Chapter 22
SIENNA
Cade comes back the next morning.
I know it’s him before I open the door. Patricia knocks like she’s collecting a debt, Barbara calls my name from the porch, and Nancy has somehow mastered a knock that sounds judgmental. Cade knocks twice and waits.
His jacket is still hanging over the back of my kitchen chair. I look at it before I go to the door, as though I need proof that yesterday happened. Then I open it.
He’s standing on my porch in a dark suit with no tie. The suit is immaculate. Cade isn’t. His eyes are red around the edges, there’s a shadow along his jaw he would never normally leave the house wearing, and he looks as though he barely slept. Cade Belluomo does not look like this in public.
He’s holding a large envelope.
My stomach drops.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi.”
Neither of us moves. Yesterday morning I woke with my face against his chest. After he left, I wore his jacket around my own house and watched a video of him running toward the stage. Now he’s standing on my porch holding what looks very much like the end of our marriage.
His gaze moves over my face and pauses at my mouth, where the swelling has mostly gone down. “How are you feeling?”
“Better.”
“I’m glad.” The words are quiet, and he looks relieved.
Then he holds the envelope out to me across the threshold.
“The papers.”
Everything inside me goes still. I knew what the envelope was. Apparently knowing and hearing him say it are two different things.
I take it and step onto the porch.
“They’re signed,” he says. “All of them. My attorney has everything she needs from me. There won’t be a challenge or a delay from my side.”
I stare at the envelope in my hands. I wanted this. I signed those papers because I wanted this. There were nights after I left him when I lay awake imagining how relieved I’d feel when Cade finally stopped fighting the inevitable and gave me back my life.
Relief is not what comes.
“You signed them.”
“Yes.”
“Last night?”
“Yes.”
I slide a finger under the flap. He watches me open it and stays exactly where he is. My attorney’s tabs are still in place, my own signature on the last page, and beneath it, his.
I’ve seen his name on contracts, foundation documents, holiday cards his assistant arranged. I know his signature almost as well as I know my own.
This one is different. The first part is unmistakably Cade. By the end, the letters have gone uneven.
And the page is rippled. Faint dark marks sit in the paper near the signature line, and the fibers have dried warped around them, and the first stroke of his name drags slightly where the ink fought the damage. I know what water does to paper.
I run my thumb along the paper beside one of the marks, not quite touching it.
When I look up, Cade is watching my hand. His eyes are red, and he holds very still.
Oh.
Neither of us says it. He knows what I’m looking at. I know what I’m holding. The composed, level man standing on my porch sat alone somewhere last night and wept onto these pages, and then he signed them anyway.
I slide the papers back into the envelope. There are approximately a thousand things I could say and none of them will get through my throat.
Cade saves me from trying.
“I owe you an apology.”
“You’ve apologized.”
“Not properly.”
“Cade—”
“Please.”
There’s no command in it. The man I married informed me of things.
He takes a breath, and I can see the effort it costs him to stay where he is instead of stepping closer.
“You gave me two years of your life,” he says.
“I spent most of them believing that because I provided for you, came home, and never lied about the arrangement, I was doing enough. I wasn’t.
I gave another woman things that belonged inside our marriage.
My time. My attention. Access to me whenever she wanted it.
And then I came home to you and told myself I’d been faithful because I hadn’t slept with her.
” His jaw tightens. “I was still betraying you.”
I say nothing.
“I will never forgive myself for that, or for what I did to you the night you left. I will never ask you to forgive me. You asked me a question no wife should ever have to ask her husband, and I answered you by reminding you of the terms of our marriage.” He watches my fingers tighten around the envelope. “I remember exactly what I said.”
So do I. I’m not going to insult you by lying. The words still hurt as much as they did that night.
“I thought because I was calm, I was being kind,” he says. “I thought choosing my words carefully meant I couldn’t be cruel to you. I was wrong. I was cruel to you, Sienna. I just did it quietly.”
My eyes burn.
He looks away for a second, and when he looks back his control is thinner.
“I came home from another woman’s house and told you how carefully I’d taken care of her. And you asked me if I’d eaten.” His throat works on a swallow. “I understood that last night. Fully. For the first time. You were leaving me, and you still cared about me.”
“Cade.”
