedics carried me out of here, nine months pregnant, gripping a stranger’s hand in the elevator.
The last thing I did in that nursery was stand with my hand on my belly and promise my daughter I would show her what it looked like when a woman chose herself.
Mom and the movers collected everything while I was still in the hospital. I never walked back through this door.
I kept that promise.
But I’m learning, slowly, that choosing yourself doesn’t have to mean choosing alone.
Benedict hovers behind me as I step through the door, Isabella in his arms. I can feel his nervousness - the way he’s holding his breath, waiting for my reaction.
He’s been preparing for this. I know because he mentioned it once, tentatively, asking what colors I liked, what furniture I’d want to keep.
I told him I trusted him.
I meant it. I mean it still, standing in a space I barely recognize.
The cold modern furniture is gone. In its place: warmth.
Soft couches in cream and sage, the kind that invite curling up with a book and a cup of tea.
Family photos on the walls - not the staged professional shots that used to decorate this space, but real ones.
Clara holding Isabella, her face soft with grandmother love.
Benedict asleep on my mother’s couch with the baby on his chest, mouth slightly open, completely undone.
Me laughing at something off-camera, my head thrown back, looking lighter than I’ve felt in years.
I don’t remember that photo being taken.
I’m glad someone captured it.
The kitchen has a high chair. The living room has a play mat, bright colors splashed across the hardwood. Everything is different, and everything is the same, and I don’t know why I’m crying until Benedict’s hand finds my shoulder.
“Too much?”
“No.” I wipe my eyes. “No, it’s perfect. I just - I didn’t expect-”
“There’s more.” His voice is careful. Hopeful. “The nursery. If you want to see.”
I do. I don’t know if I’m ready, but I do.
The walk down the hallway feels longer than it used to. I pass our bedroom - our bedroom, a phrase I’m still learning to say again - and stop at the door with the small wooden sign that reads Isabella.
My hand trembles on the handle.
I push it open.
My breath catches.
He kept the yellow walls. The star mural I painted alone, two in the morning, tears streaming down my face as I tried to create something beautiful in the middle of my despair.
But he’s added to it - a crescent moon in the corner, delicate and perfect.
A little fox sleeping beneath the stars, curled in on itself like it’s dreaming of something good.
Isabella’s name in wooden letters above the crib.
“When did you-”
“Last week. The crib and the boxes that wouldn’t fit at your mother’s came out of storage the day before that.” Benedict is behind me, our daughter still in his arms. “I wanted it to feel like she was always meant to be here. Because she was. This was always supposed to be her room. Her home.”
My eyes burn.
“It’s perfect.”
“You’re perfect.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “Both of you.”
Isabella chooses this moment to yawn - a huge, dramatic yawn that scrunches her entire face and makes her look like a tiny disgruntled old man. We both laugh, the sound breaking the tension, making the room feel lived-in already.
“Someone’s ready for bed,” I say.
“Someone’s had a big day.”
We put her down together. First time. In her real nursery. In our real home.
Benedict dims the lights while I settle Isabella in the crib - the same crib I assembled alone from YouTube tutorials, now anchored in a room that feels like it’s been waiting for her. She fusses for a moment, squirming against the mattress, then finds her thumb and goes still.
Her eyes drift closed.
We stand there, side by side, watching our daughter sleep. The nightlight casts soft shadows on the walls, making the painted stars seem to glow. Benedict’s hand finds mine in the dark.
“We made that,” he whispers.
“We did.”
“She’s incredible.”
“She is.”
He turns to me. In the soft glow, his eyes are bright. Wet.
“Thank you,” he says. “For giving me another chance. For letting me be here. For-”
I kiss him.
When I pull back, his forehead rests against mine, our breath mingling in the quiet.
“Take me to bed,” I whisper. “Our bed. In our home.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice.
He carries me. Not because I can’t walk - because he wants to. Because he’s spent months dreaming of this exact moment, and he’s not rushing a single second of it.
The master bedroom is different too. Softer. Warmer. But I barely notice the décor because Benedict is laying me down on sheets that smell like lavender and him, and his mouth is on my neck, and his hands are everywhere.
“I’ve wanted this,” he breathes against my skin. “Every night. Dreaming of you. Waking up reaching for you.”
“I’m here now.”
“You’re here now.”
He undresses me slowly. Reverently. Like I’m something precious he’s been trusted to hold.
The buttons of my dress give one by one.
Every inch of skin he reveals, he kisses.
My collarbone. The hollow of my throat. The curve of my breast, where he lingers, mouth hot, until my nipple tightens against his tongue and a sound slips out of me I don’t mean to make.
He makes a low answering noise in his chest and does it again, slower, sucking gently, his palm covering the other breast, thumb stroking until I’m arching into his hands.
“Beautiful,” he murmurs. “So beautiful.”
“Benedict-”
“Let me. Please.” His eyes meet mine. “Let me worship you.”
I let him.