Chapter 20
SIENNA
He spent one night here, most of it asleep on a couch too small for him.
Until yesterday, he had never made it farther than my front doormat.
The house should feel exactly the same after he leaves, but it doesn’t.
The counters are wiped down, the dishwasher is running, and breakfast has disappeared.
The blanket is still folded over one arm of the couch, though, and Cade’s tuxedo jacket hangs over the back of a kitchen chair.
I stare at the jacket longer than there is any reason to.
Getting it back to him should be easy. Marsh’s driver can take it into the city tomorrow, or Cade can send someone for it.
I pick it up anyway, then find my phone and open our messages.
Lawyers. Papers. Flowers. Nothing in the thread looks like two people who fell asleep holding each other last night.
You left your jacket.
A message about a jacket should not require this much consideration, but I stare at it before finally hitting send. His answer comes almost immediately.
Keep it for now.
The typing indicator appears, vanishes, then comes back and stays. In all the years I have watched my husband speak to lawyers, to boards, to rooms that went quiet when he stood, words have never been difficult for him. Apparently these are.
When the message arrives, my breath catches.
Holding you last night meant more to me than I know how to say. Thank you for letting me.
I read it twice before setting the phone facedown on the table. “No.”
I am still holding his jacket. I should hang it beside the door, but instead I put one arm through a sleeve and make it halfway into the second before I realize what I am doing. “Oh, for God’s sake.” I finish putting it on.
It looks absurd over leggings and the soft sweater I slept in, the sleeves falling past my wrists and the shoulders much too broad. Last night it had been warm from his body. It isn’t now, and somehow that doesn’t stop me from pulling it closed.
Sitting on the couch is an even worse idea, but I do that too.
I know where he was sitting. I know how his chest felt beneath my cheek after I stopped trying to keep any distance between us.
His hand moved over my back for so long that eventually I stopped waiting for him to decide I had been comforted enough.
I wanted that from him for years. Cade could buy me jewelry, fill a room with flowers, send dresses chosen by people who knew my measurements. None of it was what I wanted.
I wanted Cade’s arms around me when I hurt. I wanted to be noticed without first having to break badly enough that noticing became unavoidable. I wanted tenderness that didn’t lead anywhere except tenderness.
The worst thing he could have done now was prove he knew how.
Cold had been easier to live with because I could explain it. He was reserved. His family had raised him that way. Providing was how he cared. He came home. He wasn’t cruel. I found a reason for everything that was missing because admitting I was lonely inside my own marriage hurt more.
Last night left me nowhere to hide from it.
My phone chimes, and I reach for it too quickly.
Patricia, not Cade. Relief and disappointment arrive together, which is embarrassing enough before I even read her message.
Don’t be angry.
A link follows.
Watch this one. You need to see it.
Absolutely not, I type.
Her answer is immediate.
That’s why I sent it.
I know better than to argue with Patricia once she decides something is good for me. I leave the phone on the table, make coffee, bring it back to the couch, and ignore the link for almost a minute.
“Damn you, Patricia.”
The video opens in the middle of the applause. Whoever filmed it was several tables left of the stage, far enough away to capture things I never saw. There I am turning from the lectern toward the steps with my cards in one hand, still smiling, because that night I was simply proud of myself.
Ashley enters the edge of the frame. My stomach tightens.
Then I see Cade. He is already standing.
I drag the video backward and watch it again.
Ashley hasn’t reached me yet. She hasn’t called me anything.
Her hand is still at her side, and half the room is applauding and Cade is moving, his chair going over behind him, Pierce reaching for it too late.
Nobody around them seems to understand what has happened yet.
Neither did I. But he had seen her. By the time I turn toward Ashley, my husband is already moving toward the stage.
He had been watching.
I came tonight for you.
I heard him say it last night. I hadn’t understood exactly what he meant.
Ashley reaches me.
“You fat bitch.”
The slap turns my head. Even through the phone, the sound makes me flinch. The person filming jerks the camera, loses us for a second, then finds us again.
In my memory, Cade appeared out of nowhere when Ashley raised her hand the second time. The video shows the part I missed.
He runs.
Cade does not hurry through the ballroom or work his way around the chairs politely. He runs, hard enough that the tables rock as he cuts between them, and there are too many of them, too many people, and the first slap lands before he can get there.
