Chapter 18 Where We Began #2
"Strategy." He grins, and for a moment he looks exactly like the boy who used to sit across from me on a rougher platform, making elaborate plans for adventures we never took. "Not cheating."
I break the orange into segments and hand him half.
We eat in comfortable silence, looking out at the view that hasn't changed in all the years we've known it.
Both estates spread below us, the groves running together at the boundary line, the rooftops of our families' houses just visible through the trees.
"Remember when we tried to draw a map of everything we could see from here?" I point toward the distant hills. "You insisted that ridge was shaped like a sleeping dog."
"It is shaped like a sleeping dog." He leans forward, squinting at the horizon. "The ears are right there."
"Those are trees, Rafael." I follow the line of his finger, refusing to admit that I can see it now.
"Trees that look like ears." He draws the shape against the horizon with one finger until I catch his hand and push it down.
I laugh, and the sound surprises me. Easy. Unguarded. The kind of laugh I used to save for this place, back when everything felt simpler.
We spend the next couple of hours like that, talking, sharing the second orange from his bag, watching the light shift from afternoon gold to the softer warmth of approaching evening.
When the sun moves into my eyes, we shift to the other end of the bench, taking the blanket with us.
He gets out the water and stays while I finish a story he already knows, correcting the part where I make him sound braver than he was.
When did I stop checking whether he was listening?
I can't find the moment. I only know I haven't looked at his phone once.
At some point, he picks up the old sliver of carved wood from where I left it on the bench and turns it over in his hands before setting it on the windowsill behind us. The letters are worn by weather and time, but I know what they say without looking.
The sun has begun its slow descent, the sky turning shades of amber and rose. I've always loved this time of day, the way everything softens before the dark comes.
"Rafael." I turn to face him, tucking one leg under me on the bench. "Why did you really do this?"
"What do you mean?" He rests his forearms on his knees, turning toward me.
"You started rebuilding before you knew about the baby." I hold his gaze. "Before we'd even talked about trying again. Why?"
He's quiet for a moment, choosing his words. When he speaks, his voice is low and serious.
"I wanted to give you something back." He looks toward the new doorway behind us. "I couldn't keep asking you to come home while I left everything as it was. And this place mattered to you long before you married me."
"You hoped I'd come back." I keep watching his face. I want an honest answer, even if it's an awkward one.
"Of course I did." He rubs his palm over the bench beside his leg. "I still wanted you to have it if you didn't. I wouldn't take it away because you wouldn't take me back."
"I wasn't sure I would." The honesty feels necessary. "Forgive you, I mean. For a long time, I thought maybe I couldn't."
"What changed?" He stops rubbing the bench, waiting while I find an answer I mean.
I think about the past weeks. The market where he tracked down my almonds.
The clinic where he cried at the first glimpse of our child.
The festival where he competed in the mud and let me see how much he wanted to win, then laughed with me when I couldn't stop.
The workshop where he finally listened, really listened, to what I needed.
"You did." I reach out and take his hand. "Not all at once. Not perfectly. But enough for me to see that you were trying. That you wanted to be different, not just to get me back, but because you understood why you needed to change."
"I do understand." He holds my hand carefully, like something precious. "I know I can't undo the months I spent ignoring you. I know one rebuilt treehouse doesn't make up for all the times I let you down."
"No." I squeeze his fingers. "It doesn't. But it shows me something. It shows me you were thinking about us even when I wasn't here. Even when you had no guarantee I'd come back."
He lifts our joined hands and presses a kiss to my knuckles. The gesture is gentle, reverent.
The sun is touching the horizon now, painting the sky in bands of orange and deep pink. Rafael is quiet beside me, his hand still holding mine, both of us watching the light change over the groves we've known our whole lives.
Then he takes a breath, and he starts to sing.
His voice is low and a little rough, the way it always was when we were young. He catches on a note and goes on, smiling at me through it, the way he used to when we'd lie here watching the stars come out.
The song is one we made up together, years ago, finding rhymes for whatever we could see from this platform. I haven't heard it since before we were married. I'd almost convinced myself I'd forgotten it.
