Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The whiteboard at the front of the small conference room read:
Led by Harper and Everett Gleason.
“I want this noted for the record,” she muttered, “that I blame the judge, the counselors, our past selves, and possibly fate.”
She didn’t leave things unfinished. That was her problem. Being responsible was exhausting, but at least it was familiar.
Everett stood beside her, lining the markers up by color.
“You’re nervous.”
“I’m annoyed,” she said. “There’s a difference.”
“Both involve your eye twitching.”
Her eye twitched.
“You don’t get to know my tells anymore.”
“See?” he murmured.
Before she could throw a marker at him, the five other couples filed in. It felt like watching versions of her own history take seats: optimism, tension, exhaustion.
She gripped the podium and suppressed a groan.
“We could’ve been the long-married couple. We almost were.”
Harper cleared her throat. “Okay. We’re Harper and Everett. We’re here because—”
“We were voluntold,” Everett finished lightly.
The men all chuckled, which told her more about the men attending.
She shot him a look. “Don’t encourage him.”
Everett leaned in slightly. “We are supposed to be… approachable.”
A ripple of laughter moved through the room.
Everett wrote COMMUNICATION on the board.
Harper snorted. “Write smaller. It’s a gross overstatement.”
Everett ignored that. “Our first mistake was assuming love would make communication easier.”
“It doesn’t,” Harper said. “It makes it harder. Because you expect the other person to love you enough to listen and try to understand your point of view.”
Ava raised a hand. “So… how do you fix that?”
Harper answered without hesitation. “You say the quiet part out loud.” She looked down at her hands. “I wish I’d known that unspoken expectations are resentments waiting to decapitate you.”
“And I wish,” Everett said softly, “that I’d known her asking was her trying—not nagging.”
It irritated her how easily he slipped into her rhythm, how naturally their banter resurfaced.
Don’t fall for this.
Cal signaled from the back. “Next prompt: What does teamwork look like?”
Harper exhaled. “Not what we did.”
“We did some things well,” Everett countered gently.
She arched a brow. “Name one.”
“Hosting dinners,” he said quietly. “You’d cook, I’d do the dishes. You’d laugh with guests, I’d refill drinks. We always fell into rhythm.”
She swallowed. “…That was a long time ago.”
“Still happened,” he murmured.
Marnie jumped in. “Teamwork shifts over time. It takes practice.”
Jimmy raised a hand. “But what if one person carries more?”
Harper answered first. “They burn out.”
Everett followed with. “And the other person thinks everything is fine—because they want to believe it.” He lowered his head.
The air left the room. Harper stared at him. For too long, her requests for help or connection had been met with heavy sighs or silence, labeled as pressure. Criticism. Too much.
Cal clapped. “Let’s close with advice for the group. One sentence each.”
Harper opened her mouth. So did Everett. They spoke simultaneously: “Choose each other on purpose.”
The room gasped in unison.
The sky over the mountains was bruised twilight by the time they made it back to Cabin Seven. The workshop was over, the praise from the other couples faded, but their words clung to Harper like smoke.
In the small kitchen, she filled a glass of water. Everett leaned against the counter a few feet away, close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off him.
“We should work on that assignment.”
Harper folded her arms. “You first,” she said sharply. “I’m clinically incapable of sugarcoating.”
“I know.”
“Stop looking at me like you still know me!” Her voice cracked. She swallowed hard.
“I do know you,” he said.
The certainty in his voice grated against her resolve. He thought he knew her because they had been together for so long. A lifetime ago.
“No,” she said sharply. “You knew who I was when we were married. You don’t know who I became after you left.”
He exhaled slowly. “Then tell me.”
Silence settled between them. Harper opened her mouth.
Nothing came out. That request cut deeper than a shout.
She preferred the Everett who walked away without a word.
That version was easier to hate. Easier to label.
Easier to fight. This version listened. Listening meant she might have to forgive him.
“Fine, you want me to talk. Forgiveness feels like dying. If I tell you who I became, you’ll see what you did to me.
The person you knew no longer exists. You made sure of that when you left.
Just how much did you expect me to take?
How long did you expect me to wait? And for what?
The outcome would have been the same, no matter how you look at it.
I stopped blaming myself. I quit beating myself up because my very being wasn’t enough for the person who claimed he loved me.
Instead, I’ve learned to love myself. I am enough for me. That’s all that matters now.”
She dropped into the chair at the table and pulled the worksheet over. The heading, in bold, annoyed her even more.
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
What Went Right / What Went Wrong
Everett arched a brow as he took the chair opposite. “I can think of several.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t do this. Don’t rewrite history now.”