“I didn’t understand what you’d been giving me.
That isn’t an excuse. It makes it worse.
” He steadies himself. “I’m sorry for every time I made you feel like she had a claim on me that you didn’t.
For the gala. For leaving you there. And I’m sorry you had to leave our marriage before I understood how lonely I’d made you inside it. ”
I look at him. “Why?”
His brow draws together. “Why what?”
“Why did you do it?” My fingers tighten on the envelope.
“You keep telling me you understand what you did. Fine. I believe you. But why, Cade? Why did she get you every time she called? Why could she say she needed you and you dropped everything, and you left me alone because you decided I was fine?”
He takes it without looking away. “I don’t know how to answer that without making myself sound as bad as I was.”
“Try.”
“I justified it by telling myself she needed me.”
“She said she needed you. There’s a difference.”
He closes his eyes for a second. “Yes.”
“So why?”
“Pride.” He looks sick saying it, and he doesn’t take it back. “It was ego, Sienna. That’s all it was. I was winning a competition I’d lost before I ever met you. I never loved her. I didn’t even want her back. I wanted to be the one she picked, and I let you pay for it.”
“So while I was your wife, you were still trying to win a competition with someone who rejected you.”
“Yes.”
“You humiliated me for your ego.”
“Yes.”
“You left me standing outside in the cold because your pride needed Ashley to want you.”
“No.” It comes hard, and then he stops himself. “Not consciously. But if you’re asking whether my ego mattered more in those moments than what I was doing to you, then yes. It did.”
My eyes sting and he doesn’t come closer. “I hate that answer,” I whisper.
“So do I.”
“You should.”
“I do.”
I look down at the envelope, because I can’t look at him. “How am I supposed to believe anything you tell me?”
“You’re not. I wouldn’t, in your place.” His voice is level and it costs him. “I took you for granted, Sienna. Completely. I treated my wife like she was the one person I could afford not to choose.”
I turn away.
“Sienna.”
“Give me a second.”
“Take your time.”
I stand with my back to him and my eyes closed. I hate that he knows now. I wanted him to know for so long that the fact he finally does is almost unbearable.
When I turn around, he hasn’t moved.
“The papers are yours,” he says. “There are no conditions attached. I don’t want the divorce. But what I want doesn’t matter.” He looks at the envelope against my chest. “You asked me to let you go. I should have listened sooner.”
I have wanted him to sign those papers since the night I packed my bag. Now he has, and it hurts. Nothing about this man has ever hurt me at the appropriate time.
“What happens now?” The question comes out before I decide to ask it.
I watch him refuse to hope. “Whatever you want to happen.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know.” He gives me the smallest, saddest attempt at a smile. “I don’t think I’m entitled to ask for anything this morning. I should go.”
My heart gives one hard, stupid beat. I don’t tell him to stay.
He nods once, as though I’ve answered a question he was careful not to ask, and turns toward the steps. I watch him cross the porch. He reaches the top step and puts one hand on the rail.
For several seconds he doesn’t turn around. When he finally does, there’s something in his face I’ve never seen before. Not uncertainty. Cade knows exactly what he’s about to say. He’s afraid to say it anyway.
“Sienna. I owe you one more answer.”
The envelope slips slightly in my hands, and suddenly I’m back in our old living room with the lamp on, asking him the question that ended everything.
Do you love me?
Cade’s hand falls away from the porch rail.
“You asked me a question the night you left. I gave you the worst answer of my life, and I’m not willing for it to be the last thing you ever heard from me as your husband.
” He steadies himself. “I thought I knew what love was. I thought I’d had it and lost it and been ruined by it, and I built my whole life on that, and I was wrong.
What I felt back then was pride, and injury, and being young.
I know that now, because now I have the real thing to compare it to. ”
I can’t move. If I move, this stops.
“Nobody ever showed me what love actually was,” he says. “Until you.”
He pauses, searching for the words.
“And I lived inside that for our entire marriage without understanding what it was. Then you finally asked me the one question that mattered, and I stood there and told you I wouldn’t insult you by lying.”
My voice comes out low and shaking. I didn’t plan to speak. “You looked right at me, Cade. You told me you wouldn’t lie.”
“I lied.”
I stare at him.