Chapter 4
I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO THIS
Luca’s flickers with candlelight and white tablecloths and a wine list thicker than my prenup. Preston pulls out my chair. He orders a bottle of the red I like without asking. He remembered.
He reaches across the table and takes my hand.
“I feel like we haven’t had a night like this in forever.”
I look down at his hand over mine. “We haven’t.”
“That’s my fault.” He squeezes my fingers. “I’ve been buried in work. The expansion is eating me alive. But that’s not an excuse.”
He reaches down beside his chair and brings up a small blue box, setting it on the table between us.
“What’s this?”
“Open it.” He’s watching my face with that half-smile he does when he’s waiting for a reaction.
A gold necklace. Thin chain, small pendant—a tiny knot. Elegant. Exactly my taste.
I lift the chain out of the box, the pendant pooling in my palm. “Preston, it’s beautiful.”
“I saw it and couldn’t walk past it.” He gets up and comes around behind my chair. I sweep my hair aside and he fastens the chain around my neck, his fingers brushing the back of my skin.
For one terrible second, my shoulders drop. The pendant settles against my collarbone and I touch it with my fingertips, staring at it in the candlelight. He remembered exactly what I like. Of course he did.
Preston bends and kisses my temple before returning to his seat. “It looks perfect on you.”
I force myself to smile. “Thank you.”
He reaches across the table and takes my hand again, and for one stupid, aching second I want to let myself have this. The restaurant. The wine. His hand around mine. The necklace warm against my skin. I want the husband sitting across from me to be real.
I look at his face across the candle flame. His jaw. His eyes. The small scar on his chin from the mountain biking fall the summer before Abby was born. I know this face better than I know my own. I’ve traced this jawline with my thumb while he slept and felt lucky.
“Abby did the funniest thing today,” he says. “She told Ana she couldn’t take a nap because her stuffed animals needed her to stay awake. She said they get scared without her.”
I laugh before I can stop it. That is so Abby. And his voice just went soft—the way it used to when he’d hold her on his chest and whisper nonsense into her hair—and my eyes sting.
“She gets that from you,” he says. “The protector thing. She has your heart.”
My throat tightens. Don’t. Don’t do this to me.
“I’m lucky,” he says. “I know I don’t say it enough. But I am.”
His phone buzzes on the table. His eyes drop to the screen—a flicker, half a second, a reflex he catches almost fast enough. Then he turns it face-down.
“Work. Ignore it.”
But I saw his jaw clench. I saw that fraction of a beat where he read the screen and decided I wasn’t allowed to see it. And the warmth from the wine and the candle and his hand on mine just goes cold.
He leans back. Swirls his glass. “I’ve been thinking. This summer—let’s go somewhere. Just the four of us. No nanny, no babysitter. A beach house, maybe. Abby can build sandcastles. We can let Mitch eat sand.”
I lift my glass and make myself smile. “That sounds perfect.”
My voice is steady. My face does what it needs to do. Under the table my free hand is gripping my thigh so hard my nails dig in, because I can still see the email—keep documenting, my lawyer says we need six more months—and he’s sitting here talking about sandcastles.
“Excuse me.” I push my chair back. “Bathroom.”
I walk across the restaurant on measured steps, my heels clicking on the tile. The bathroom is single-occupancy. I lock the door and grip the edge of the sink and stare at my face in the mirror—mascara, lipstick, the gold knot resting against my collarbone.
My hands are shaking. For fifteen minutes, I almost believed him. I almost reached back when he took my hand across that table.
Almost.
Preston hasn’t touched me in months. And now we’re in bed and I’m already half asleep, and his fingers are moving up my leg and his mouth is on my neck and he’s murmuring “Come here” and my hands are balling into fists under the sheet.
My skin is crawling under his hand. Bile hits the back of my throat, hot and sour, and I swallow it down because pushing him away would be a crack in the mask.
He moves on top of me and I stare at the ceiling fan. His eyes are closed. His weight pins me flat and he doesn’t look at my face, doesn’t say my name. I leave my body on the mattress and go somewhere past the ceiling where his hands can’t reach me.
It’s over fast. He rolls off and his hand is already reaching for the nightstand. “That was nice.”
His phone lights up. I lie there with the sheets tangled around my legs and his elbow still touching my arm and my skin won’t stop crawling—this prickling revulsion everywhere he touched me. The blue light catches his jaw as he scrolls and I know he’s texting her.
I push the covers off and stand up. My legs feel disconnected from the rest of me.
“You okay?” He doesn’t look up from the screen.
I grip the bathroom doorframe. “Bathroom.”
I close the door and lock it and my knees buckle and I’m on the tile before I decide to sit. The floor is cold under my legs and I pull my knees up and press my face against them and I’m shaking so hard my teeth are chattering.
I grab my phone off the counter.
I need to tell you something. Can you come this weekend?
I send it to Claire and stare at the screen, my hands trembling so badly the phone jitters in my grip. Her reply comes back before I can set it down.
I’m coming. Tonight.
Then her name lights up the screen. FaceTime. I answer and Claire’s face fills the frame—her kitchen behind her, reading glasses shoved onto her forehead.
“Show me your face.” I lift the phone and the screen light stings my eyes and my chin is already trembling. “Oh, Soph.”
A sound comes out of me that I don’t recognize. “I can’t—” I press my hand over my mouth and shake my head.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me right now.” On the screen she’s already moving, crossing her kitchen. “I’m packing a bag.”
I dig my nails into my knee. “It’s Preston.”
The movement on her end stops. “What did he do?”
“I can’t say it on the phone.” My voice is shaking and I press the phone harder against my knee to keep it steady. “I need you here. I need to show you.”
“I’m coming tonight.” She’s moving again—I can hear a door opening on her end.
“Claire—”
“I’m already walking to my closet.” She tilts the phone and I can see her pulling a bag off a shelf, one-handed, not even looking at it. “Are you safe?”
My voice comes out smaller than I want it to. “I’m safe.”
“Are the kids safe?”
My stomach lurches and I press my free hand flat against the tile. “They’re fine. They’re asleep.”
“Where is he?” I hold my breath and listen through the bathroom door—that heavy, rhythmic breathing. “In bed. Asleep.”
I curl tighter against the tub, my forehead dropping against my knees. The pressure in my chest is building toward a sound I can’t make with him sleeping on the other side of that door. “Just come. Please. I’ll tell you everything when you’re here.”
A long breath on her end. “I’m driving tonight. I’ll be there before the kids are up. Don’t say anything to him. Can you do that? I love you.” Her chin dips when she says it and I can see her fighting to keep her face together.
My throat aches so bad I can barely get the words out. “I love you too.”
I press the phone against my chest. Through the door, Preston’s breathing is deep and even. Ten feet away. Asleep.
I get up and wash my face and walk past him and get into bed. I pull the covers up and lie there in the dark with my eyes open and my fists pressed against my ribs.
I’m done crying for this man.