Chapter Twenty-Two
The Speech
Sydney
I’ve been rehearsing this for three days—in my head, in the shower, while driving the Lexus to the senior center, and while cutting Luke’s toast into triangles.
It’s a good speech. It’s airtight. Lauren helped me workshop it last night, and even she admitted it was solid, which means it’s either genuinely logical or so depressing that she didn’t have the heart to argue against it.
He lands at eleven. I hear the garage door at 11:40, followed by the sound of his bag hitting the hallway floor and his footsteps coming through the kitchen.
The twins have been asleep since eight, and the house is quiet.
I’m on the couch with a book I haven’t read a single page of because I’ve been staring at the same paragraph for forty-five minutes while waiting for the sound of his car.
He appears in the living room doorway, and his eyes find me immediately.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey. How was the trip?”
“Good. Won two out of three.” He leans against the doorframe. “Did the kids go down okay?”
“Fine. Luke wanted extra chapters tonight. I think he missed you.”
“And Lily?”
“She told me to tell you that Jeffrey learned a new dance move and you have to watch it tomorrow.”
He almost smiles. Then he crosses the room and sits on the couch—not at the other end, but in the middle. Close enough that I can smell the faint scent of his cologne. “Syd.”
“Yeah?”
“You said we’d figure this out when I got back.”
“I did say that.”
“So.” He turns to face me, one arm along the back of the couch, looking at me with that steady, patient, gray-eyed focus that makes me feel like I’m the only thing in the room. “I’m back.”
Here we go. Three days of rehearsal. Airtight argument. Logical, responsible, mature.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I say. “A lot. Like, an unhealthy amount. And I, um—” I set the book on the coffee table and pull my feet up under me so I’m facing him.
“I think if we were younger, if the circumstances were different, maybe we could try this. But Arch, you’re barely divorced.
It’s been, what, four months? You probably need to process that. Maybe go to therapy, I don’t know.”
He doesn’t interrupt. He just watches me.
“And if things didn’t work between us—if we tried and it fell apart—I couldn’t live with that. I can’t lose you. People who date and break up don’t stay friends. They just don’t. Not really.”
“Syd—”
“And the kids.” My voice catches, but I push through it. “If we hurt the kids, Archer. If they get attached to the idea of us together and then it doesn’t work, and they lose me on top of already losing their parents’ marriage—I couldn’t do that to them. I couldn’t live with that.”
He’s quiet. The house hums around us.
“So.” I exhale. “I’m sorry. I’ve thought it through from every angle, and I don’t see a path forward. Not one that doesn’t risk everything that matters.”
I sit there and wait for him to nod. To say okay. To do what Archer does, which is accept the reasonable thing and go upstairs, close his door, and give me the space I’m asking for, even though I don’t actually want it.
He doesn’t nod.
He sits there looking at me for a long time, and his face doesn’t do any of the things I expected—he doesn’t look hurt, doesn’t look resigned. He looks like a man who just listened to a closing argument and found the hole in it.
“You just listed every reason this won’t work,” he says.
“Because there are a lot of them.”
“You didn’t list a single reason of why you don’t want it.”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“Everything you said is real, Syd. The divorce, the kids, the friendship—all of it. I’ve thought about all of it too. So many times, believe me. But you didn’t say you don’t want this. Not once.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s exactly the point.” He shifts closer, his knee pressing against mine, and I don’t move away. “You gave me a list of things you’re afraid of. You didn’t give me a no.”
“Archer—”
“Tell me you don’t want this. Look at me and say, ‘I don’t want you, Archer,’ and I’ll go upstairs and we’ll never talk about it again.
But if you can’t say that—if the only thing stopping you is fear—then I’m not accepting the speech.
I’m sorry. I’ve spent fifteen years accepting reasons. I’m done.”
My chest is tight, my eyes are burning, and he’s sitting right there, close enough that I can see the stubble on his jaw, the tired lines around his eyes, and the way he’s looking at me like I’m something he’s seeing for the first time.
“I can’t say that,” I whisper.
“Can’t say what?”
“That I don’t want you. I can’t say it because it’s not true, and I’m a terrible liar, and you’d know.”
