Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tyler wasn’t sure if he’d ever been so nervous in his life, at least not when it came to romantic matters.
Oh, he’d been nervous about other things, certainly.
When Izzy had been born, he’d practically sweat all the way through his shirt with nerves that he’d tried to hide from Cadence, since he didn’t want to add even the tiniest bit more to her burden.
He had been nearly as nervous when he’d tried out for the soccer team in high school, but that had been the chaotic emotional response of one’s teenaged years.
Asking Cadence out for the first time, though? No, he’d been pretty certain that she’d been interested in him, since they’d been circling one another and flirting with increasing obviousness for months by the time he got up his courage.
Even when he’d asked her to marry him, he’d been nervous, to be certain, but not this nervous. After all, they’d discussed marriage, so he knew she was interested in the idea. He’d had it on pretty good authority, which was to say Cadence’s own authority, that she would say yes.
This time, he did not know at all if she would say yes.
This time, she might very well kick him right out on his butt, and he wouldn’t be able to blame her.
After all, it had been only two nights before that she’d told him she was scared to try again. And he respected that, he did.
He just wanted one more shot to show her that he could do better, not just tell her. Just one more chance to remind her that they were good together.
He poked his head into the gallery as though he was some kind of burglar looking to case the joint, then immediately felt silly. Yes, he wasn’t entirely certain what Cadence’s response would be to his showing up, but that didn’t mean he needed to act like he was doing something wrong.
He didn’t see Cadence at first—the main space of the gallery was empty.
Tyler paused. He’d brought Cadence her favorites, an iced lavender latte from Juniper Café and a Bavarian croissant from Honey Bee Bakery.
He’d figured that way, even if she was annoyed at him for showing up, even if it turned out that his decision to show up here was a huge miscalculation, then at least Cadence would have some treats to show for it.
Except… he couldn’t give her the pastry or the drink, which was rapidly melting in the summer heat, if he couldn’t find her.
“Oh, shoot, shoot, shoot.”
Tyler whipped around at the sound of Cadence’s distress. He hurriedly put the beverage and bakery bag down on the front desk and hurried toward a back corner of the room, where Cadence was…
“Oh my gosh, Cadence, be careful!”
Cadence startled at his words. Ironically, Tyler thought this might have helped her balance, as she was precariously perched on the ricketiest stool he had ever seen, trying to hang a painting high up on the wall.
He stepped forward and put one hand against Cadence’s back, reaching the other up to steadying the large frame she held. Between the two of them, they got both the art and Cadence safely to the floor.
Once Tyler no longer felt like his heart was trying to leap out of his chest, he glanced up at the hook where Cadence had been trying to loop the frame.
“That needs to be higher,” he observed.
“Ugh, I know,” she said, pushing a wayward strand of hair from her face.
Her hair was a little less controlled now that it was shorter, since she could no longer wear the braid that had been her signature for so many years.
He liked her new look. It was… playful. It reminded him of a younger, more carefree version of Cadence.
Though he had seen her hair directly after she’d gotten the perm, before her friend June had helped her fix the style. Tyler would never, ever admit this, not to anyone, not for any reason, but in the safety of his own mind he could admit that maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been her very best look.
But that was in the vault.
“If you know,” he asked teasingly, “then why is the hook not higher.”
She gave him a flat, unimpressed look. “It’s because I couldn’t reach it, as you know perfectly well, Tyler Meadows, so don’t give me a hard time.”
He grinned at her. She was fun to tease.
“Okay, give me the hammer,” he said, holding out his hand expectantly.
Her eyes were narrow but there was a little half-smile on her lips as she handed him the requested tool.
He tested the wobbly stool to see if it would hold up against his weight, since he was a good bit heavier than Cadence, then slowly raised himself up.
When it stayed steady, or at least steady-ish, he thought privately, he removed the hook and raised in a few inches higher.
“Here?” he asked.
Cadence wrinkled her nose, then stepped back a few feet to get a better perspective. “Maybe like… two more inches?”
He moved it. “Here?”
She paused, assessing again, then nodded. “Yeah, that’s perfect.”
With his height, it was the work of moments to hammer the nail into the right place.
