10. Luciana Creed #2
I swallowed hard as the kitchen suddenly felt smaller than it had a few seconds ago. The silence pressed in around me, making it harder to breathe, and for the first time since I’d picked up the phone, I wasn’t sure I could keep this conversation going.
“What if telling him makes everything worse?”
The question barely rose above a whisper.
Mama Creed let out a slow sigh. “Baby, everything already is worse.”
Her words settled over me, and I felt the truth of them almost immediately.
I’d spent weeks convincing myself there would be a better time to tell Maddox, some perfect moment when the truth wouldn’t hurt as much.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that moment had never existed.
The truth was always going to hurt. All I’d managed to do by waiting was give it more time to grow.
“I don’t know how he’s gonna react to everything I’ve been keeping.”
My hand drifted to my stomach without me even thinking about it. It had become second nature lately, especially anytime fear crept in.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive me.”
Mama Creed didn’t respond right away. She gave me a few seconds to sit with my own words before speaking again, and when she did, her voice carried the same gentle honesty she’d had from the beginning.
“Forgiveness ain’t something you can control.”
I closed my eyes and let out a shaky breath.
“Then what can I control?”
“You can control whether you tell him the truth… everything,” she said without hesitation. “After that, all you can do is accept whatever comes next.”
The tears I’d been fighting finally slipped free, and this time I didn’t bother wiping them away.
There wasn’t any point anymore. Mama Creed wasn’t trying to make me feel better or feed me false hope.
She wasn’t promising my marriage would survive or telling me everything was going to work itself out.
She was giving me something I’d been avoiding for far too long—the raw truth.
A few minutes later, the call came to an end. Neither one of us rushed to hang up, and neither one of us pretended everything was okay. Before she ended the call, Mama Creed told me she loved me and nothing will ever change that.
I sat at the kitchen island long after the screen went dark, staring at my phone while the silence settled around me. The house had never felt this quiet before, and somewhere in the middle of it, I realized how much of my identity had become wrapped up in being a wife and a mother.
Everything I did revolved around my family. Maddox. The boys. Our home. The routines we’d built together. The life we’d spent years creating. Now every piece of that life felt uncertain, and the awareness made another wave of nausea roll through me.
At this point, I couldn’t even tell if it was the pregnancy, the stress, or both.
With a tired sigh, I pushed myself up from the stool and made my way upstairs.
I wasn’t even sure why I’d come up here. Maybe I was looking for a distraction. Maybe I needed something familiar to hold onto, or maybe I just wanted proof that the last ten years of my life hadn’t been built on a lie.
My eyes settled on a framed picture sitting on the dresser.
It was one of my favorites.
Maddox stood in the middle of the picture with MJ hanging off one side of him while Michael clung to the other.
MJ couldn’t have been older than two, and Michael was still a baby, but neither of them cared that their daddy was trying to stand still long enough for a picture.
They’d turned him into their own personal jungle gym, and the smile on Maddox’s face said he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
I couldn’t help but smile.
That man loved being a father.
He always had.
No matter how busy work became or how much responsibility landed on his shoulders, the boys had always come first. They never had to wonder if their daddy loved them because he made sure they felt it every single day.
The smile slowly faded as my hand drifted to my stomach.
My thoughts immediately shifted to the baby growing inside me, the secret I’d been carrying, and the truth I still hadn’t found the courage to tell him.
Slowly, I lowered myself onto the edge of the bed as fear settled over me all over again.
It wasn’t fear that Maddox would stop loving his children.
That had never been the man I married.
The fear came from somewhere much deeper than that.
What if he looked at this pregnancy and saw manipulation instead of love? What if every time he looked at this baby, all he could see was another betrayal? What if the moment I’d prayed for and dreamed about for years became the very thing that finally destroyed what was left of my marriage?
A tear slipped down my cheek before I could stop it, and this time I didn’t bother wiping it away.
Another tear slipped free, followed by another, and I wiped them away with more frustration than gentleness.
Crying wasn’t changing a damn thing. The truth was still waiting for me, the next therapy session was still coming, and Maddox was still carrying the weight of everything I’d done. None of that disappeared just because I broke down.
My eyes drifted to the clock on the nightstand, seeing it was a little after three.
The boys would be home soon, and life would start moving again.
Homework would need checking, dinner would need cooking, baths would need giving, and bedtime would be here before I knew it.
For once, I welcomed the distraction because keeping busy was the only thing that stopped my mind from spiraling.
By the time the front door opened later that afternoon, I’d managed to pull myself together.
At least enough to get through the rest of the day.
The house immediately filled with the sound of the boys’ voices. Michael came barreling into the kitchen talking so fast I could barely understand him, while MJ followed close behind, trying to tell his own story before his little brother interrupted him.
For a while, I let myself disappear into their world.
They argued over snacks, told me about school, and somehow turned the simplest conversations into complete chaos.
It was loud, messy, and wonderfully normal, and for a few precious minutes, I wasn’t thinking about therapy, Maddox, or the secret hanging over my head.
I was just their mom, but the peace didn’t last.
It never seemed to anymore.
Dinner came and went, and after the boys disappeared into the family room, the front door opened.
My stomach tightened before I even looked up.
It was my husband.
The reaction came as naturally as breathing, but somewhere along the way, the feeling attached to it had changed. There was a time when hearing him walk through that door made me feel safe.
Now it made me nervous.
I hated that.
I hated the distance between us, the silence that seemed to follow us everywhere, and the way every conversation felt like we were carefully stepping across broken glass, terrified one wrong move would shatter whatever was left.
Maddox greeted the boys first like he always did.
MJ immediately launched into a story about something that happened at school, and Michael interrupted him so many times I lost count.
As if he felt me watching him, Maddox looked up.
Our eyes met from opposite sides of the room, and for a few seconds, neither one of us spoke. He gave me a small nod, nothing more than a quiet acknowledgment, and I returned it before we both looked away.
Life kept moving around us.
The boys kept talking.
The television kept playing.
Everything looked normal, but that was about it.
By the time we climbed into bed that night, my nerves were completely shot. Maddox lay beside me scrolling through his phone while I stared up at the ceiling, painfully aware that the distance between us had nothing to do with the space in the mattress.
Years ago, I would’ve rolled over without thinking and curled against his side. I would’ve fallen asleep listening to his heartbeat, knowing I was exactly where I belonged.
Now…
I wasn’t even sure he wanted me to touch him.
Eventually, Maddox locked his phone and reached over to turn off the lamp. Darkness settled over the room, and the silence that followed felt heavier than it should have.
I stared at the ceiling for a while before finally turning my head in his direction.
His back was facing me, just like it had since he started back sleeping in here the other night.
There was a time when that wouldn’t have meant anything, but now it felt like another reminder of how far apart we’d become.
My throat tightened as one thought continued to circle through my mind.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow I’d finally tell him the truth about the pregnancy. Tomorrow I’d stop hiding behind fear, excuses, and the hope that somehow this would all fix itself. Tomorrow I’d find out if there was anything left of our marriage to save.
That thought stayed with me as I closed my eyes and waited for sleep to come.
Eventually, it did, but peace never followed.