CHAPTER 56
The Rule That Changes
In the car, Elise cried.
Not dramatically. Not with sobs that demanded rescue. She sat in the passenger seat with her face turned toward the dark window while tears slipped down quietly enough that Daniel noticed only because a streetlight caught them on her cheek.
He pulled over beneath a row of jacaranda trees two blocks from home.
'Hey.'
She wiped quickly. 'I am okay.'
'That is a conclusion, not a report.'
Her mouth trembled into a laugh. 'That phrase is becoming very annoying.'
'Useful things often are.'
Elise looked out the windshield. Purple blossoms littered the curb like confetti after a party. 'I do not know why I am crying.'
Daniel kept both hands on the steering wheel because he sensed touching too soon would let her hide inside comfort before she finished telling the truth.
'Try anyway,' he said.
She inhaled unevenly. 'Because he left. Because you let him dance with me. Because I liked that you watched. Because I came back to you and it felt right. Because none of that fits the old story I had about being a good wife.'
The last words entered him gently and then broke something open.
'What was the old story?'
'That wanting less made me safer to love.'
Daniel closed his eyes for a moment.
There were sentences a marriage survived only by being willing to hear them fully. This was one of them.
'Elise.'
'I know you did not ask that of me.'
'Maybe not out loud.'
She turned toward him. 'Daniel, no.'
'Yes.' He opened his eyes. 'Maybe I rewarded the parts of you that made me feel secure and got nervous around the parts that made me feel chosen instead of guaranteed.'
Her tears came faster. 'That is not all on you.'
'No. But I am in it.'
The car hummed softly around them. A sprinkler ticked somewhere behind a hedge. Daniel thought of Marcus on the rooftop saying he would not be used to hurt them. Strange, that a third man had helped them enter a confession that belonged only to husband and wife.
Elise reached across the console. He met her halfway.
'I need the rule to change,' she said.
His chest tightened. 'Which rule?'
'The one I made for myself. The rule that says I can want only what is easy for you.'
Daniel swallowed. 'That rule was never fair.'
'It felt loving.'
'A lot of unfair things disguise themselves that way.'
She leaned her head back against the seat. 'What if my wanting becomes too much?'
He turned fully toward her. 'Then we use guardrail. We talk. We slow down. But I do not want your honesty filtered through what you think I can survive.'
'That is a brave sentence.'
'I may need to borrow courage against it later.'
She smiled through tears. 'I will lend it back.'
Daniel finally touched her face, wiping the dampness from her cheek with his thumb. The intimacy of the gesture felt sharper than anything that had happened on the rooftop.
'What do you want, honestly?' he asked.
Elise looked frightened by the doorway he had opened.
Then she walked through it.
'I want him to touch me more than he did tonight,' she whispered. 'Not everything. Not fast. But more. And I want you there. I want to keep looking back and find you still with me.'
Daniel's body answered with heat before his fear could organize a speech.
He held her gaze. 'Then next time we talk about more.'
Her breath shook. 'Next time?'
'Yes.'
He started the car again. The headlights swept over the quiet street, and their house waited ahead, ordinary and changed as ever.
Behind them, the old rule lay beneath the jacaranda trees, losing its power petal by petal.