Then, working together, he and Cadence lifted the artwork and hung it on the newly placed hook.
When he hopped down from the stool and paced backward to stand behind Cadence, he could see what she saw, even with his far less keen eye. This was where that painting belonged.
There was a single beat where they were in perfect accord, both enjoying the simple pleasure of a job well done. Then the moment passed and Cadence turned to look at him, uncertainty in her gaze.
“Ty,” she said quietly, and he wondered if he was deluding himself to think that he heard hope in her tone. “What are you doing here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. While working together had felt extremely good, he now felt too foolish to just say, “I thought if I showed you that we get stuff done together you might decide to love me again.” And, sure, it was a touch more complicated than that, but hadn’t that been the core of his scheme?
“I, uh, brought something for you,” he said. Then, worried that this would get her expectations too high, he added, “A little something. Tiny, really. No big deal.”
She pursed her lips in an expression that suggested she was trying not to laugh. He’d mostly seen this directed to a toddler-aged Izzy when she was doing something hilarious but that they didn’t want to encourage by laughing about.
“So I should expect a super huge surprise?” she asked. “Like, super huge?” She let out a theatrical gasp. “Did you get me a pony?”
He decided to play into her attitude. “Oh, way better than a pony.” Joking around with her was nicer than the waves of nervousness that kept striking him.
When Cadence saw his offerings on the desk, however, she looked as though she couldn’t have been any happier if he had shown up with a pony.
“No way,” she said, grinning. “You got me…” She took a quick sip through the straw.
“Oh, it is the lavender latte and—” She cut herself off with an excited squeal of pleasure.
“And the Bavarian croissant? I can’t believe you did this.
” She took another sip of her drink, then chased it with a bite of the croissant.
Her happy little dance was all the thanks Tyler needed.
“Oh, man, I can’t believe you did this,” she repeated when her mouth was empty. “You always said it was wasted effort, going to two places just to have them together.”
And, just like that, Tyler’s good mood died. Not because Cadence sounded displeased or angry about his past comments. In fact, the offhand way that she mentioned it made things all the worse.
Because he had said that, and other things like it, for far too long.
He’d treated Cadence and the things that she wanted as though they were not worth the effort.
And for what? Juniper Café and Honey Bee Bakery were maybe three minutes away from one another?
What was the cost of three minutes when it came to doing something kind that made his wife happy?
He ran his hands roughly through his hair.
“I… I owe you an apology, Cadence,” he said.
She blinked up at him, pausing mid-bite, then lowered her pastry.
“What do you mean?” she asked, sounding guarded. He deserved that, he supposed, given that he’d shown up out of the blue and started being cryptic.
“No, no, nothing’s wrong,” he said hurriedly, before Cadence’s mind could jump to worrying about Isabelle. He knew how she thought. They were both parents, and their daughter would never be far from their minds. “I just meant… I didn’t really realize how selfish I’d let myself get, toward…”
He stopped before he could say the end of our marriage.
That felt like putting bad energy out into the world.
He didn’t want their marriage to be over.
He wanted whatever was currently happening between them to be a blip, something they’d discuss ten, twenty, thirty years from now as that rough patch before they would smile and reminisce about all the wonderful memories they’d made after they’d worked things out.
But dreaming about that was getting ahead of himself.
“In the months before I moved out,” he concluded.
Cadence was looking at him with more sympathy than he likely deserved.
“Ty,” she said. “It wasn’t just you. It was both of us.”
He grimaced. “I don’t know. I mean, yeah, I get that a marriage is made up of two people. I get that we were both there. But… I feel like I was the one who started letting the little things slip. Like, who cares if you to two places to get the things you like? Why was I such a jerk about that?”
“Well, you were wrong about how perfectly these treats go together,” she said, the gentle teasing helping break some of the tension that had wrapped itself around Tyler’s heart.
“But you weren’t a jerk. You were hurting.
We were both hurting. Or, okay, maybe we were both jerks, because sometimes people who are hurting get so wrapped up in that hurt that they forget to make room for other things. Like kindness or patience.”
“But what kind of man forgets kindness or patience when his wife is grieving?”
