27. Delphine #3
About Heath. My husband. My partner. The man who had broken my heart and spent every day since trying to put it back together. Who still looked at me like I was the most important thing in any room. Who had chosen me, and kept choosing me, and would keep choosing me for the rest of our lives.
“Yes,” I said. “Really happy.”
“Good.” Blair squeezed my hand. “You deserve it. After everything.”
“We all deserve it.”
“That’s true.” Blythe raised her champagne glass. “To surviving. And thriving. And showing Newport that we’re not to be messed with.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
We clinked glasses, and I looked around the ballroom one more time. At the spot where Montana had tried to strike me. At the door where I had fled with Blair’s arm around my shoulders, certain my world was ending.
None of it scared me anymore.
Heath returned with Sophie, who had run out of steam and was now drooping against his shoulder, her eyes heavy with sleep.
“I think it’s time to go home,” he said.
“I think you’re right.”
We said our goodbyes to Blair and Blythe, promising to visit more often, knowing we probably wouldn’t but meaning it anyway. The kind of promise that friends make when they love each other across distances that can’t quite be bridged.
The car was waiting outside, and I slid into the backseat next to Sophie’s car seat while Heath got her buckled in. She was already half asleep, her bunny tucked under her chin, the hydrangea still clutched in her small fist.
“Pretty flower,” she murmured as her eyes closed. “Blue.”
“That’s right, baby. Blue.”
Heath got in beside me, and the car pulled away from the Bellcliff Club. I watched Newport slide past the windows, the grand estates and the manicured lawns, the lights glittering on the water.
This place had been my home for nine years. It had given me my husband and my daughter and the friends who had saved my life. It had also nearly destroyed me, had tested my marriage to its breaking point and shown me exactly how cruel beautiful places could be.
I was glad we didn’t live here anymore.
But I was also glad we could come back. That we could walk into those ballrooms with our heads held high, on our own terms, for our own reasons. That Newport no longer had the power to break us.
“You’re quiet,” Heath said.
“Just thinking.”
“About?”
“About how different everything is. How different I am.” I reached over and took his hand. “I used to be so scared of this world. So certain I didn’t belong. So convinced that everyone could see right through me.”
“And now?”
“Now I know who I am. I know what I’ve built. I know what we’ve survived.” I looked at Sophie, sleeping peacefully, her small chest rising and falling. “I know what matters.”
“Which is?”
“This. Us. Her.” I squeezed his hand. “Everything else is just noise.”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I like this version of you.”
“Which version?”
“The one who knows her own worth. The one who doesn’t need anyone else’s approval. The one who walked into that gala tonight like she owned the place.”
“I don’t own it.”
“You could.” He grinned. “If you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to. I have everything I want already.”
The car turned onto the main road, heading toward the airport, toward the plane that would take us back to France, to our real home, to the quiet life we had built on the ashes of everything we had almost lost.
Sophie stirred in her sleep, murmured a few sleepy syllables, and then settled again with a small sigh.
“Heath?”
“Hmm?”
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For fighting for us. Even when I pushed you away. Even when it seemed hopeless.”
“I would have fought forever.” He turned to look at me, his eyes serious. “I would have spent the rest of my life trying to win you back.”
“I know. That’s why I came back.”
“Because I’m persistent?”
“Because you showed me that I was worth fighting for. And then you kept showing me. Every single day.”
He leaned over and kissed me, soft and slow, while our daughter slept beside us and the lights of Newport faded behind us.
“I’ll keep showing you,” he said against my lips. “Forever.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
I settled against his shoulder as the car carried us toward our future. Behind us, the gala continued without us, the hydrangeas and the chandeliers and the beautiful, complicated people we had once tried so hard to impress.
Ahead of us, France. Our home. Our life. Our daughter, who would grow up knowing that her parents loved each other fiercely and chose each other deliberately and built a real life out of the ruins of what had almost been lost.
Every marriage in Newport has a secret.
Ours was simple, in the end. We had come within inches of losing everything. We had hurt each other deeply, trusted the wrong people, nearly let fear and silence destroy the best thing either of us had ever known.
But we had survived it. We had fought our way back to each other. We had built a life that was ours alone, free from the expectations and cruelties of the world we had left behind.
Every marriage in Newport has a secret, and the ones worth keeping are the ones that survive it.
THE END