“Yeah.” His voice is low. “I’d know.”
“You’re supposed to talk me out of this, Archer. That’s how this works. I give the speech, and you agree, and we go back to being responsible adults who don’t—”
He kisses me.
His hand slides to the back of my neck, pulling me in as his mouth covers mine, and the speech—the three-day, shower-rehearsed, Lauren-approved, airtight speech—disintegrates on contact.
I grab the front of his shirt with both hands, pulling him closer because I’m tired of being responsible, tired of being scared.
His mouth is warm, and he tastes like mint gum, and I missed him.
Three days of a road trip, and I missed him like a limb, and that should terrify me, and it does, yet I kiss him anyway.
He groans against my mouth—low, rough—and his arm wraps around my waist, lifting me into his lap, my knees on either side of his hips. His hands are on my waist, my fingers are in his hair, and we’re making out on his couch like teenagers who just discovered French kissing.
“Syd.” He pulls back half an inch, breathing hard. “I need you to know this isn’t—”
“I know.” I kiss him again. “I know it’s not a rebound.”
“I haven’t—” His hands tighten on my waist as I shift in his lap. “I haven’t been with anyone in over two years, and I’m, uh—” He exhales hard through his nose when I roll my hips. “I’m trying to be a gentleman about this.”
“How’s that going?”
“Badly.”
I laugh against his mouth, and he pulls me closer, one hand sliding up my back under my shirt, his palm flat against my bare skin.
The contact sends a shiver through me that he feels because his arm tightens in response.
His mouth moves to my neck, just below my ear, and I tilt my head back, feeling his teeth graze my skin.
I make a sound that I would be embarrassed about if I could think, which I can’t, because his hands are under my shirt and his mouth is on my throat, and I am sitting in his lap, wanting this for more than a decade.
It is better than I imagined, and I imagined it a lot.
His hand slides higher up my back, and I arch into him as he says my name against my neck like a prayer and a curse at the same time. I’m reaching for the hem of his shirt when I hear it.
A small voice from the top of the stairs.
“Daddy?”
We freeze. His hands stop moving. My hands stop moving. We’re both breathing hard, my hair is everywhere, and his shirt is twisted. We look at each other for one suspended second before I climb off his lap, and he stands up. We separate like two magnets yanked apart.
“Yeah, buddy?” His voice is wrecked, and he clears his throat, trying again. “Yeah, Luke. What’s up?”
Luke stands at the top of the stairs in his pajamas, holding his shark blanket, his face crumpled with sleep. “I had a bad dream.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I watch Archer take the stairs two at a time.
Luke reaches for him, and Archer scoops him up.
Luke’s face presses into his shoulder, his small arms wrapping around his dad’s neck.
I stand in the living room, my shirt twisted, my lips swollen, my heart hammering, watching this man hold his son.
I think: this is why I gave the speech. Because this is what’s at stake. Not my heart. Not his. Theirs.
Archer carries Luke down the hall toward his room, murmuring something low that I can’t hear, and I stand at the bottom of the stairs, waiting until I hear Luke’s door open and the soft sounds of Archer settling him back into bed.
I should go to the guest room. I should go to sleep. I should think about the way he just flat-out rejected my speech.
I walk upstairs. Archer is in Luke’s room, lying on the twin bed next to his son, one arm around him, Luke’s shark blanket pulled up to his chin. Luke’s eyes are already closing. Archer’s hand is on his back, rubbing slow circles, and he looks up when he sees me in the doorway.
I lean against the frame. He looks at me across the dim room, over his sleeping son, his eyes soft, his lips still red from my mouth, and his hair a disaster because my hands did that.
“Goodnight, Arch,” I say.
“Night, Syd,” he whispers.
I push off the doorframe, walk to the guest room, close the door, and stand there with my back against it, pressing my fingers to my lips.
He’s right. I didn’t say I don’t want this. Because I can’t, because it’s the biggest lie I’d ever tell, and we’ve both had enough of those to last a lifetime.
I gave the speech. The airtight, responsible, grown-up speech.
He kissed me right through it.
And the worst part—the part that’s going to keep me up all night—is that I’m glad he did.