In a flash, he thought of Cadence’s devastated face when she told them about one of their most painful disappointments.
Her cycle had been late enough that they’d started to hope that maybe this time they’d end up with the pregnancy they so desperately desired.
Tyler had ignored the tiny voice in the back of his mind that told him not to get his hopes up.
His hopes had gotten way, way up. Surely, this time they’d finally get lucky, right?
Except the odds still hadn’t been in their favor.
He remembered coming home from work one day to find that Izzy had unexpectedly been picked up by Cadence’s parents.
And Cadence had been on the couch, curled in on herself.
She had a hot water bottle on her lower stomach, a sure sign that she was being plagued by cramps.
He saw that and knew that, once again, they hadn’t managed to get pregnant. There would be no bouncing baby nine months later. And that tiny, warm kernel of hope had just withered and died inside him. And he just felt…
Blank. Like something inside him had turned off to protect him from experiencing the pain.
He’d waited too long before turning that part of himself back on.
And, now that he thought about it, the hope hadn’t died.
He’d just… smothered it. The pain of the ups and downs of hoping and then being crushed by disappointment had been too much to bear.
But by giving up, he’d abandoned his wife in her time of need, at least in an emotional sense.
If he’d tried to protect himself from pain by not feeling it, he’d left her to feel it all alone.
It was no wonder, really, that she’d pulled back from him in return.
Cadence’s expression wasn’t judgmental though.
It was kind. And patient.
“You were grieving too,” she said. “My grief just came out, while yours turned in.”
Maybe. Part of him wanted to believe her kindness, wanted to trust, as he had for so long, that Cadence’s judgment was his due north.
Yet, he felt that perhaps she was being too kind to him. Maybe she was letting him off the hook too easily.
But maybe that was what she was talking about. Maybe being a little kinder to one another was the whole point.
“Maybe,” he said quietly. “Maybe you’re right.”
Cadence hopped up to sit on the edge of the desk so she could continue enjoying the treats he’s brought her, then nodded at the spot next to her, indicating he could take a seat too, if he wanted.
Tyler was not about to pass up a chance to get close to her, even if it was something as small as sitting innocently side by side on a table.
She took a thoughtful sip of her coffee before speaking again.
“We can’t take back what we did then,” she said. “I… I wish we could, but we can’t.”
He nodded.
“And I guess what I’m trying to work through,” she went on, slowly, carefully, as though she were thinking even as she spoke, “is how to accept that we can’t take it back without carrying all that pain forward.”
He nodded again. “I mean, I don’t have ‘the answer’ to that. There probably isn’t one ‘right’ answer.”
She chuckled dryly. “Probably not. Would be nice though.”
“Sure would,” he agreed, matching her tone. “But the upside, maybe, is that if there isn’t an answer… maybe there are a few answers?”
She took another contemplative sip. “Maybe,” she allowed.
“So what if…” He took a risk and reached out, grasping her free hand in his. His heart leapt when she didn’t pull away. “What if we just try? What if we plan to meet up and really listen to one another, like really be intentional about it? What if we have one night of old-school bonding?”
“Old school?” she repeated, a smile in her voice. Tyler’s heart leapt again. It wasn’t a no, at least not an immediate one. “Like… we take a turn about the room? Attend a musicale at the biggest ball of the season?”
“Have you been reading one of those duke books for your club again?” he asked. She pointedly didn’t make eye contact and hummed a little tune. “Yeah, yeah, okay,” he laughed. “No, I did not mean we should time travel to the 1800s. I thought more like going to dinner.”
She paused, her playful, teasing aspect vanishing into a cloud of uncertainty.
“One dinner,” he said. “If you don’t want to… try anything after that, I’ll accept it, I promise. I just… please give me one more chance, Cadence. One last chance to prove how sorry I am that I let things fall apart. Please.”
She squeezed his hand once before letting go, and Tyler held his breath.
“Yeah,” she said. “Okay. One dinner.”
And Tyler knew nothing was fixed yet, that nothing was set in stone, but he couldn’t help the grin that spread over his face. It was the most hope he’d had in ages, and he would enjoy it to its fullest.