17. Juliette #2
Instead, what comes out is: “Your father said you defended me.”
“I did.”
“That night. At the engagement dinner. He said you chose my side.”
“I did.” His voice is rough. “I chose your side every day of our marriage, Juliette. In my head, in my heart, in every way except the one that mattered. I chose you and I never said it out loud, and that’s the thing I’ll regret for the rest of my life.”
“Why didn’t you say it?”
“Because I was scared.” He takes another step. We’re inches apart now. “Because saying it meant fighting for it, and fighting meant risking everything, and I’d been taught my whole life that Deans don’t risk. We manage. We accommodate. We survive by not making waves.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m drowning anyway.” His hand comes up, hovers near my face without touching. “And I’d rather drown reaching for you than survive by staying still.”
His fingers stop an inch from my cheek. I can feel the heat of them, feel the effort in the stillness, a man holding a full glass on a moving boat.
“Say the rest of it,” I tell him.
“The rest is undignified.”
“Good. Dignity’s what got us here.”
“Fine.” His hand drops. His voice comes out stripped.
“I was scared shitless of my mother my whole life, and I’m not anymore, and do you know what I’m scared of now?
A woman with a scrub brush and a paint-splattered ponytail who won’t tell me the score.
The exchange rate on my fear has completely collapsed.
It’s all you now. Every last dollar of it. ”
The air between us is charged.
We shouldn’t.
His fingertips brush my cheek. The lightest touch, barely there, and my whole body responds.
“Juliette.”
“Don’t.” I step back. “Don’t make this easy.”
“I’m not trying to make it easy.”
“Then what are you trying to do?”
“I’m trying to be honest.” His hand falls to his side. “For once in my life, I’m trying to just - say the thing. Without strategy. Without planning. Just the truth.”
“What’s the truth?”
“The truth is I love you.” His voice breaks.
“The truth is I’ve loved you since the day you kissed me in that library, and I was too much of a coward to say it when it mattered, and now I’m standing in your bookstore saying it when it’s probably too late, and I don’t know what to do with that except-”
“Except what?”
“Except keep saying it. Until you believe me, or until you tell me to stop.”
The silence stretches between us.
Outside, a gull cries. The water slaps against the docks. The island goes about its business, unaware that everything is changing in this half-built room.
“I don’t know if I can believe you,” I say finally.
“I know.”
“I don’t know if I want to.”
“I know that too.”
“But I’m not ready to tell you to stop.”
Something shifts in his face. Hope, maybe. Or fear. Or the particular kind of vulnerability that comes from laying everything on the line.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I need more time.” I step back, putting distance between us. “It means I’m not saying yes. But I’m not saying no either.”
“I can work with that.”
“Don’t work with it.” I pick up my scrub brush. “Don’t treat it like a negotiation. Just - give me space. Let me figure out what I want without you standing at the end of my lane every morning reminding me you’re still there.”
“You want me to stop coming?”
“I want you to give me room to miss you.”
He goes still, the way he went still at the dinner table six years ago - except that stillness was ice forming, and this one is something thawing and deciding not to run.
The words surprise us both.
Zachary stares at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nods.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“I’ll give you space.” He heads for the door. “But Juliette?”
“What?”
He turns, silhouetted in the doorway, and his expression is something I haven’t seen before. Something that looks almost like peace.
“When you’re ready - if you’re ever ready - I’ll be there.”
“That’s a long time to leave a man standing by, potentially.”
“I’ve had practice standing.” A ghost of a smile, gone as fast as it lands. “Turns out I trained six years for the wrong event. All that standing by while it mattered - I’m just redeploying the skill somewhere it finally does some good.”
The door closes behind him.
I stand alone in my half-built bookstore, surrounded by shelves that aren’t finished and dreams that are only just beginning.
Something has shifted, somewhere in the center of my chest.
I pick the scrub brush back up. The floor still needs finishing - floors are faithful that way - and I work the last corner in the long amber light while the harbor sounds come through the glass, and my hands do the work while the rest of me stands somewhere else entirely, holding a sentence like a stone worn smooth: room to miss you. He’s going to give me room to miss you.
Something that feels almost like hope.
***
That night, my mother’s bed does not work.
The quilt is too warm and then the room is too cold and the clock in the hall is fine, actually. The clock is innocent. The problem is in the bed with me. The problem smells faintly of sawdust even though I washed my hair. Twice. It’s in the pillowcase. It’s in my skin.
“Give me room to miss you,” I told him. Like a woman in control of the terms.
I have room. The whole house is room.
I miss him in it. I miss him in the doorway.
I miss him in the empty glass on the nightstand.
I miss him in the ache between my legs that I have not touched since the pantry, because I have been good.
I have been so goddamn good, and look where it’s gotten me: lying in my mother’s bed in the dark, wanting something I told myself I didn’t need.
I roll over. I think about lumber deliveries.
I think about shelving pine versus oak. I think about his hands at my waist against the new shelving, gripping like I might change my mind mid-air, his mouth at my throat in a half-demolished shop - and my own hand is moving before I’ve authorized anything, sliding under the waistband of my pajamas, and I stop.
I stare at the ceiling.
The ceiling has no opinion.
I keep going.