I close my eyes and let his voice wash over me. My chest aches with something I can't quite name. This is what I missed. Not just his presence, but this. The way he used to share small, private things without being asked. The way he used to offer pieces of himself like gifts.
He sings, softly, "When the wind comes cold, I'll find you here," and I remember hearing that line when we were young while I pretended to be asleep. There was a secret thrill in being the only one who got to hear it. Even then, I thought, this is the person I want to know forever.
The tears come before I can stop them. I turn my face toward his shoulder, but he has already seen them.
He lets the last note fade. When I open my eyes, he is watching me, his face wet too. The same way it was at the clinic when we saw the heartbeat.
"I missed this." I wipe my cheeks with the back of my hand. "I missed you doing things like this. Singing because you wanted to, not because I asked."
"I stopped doing a lot of things." He brushes a tear from his face before it reaches his mouth. "I don't know when. I just looked up one day and realized I'd turned into someone who only gave you what I thought you needed instead of what I actually had."
"There's something else." He looks toward the stairs, then back at the little carving on the sill. "Something I need to tell you."
"What?" I lower our joined hands to my lap and turn enough to see his face.
"When I started this, I was thinking about us. About giving you back something we'd lost." He looks at the treehouse around us, then back at my face. "But somewhere along the way, I started thinking about something else too."
"What do you mean?" I follow his gaze toward the stairs.
"Our child." He moves his hand along the bench, leaving a small space beside us. "I started imagining them here. Playing in the branches, the way we used to. Learning to climb the stairs. Finding the carving with our initials and asking what it means."
My breath catches. I hadn't let myself think that far ahead. Hadn't let myself imagine our child in this place, inheriting the history we've built.
"You built this for them too." I look toward the stairs and imagine a small voice calling up to us, impatient to climb.
"I built it for all of us." He turns to face me fully, his eyes bright. "For the family we can still make. For the future I want to have with you, if you'll let me."
"I want that too." I pull my legs up onto the bench, facing him fully. "That's what I keep seeing. Every week, every day, you keep giving me pieces of yourself I thought you'd locked away forever."
"Sera." He reaches across the blanket and leaves his hand open beside mine. "I want you to be able to tell me things again. Even the things I don't want to hear. I don't want to keep shutting you out."
"You've been listening." I take his hand and pull it toward me, pressing it against my heart. "Even yesterday, when it hurt. You stayed and heard me."
His fingers spread against my chest, feeling my heartbeat under his palm.
"I forgive you." His hand goes still against me, and I cover it with mine. "For the months you left me waiting. For choosing fear over honesty. For all of it, Rafael. I forgive you."
His breath catches. His eyes are shining in the last of the sunset light.
"I needed more than a promise." I keep my hands against him, feeling how hard he's trying to stay still and hear me. "You kept showing up when I couldn't promise I would stay. I can see what you're doing now, Rafael. I want to be part of it."
He pulls me against him, his arms wrapping around me, his face pressed into my hair. His shoulders shake under my hands. He tries to say my name and stops, holding me closer instead.
I hold him back just as tightly. When a gust lifts the blanket from our laps, he catches its edge and draws it around our shoulders, bringing me close beneath it.
The sky has deepened to purple and rose, the first stars appearing above the treehouse. I pull back just enough to see his face, to trace the tear tracks on his cheeks with my thumb.
"I'm going to call the lawyer tomorrow." I keep my eyes on his. "I want to stop the divorce. I want to stay married to you."
His whole body goes still. Then his hands come up to frame my face, gentle, trembling slightly.
"I love you." He rests his forehead against mine, unable to get farther from me than that. "I love you so much."
"I know." I lean into his touch. "I love you too. I choose you."
I draw him down to me and kiss him. His mouth is warm, faintly sweet with the orange we shared, and he kisses me back until I forget the cold reaching through the blanket.
When we part, he keeps his forehead against mine. I slip my arms beneath the blanket and hold him there.
"Again," I whisper against his mouth, and this time I don't have to wait.