CHAPTER 23 Reid #2
It was so simple.
It was so catastrophically, humiliatingly simple.
Maya was the most important thing. Maya had always been the most important thing.
He didn’t feel untethered. He felt… clear.
Everything made sense now. There was no conflict.
He hadn't broken his principles, he’d finally found the right one.
Maya was the law he should have been living by. He could trust her. He did trust her.
She was first.
She had always been first.
He had just been too much of a coward to admit it to himself.
Reid opened his eyes. Around him the city continued, ordinary and indifferent and completely unaware that something had just cracked open and rearranged.
Reid drove out of the city in silence.
The skyline receded slowly in the rearview mirror.
The roads narrowed as he entered the suburb. Familiar streets unfolded around him now. The florist Maya loved, the library with the automatic doors she’d fought for, the sports field where they attended the community picnic every year.
Quiet streets. Trim lawns. The same grocery store for thirty years. The same people year after year.
Ordinary and boring and dull. Just like Reid, himself.
A teenage boy crossed at the intersection ahead on a bike. Reid stopped automatically and waited while the kid pedaled across the street.
Maya hadn’t see this place as dull and ordinary. She’d seen it as her home.
They were supposed to bring up their children here.
Reid swallowed hard.
He carried her across the threshold of his house after their wedding.
He’d nearly lost his footing on the entry rug. Maya had laughed, one arm around his neck, bouquet still in her hand.
She had been warm and soft and gloriously solid in his arms, all lush curves and laughing weight.
She gave everything she could. But from Reid, she took. She took his attention, his Saturdays, his body—like it was simply hers by right. He was hers. He would always be hers.
He didn't deserve her, he never had, but what did that matter?
Maya was—Maya. She was her own category. You didn't measure up to her; you showed up for her.
He pulled into the driveway and cut the engine.
His first instinct, the instant he'd seen Maya's name on those accounts, had not been to arrest her. His first instinct had been to bury it. To cover it. To protect her.
He had spent the next three days overriding that. Shouting it down. Drowning it in spreadsheets. He had been so proud of himself for refusing to listen to it.
What a joke.
His instinct had been right all along.
Reid looked down at his hands. At the ring on his finger.
Maya had married him. And now she would divorce him.
And finally Reid understood.
His instincts about Maya were not a weakness. They were not sentiment to be overridden. His instincts about Maya were the truest thing in him.
If his instinct said protect her, he would protect her.
If his instinct said fight for her, he would fight for her.
If his instinct said she was innocent, then she was innocent.
He couldn't give her back the morning at the fun run. He couldn't give her back the weekend in the cell. He couldn't give her back the years of marriage.
But he could do better now. And he would do better now.
He was going to clear her name. He was going to repair her reputation.
He was going to dedicate his life to her.
And if, at the end of all of it, if she let him stand in the same room with her and tell her I love you, then he was going to tell her, every day for the rest of his life.
He started the engine. He needed help.
Reid stared at the self-help section. People learned things.
Reid had learned tax code dense enough to make grown men cry. He’d read manuals, regulations, case studies. He researched and he studied and he learned.
He knew how to study.
“I need books about being a bad husband,” he said to an employee. “I need to stop being a bad husband.”
She looked startled. “Oh,” she said.
Reid flexed his hand. His knuckles ached from where they connected with Julian’s face. Good.
“I need books about betrayal,” he said. “And insecurity. And…” His jaw tightened. “Catastrophic personal failure.”
The employee stared at him. “Right,” she said slowly. “Okay.”
Reid followed her through the aisles. She pulled out a few books and handed them to him one at a time.
The employee glanced at the growing stack in his arms. “These are all pretty intense,” she said cautiously.
They weren’t nearly intense enough. The titles should be things like:
Your Wife Deserved Better
You’re a Pathetic Loser
Men Who Fail at Being Husbands
He had spent days thinking of himself as principled and rational while his wife sat in a jail cell begging him to believe her.
A woman who had loved him openly.
Trusted him completely.
Reid stared blindly at a book about accountability while shame pressed hot and suffocating against the inside of his ribs.
The employee reappeared near the end of the aisle, handing him another book. “Do you think that’s enough?”
Reid looked down at the stack in his arms. He thought about Maya sitting alone and scared in a cell.
No.
Not even remotely.
But he nodded anyway.
At the register, the cashier glanced at the books, then at him, then quickly away again.
Even strangers could tell he was a disaster. Good. He was a disaster.
The cashier slid the books into a paper bag.
He thought of Maya again. Her face when he had arrested her.
He was going to be better for her. He was going to read every single one of these books. He was going to fix himself.