That is why the second one never does.
Then his hand closes around her wrist.
“Oh.”
I pause the video.
I have seen Cade angry. I’ve seen his jaw lock when somebody insulted him at a dinner, heard his voice go quiet when a contractor tried to lie to his face, watched a whole room adjust itself when his patience ran out.
I have never seen this man.
When I start the video again, Ashley is shouting at me about the cottage. Cade says her name once, and even through a phone speaker the sound of it raises the hair along my arms. Security arrives. He turns her toward them.
If you ever touch my wife again?—
I pause it again.
“This is not sexy.”
I stare at his frozen face. Then I rewind. Apparently I am a liar.
There is nothing sexy about what Ashley did to me. I can still taste the blood if I think about it too hard, and there is nothing remotely erotic about police questions or strangers holding up phones while my legs threatened to give out beneath me.
But watching my husband come out of that chair before anyone else understood there was a reason to, seeing his face when he stopped Ashley, hearing him say my wife like the words belonged to him at a cellular level?
God help me.
It is indecently, infuriatingly sexy.
I let the video continue. This time Ashley barely registers. The camera stays on us after security takes her away, and onscreen I lower my hand and stare at the blood on my fingertip while Cade watches my face.
I remember what happens next. My legs weaken.
I start looking for the edge of the stage or a chair, anything I can touch without making it obvious that I need help.
What I didn’t know was that Cade saw it before I moved.
I am still upright on the screen when he turns toward me and reaches, and his hands close around my arms before my knees can give way.
I stop the video and sit back against the couch.
He noticed before I asked. Before I said anything.
That was what I wanted. I never expected him to read my mind or build his life around my moods. I wanted a husband who looked at me often enough to know when I was hurting.
A husband who noticed me.
The jacket shifts when I wipe under one eye.
And now I have him.
Now.
The word makes anger rise so quickly I have to stand.
I signed divorce papers, and suddenly Cade knows how to look at me. He pours my coffee. He tells me I’m beautiful and runs toward the stage because Ashley is coming toward me. He walked through a storm because there was something he needed me to hear. Last night he held me until I fell asleep.
Where was all of this when I was his wife every day?
I cross to the window. The sea is bright beyond the glass, and I pull the jacket tighter around myself before I realize I’m doing it.
That makes me angry too.
I could take it off. I don’t. Anger is easier than admitting why.
I liked last night.
Not the assault or the public ordeal afterward. Cade. Being steadied when my knees weakened. Hearing I’m taking you home and being glad he was the one taking me home. The care in his fingers at my zipper.
I liked crying against him.
And God help me, I liked waking up there.
This morning I woke without remembering the divorce, or Ashley, or everything that had happened between Cade and me. I was warm and half asleep with my cheek against my husband’s chest, and nothing about being there felt strange.
That is almost impossible to forgive.
We could have had mornings like that. I don’t mean sleeping on this couch with Patricia pounding on the door.
I mean what should have been ordinary: falling asleep against my husband because I felt safe enough to, waking with his arm around me so often that finding it there would never have startled me.
Instead I got it once, by accident, while our marriage was already ending.
For years I told myself he simply wasn’t made that way.
Now I know better.
Maybe losing me changed him. I don’t know. I needed this Cade before I learned how to leave the other one.
His message is still there when I pick up my phone.
Holding you last night meant more to me than I know how to say. Thank you for letting me.
My eyes burn again.
I type It meant something to me too, stare at it, then delete it.
I’ll get the jacket back to you.
I delete that too.
Thank you for last night.
That one stays longest. Then it goes with the others. Every honest answer feels dangerous, so I send nothing.
A minute later I check the phone anyway. No new message. He isn’t pressing for an answer or using last night as permission to ask for something else. He has left the choice with me, and I hate how much I notice that this is new too.
I play Patricia’s video once more. There is nothing left for me to discover in it. I know that before I press play.
This time I watch Cade.
Ashley appears, and he is already on his feet. By the time I understand I’m in danger, he is running toward me. When my knees weaken, he sees that too.
I don’t know what to do with a Cade who looks at me this closely. For so long I begged myself to stop wanting exactly this.
I let the video finish.
His jacket is still around my shoulders.
But it’s too late, isn’t it?