Chapter Twenty #3
can sway to invisible music and just push the world away for a while.
Instead, he stretches out on the couch, staring ahead as if
he’s watching something I can’t see.
Unable to stand the silence any longer, I sit down beside
him and gently nudge him with my knee. “You’ve been in your head for the last
hour. Talk to me. Please.”
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw works as if he’s
rehearsing what he wants to say. Or maybe fighting it.
“Do you ever feel like,” he finally says, his voice low,
“like you ended up being more of a…support system than a wife?”
It hits hard, sharp. “What?”
He rubs his hands over his face in frustration. But not with
me. With himself. “I mean…everything. Moving. Packing. Adjusting. Waiting.
Holding your life in your hands, ready to set it down whenever I need
something.” He exhales slowly. “Like I’m living my dream, and you’re…orbiting
it.”
My instinct is to deny it. To tell him he’s being
ridiculous. But he’s not asking for reassurance. He’s confessing.
So, I wait.
He swallows. “When we first started this, I promised myself
I’d do right by you. That I would always put you first and do everything I
could to set you up for success. I vowed to never ask you to carry the weight
of my career. But I look back and…” He lets out a long breath. “So much of our
life revolves around whether I’m playing, whether I’m hurt, whether I’m traded.
Whether I’m okay.”
His voice cracks on that last word, and my heart aches.
“You’ve changed cities, changed routines, changed entire plans
for me, over and over,” he continues, softer now. “And you’ve done it without a
pause. Like it’s natural. Like you owe it to me. And I don’t know when I
stopped questioning that. I don’t know when I stopped asking if you were okay.
When I stopped making sure that you didn’t feel like second place to the game.”
“You haven’t—” I start.
He shakes his head gently. “Let me finish?”
I go quiet.
“I grew up believing baseball was everything,” he says. “And
for a long time, it was. It was my identity. My anchor. My future. And then you
came into my life and, suddenly, it wasn’t the center anymore. You were.” He
breathes out, long and shaky, both hands raking through his hair, making it
spiky. “And somehow, I still kept acting like the game had to come first. Like
it was a force I couldn’t push back against, even for you.”
There’s grief in his voice, and it’s raw and honest.
He looks at me then—really looks—and his eyes are tired, yet
so impossibly full of love.
“You’ve been a good teammate,” he whispers. “You’ve bent
when life needed bending. You’ve sacrificed without calling it a sacrifice.
You’ve stood by me, even when it meant standing alone. I hate thinking about
how lonely you’ve been.” His throat works. “And I haven’t been able to do the
same for you.”
Emotion burns behind my eyes, and I will the unshed tears
not to fall.
“Christian…” I breathe softly, reaching for his hand.
He threads his fingers through mine but doesn’t look away.
“I’m not saying I regret baseball. I don’t. I love it. I always will. It’s
changed my life—our life. But I can’t keep pretending that the cost hasn’t been
real. On us. On you. And I don’t get to ignore that because the game is
comfortable and familiar and safe for me.”
His words land, slow and heavy. I know what he’s walking
toward before he says it.
“This is my last season,” he says, his voice low.
The words linger in the space between us. Not explosive. Not
shouted. Just truth.
“I’m not asking…”
He places a finger over my lips, silencing anything I have
to say.
“I know you’re not. You never would. This is completely my
decision, and…I’m done after this season,” he continues. “I’ve been so blessed,
and I’ve achieved everything I could ever dream of and more in my career.
Before I met you, I never knew a life without baseball, and because of you, I
know what I want my life to look like after baseball. And it’s not
measured in innings or stats or how hard I can push my body before it breaks
again.” His voice softens, steady and sure. “It’s you. It’s us. It’s being the
husband you deserve, not the one who keeps asking you to put your world on hold
so I can play in mine.”
My vision blurs.
He squeezes my hand, gentler now. “And I want you to chase
everything. Every role. Every dream. Every version of your life that makes you
feel alive. I don’t want to be the reason you ever doubt that you’re allowed to
want more. If you want to call Tracy right now…”
Now it’s my fingers over his lips as I
shake my head. “No. That’s not what I want. What I want is right here in front
of me.” I pause, even as the first tear falls. “You. All I’ve ever wanted is
you.”
There’s a profound quiet after that. The kind that feels
sacred.
I lean forward slowly and press my forehead to his, both of
us a little breathless and emotionally drained.
He doesn’t try to fix the silence. He simply holds me.
Steady. Certain. We’re both free in a way that we’ve never been free before.
Our careers have dictated our choices for so long, but tonight we made a
choice.
And we chose us.