11. Maddox Creed
MADDOX CREED
Ihated therapy.
The thought hit me before I even opened my eyes.
For a few seconds, I lay here staring at the ceiling, already knowing what day it was and already wishing I could skip the bullshit altogether.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option. The therapist wanted us back.
Luciana wanted us back. Hell, if I was being honest with myself, a part of me wanted to go back too.
That was probably the most irritating part. A few weeks ago, if somebody had told me I’d be sitting in a therapist’s office talking about my feelings with a complete stranger, I would’ve laughed in their face. Now here I was getting ready to do it all over again.
With a sigh, I threw the covers back and climbed out of bed. The house was quiet, and the first thing I noticed was that Luciana was already gone. Her side of the bed was empty, the bathroom light wasn’t on, and there wasn’t a sound anywhere upstairs.
Honestly, I was relieved.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see her. I just wasn’t in the mood for another conversation that felt like it needed to be picked apart and analyzed.
After pulling on a pair of sweatpants, I headed downstairs. The smell of coffee hit me before I even reached the kitchen, and a second later I spotted Luciana standing at the counter with a mug in her hand.
So much for avoiding each other. I thought.
She looked up when she heard my footsteps, and our eyes met for the briefest second before I looked away. It wasn’t anger. Hell, it wasn’t even resentment anymore. The truth was, I just didn’t know what to say.
“Morning.”
Her voice was quiet and careful, like she was testing the room before stepping any farther inside.
“Morning.” The word left my mouth automatically, and that was where the conversation ended.
Silence settled between us while I grabbed a mug from the cabinet and poured myself some coffee.
There was a time when that kind of silence would’ve felt comfortable.
Now it felt crowded as hell, packed with too many unfinished conversations, too many unanswered questions, and too much hurt sitting between us.
My eyes drifted toward the clock.
Eight-thirty.
Our appointment wasn’t until later that afternoon, but the knot in my stomach had already started forming. The crazy part was, therapy itself wasn’t what had me on edge.
It was everything that might come out once we got there.
The questions.
The answers.
The honesty we’d both spent years avoiding.
That was the part that made me nervous.
A chair scraped softly across the floor, pulling me out of my thoughts. I looked up just as Luciana lowered herself into the chair across from me.
I felt her looking at me, but I didn’t look up or acknowledge it. Instead, I kept staring into my coffee.
“How’s Nylah?”
That question caught me off guard. It wasn’t that Luciana asked. It was the fact that she hadn’t asked before.
“She’s good.”
The words came out short, but they weren’t meant to. There just wasn’t much else to say. She was good, and right now, that was enough.
Luciana nodded slowly, her eyes dropping to the coffee in front of her. For a second, I figured that would’ve been the end of the conversation.
Then she surprised me.
“I’m glad…”
Two simple words, but I believed every one of them. That was the fucked-up part. After everything that had happened, I still believed Luciana genuinely cared about my daughter, and me believing that irritated me more than it should have.
Life would’ve been a whole lot easier if she’d been the villain in all of this. If she’d done what she did out of jealousy, spite, or hate, maybe I could’ve wrapped my head around it. Instead, she’d made those decisions while loving me, and that made the whole situation even harder to understand.
Silence settled over the kitchen again, but this time it didn’t feel awkward. It felt inevitable. We were both thinking about the same thing, even if neither one of us was willing to say it out loud.
The therapy appointment.
It hung over us like a storm waiting to roll in. In a few hours we’d be sitting back in that office, answering hard questions and digging into truths we’d both spent years avoiding. I could already feel the weight of it sitting in my chest.
The only thing I didn’t know was whether our marriage would survive what came next.
I kept my hands wrapped around the coffee mug while Luciana sat across from me, looking like she had something sitting on her chest that she couldn’t quite get off.
That was becoming common lately, though.
She always looked like she wanted to say more than she actually did, and I never knew whether I was supposed to pull it out of her or leave it alone.
Most days, I chose to leave it alone, not because I didn’t care, but because every conversation between us seemed to turn into something heavier than either one of us was ready to carry before breakfast.
The boys came downstairs a few minutes later, saving us from the awkwardness neither one of us knew how to escape.
Michael came in first, half dressed with one sock on, his shirt inside out, and his hair looking like he had fought in his sleep.
MJ followed behind him, already irritated before the day had a real chance to start.
“Tell him he can’t wear that shirt like that,” MJ said, pointing at his brother like he was personally offended.
Michael looked down at himself, then shrugged. “It still cover my body.”
For the first time this morning, something close to a laugh overcame me. “Fix your shirt, Mike.”
“See?” MJ smirked. “Told you.”
“Shut up,” Michael mumbled as he started tugging at the shirt.
Luciana shot him a look. “Watch your mouth.”
I glanced over at her, and for a second, things felt normal enough to remember that we used to do this every day without tension sitting between us.
We used to sit in this same kitchen and laugh at the boys arguing over dumb shit.
I used to kiss my wife before leaving the house.
She used to remind me about whatever game, appointment, or school event I was supposed to remember.
Back then, our life had rhythm.
Now every morning felt like we were both trying not to step on broken glass.
The thought killed whatever little humor had tried to surface.
After breakfast, the boys moved around the house gathering shoes, backpacks, and whatever else they swore they needed but should’ve had ready the night before.
Luciana stayed busy wiping counters that weren’t dirty, refolding a towel that had already been folded, and moving shit around just to keep her hands occupied.
I noticed it, but I didn’t say anything. She was nervous about therapy.
I could tell.
Hell, so was I, even if I wasn’t walking around looking like I might throw up any second.
By the time the boys were ready to leave, Michael was still complaining about his shoes being too tight and MJ was telling him his feet weren’t growing, he was just being dramatic. I grabbed my keys from the counter and looked toward Luciana.
“You taking them or you want me to?”
She batted her eyes like she hadn’t expected me to ask. “I can take them.”
“I got it…”
Her lips parted, then closed again. For a second, she looked like she wanted to argue, maybe say she could handle it, but eventually she nodded and handed me Michael’s jacket from the back of the chair.
“Thank you…”
I just nodded.
That was all.
Still, I felt the weight of it. Not because taking my kids to school was some big gesture, but because lately the smallest normal things felt bigger than they should have.
I could tell Luciana felt it too. Her eyes followed me as I helped Michael get his jacket on, and when I looked up, she quickly looked away.
I hated this shit.
I hated that our marriage had become a room full of almosts. Almost conversations. Almost touches. Almost apologies. Almost moments that never fully landed because neither one of us trusted what came after.
Once the boys were loaded into the truck, the ride to school went the same way most mornings went with them. Loud as hell. Michael talked about some kid in his class who kept eating glue, and MJ swore up and down he was lying because nobody was still eating glue.
I didn’t know which one of them was telling the truth, but listening to them go back and forth gave me something else to focus on besides the appointment waiting on me later.
After dropping them off, I sat in the school parking lot just to kill time.
The engine stayed running while parents moved around me, rushing kids through the front doors and waving at teachers like it was a normal morning.
For them, it probably was. For me, everything felt off.
I kept thinking about Nylah, about how I had dropped two of my children off at school plenty of times over the years while another one had been somewhere else living a life I knew nothing about.
That kind of thought could fuck up a man’s whole day.
By the time I pulled away from the school, my mood had shifted again.
I didn’t go straight home. I drove around for a while, not far, just through familiar streets that gave me time to think without sitting still.
Therapy wasn’t until later, and for once, I wasn’t rushing to the office or the warehouse.
Business could wait. It had waited before and it could wait again.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder while I was sitting at a red light. For a second, I thought it might be Gia, and my eyes immediately dropped to the screen.
It wasn’t.
It was Luciana.
HER: The appointment is at two. Do you still want to ride together?
I stared at the message a little longer than I should have until the light turned green and the impatient bastard behind me laid on his horn.
“Calm your impatient ass down,” I muttered, easing my foot onto the gas.
A few blocks later, I pulled into a small plaza and put the truck in park before picking up my phone again. I read the message one more time, then typed the only response that came to mind.
ME: Yeah.