It chipped away at the story she’d built to survive. She capped the pen harder than necessary. The “good” list felt dangerous. The “bad” list was safer. It came with receipts.
“Harper—”
He didn’t get to interrupt. She had three years of silence to fill. “I never asked you to be perfect.” Her throat closed around the words. “I asked for a partner. Not a ghost.”
“I know,” Everett said quietly. “But I kept trying to fix everything alone. And failing alone. And the shame… it ate me alive.”
He met her gaze. There was something different in his expression now. Not deflection. Not retreat. Vulnerability.
“So instead of asking for help,” he continued, “I drank. I took trips to feel free while you stayed home. I made it worse. I made us worse.”
She chewed her lip as he finally took ownership of his actions.
“It wasn’t you I was running from,” he said. “It was the version of me I became.”
“How could you not tell me?” she whispered. “We were supposed to be a team.”
“I didn’t know how to be a teammate,” he admitted. “Not when I couldn’t stand the man standing next to you.”
Fury flared. “You could’ve talked to me.”
“I tried,” he said. “Not out loud.”
“So you walked away.”
“I thought it would make things easier for you.”
“That was the worst thing you could’ve done!” she exploded. “I needed you to show up, Everett! Not disappear!”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I know.”
He picked up the pen.
In neat, steady handwriting, on the what went right side, he wrote:
—Loyalty
—Friendship
On the what went wrong side, he wrote:
—Shame
—Silence
—Avoidance
She stared at the list. Finally, she added a single line beneath his on the what went wrong side.
—We stopped choosing each other.
Her voice softened. “I chose being right over being close. Every time. Because you left me alone.”
He reached slowly and tapped the list. “This doesn’t have to be the end.”
She shook her head and went to stand before the fireplace. “We’re too late, Everett.”
Staring at the fireplace, she asked, “Why did you really leave?”
His jaw tightened. “I told you.”
“No, you didn’t,” her voice sharpened. “You said you were overwhelmed, that you were scared, that you were flailing.”
“The credit card bill came,” he said. “The one with the surprise truck repair and the internet bill. We’d maxed out the third card. We were… we were drowning, Harper.”
“We were treading water,” she corrected. “It wasn’t great, but we could have worked together to get us back in line.”
“I was,” he cut in, voice suddenly rough. “You saw the numbers. I was exhausted. It wasn’t getting better.”
“You mean you weren’t getting better. And what about me? Your solution was to spend money we didn’t have?” she continued. “ATVs, fishing gear, boys trips?”
“It was the only thing that made me feel in control.”
“In control of what? The financial mess you were creating? You don’t get to complain about money stress when you’re the one lighting it on fire.
Control. The irony. I played Jenga with our finances until my eyes bled, squeezing every cent while he…
He winced, his hand moving toward her and then dropping, like he’d forgotten he wasn’t allowed to touch her anymore.
“And then,” she continued, her breath going shallow, “when I tried to talk to you about anything,” she went on, “you said I was overreacting. That I was being dramatic. That I expected too much from you.”
“You did,” he muttered.
She froze.
Too much. Not the job. Not the debt. Me. The nausea coiled in her gut. It was almost too much. When did wanting to be seen become a liability? A headache pulsed behind her eyes.
“What did I expect that was too much, Everett? Honesty? Affection? A husband who didn’t treat me like another chore on his list?”
He looked away. Looked at the floor. The wall. Anywhere but her.
Why isn’t fighting for us worth the discomfort of looking at me? Why am I something to escape from?
“So instead of dealing with your feelings, you detonated our life and disappeared. Typical,” she said bitterly.
Everett fired back, raw and unfiltered, “Nothing I did was right! I’d get home, and you’d pick a fight before I set my keys down!”
“Wrong again, you were letting yourself down and blaming it on me. I asked questions to try to figure out how to make it work. From where I was standing, I was doing the emotional heavy lifting while you… what? Pretended everything was fine while I screamed into a void?”
“I didn’t pretend,” he snapped. “I checked out.”
“And that’s somehow better?” Her hands trembled.
“No.”
He sounded defeated.
“The night you left,” she said, “I thought you were blowing off steam. I figured you’d go for a drive, sleep on your buddy’s couch, and come back ready to finally talk. So I waited. I sat on that couch all night with my phone in my hand, jumping at every car that drove by.”
She swallowed hard.
“And then morning came. And then, the next day. And the next week. And every day, some part of me kept thinking, He’ll come back. He’ll realize this was a mistake. He’ll remember I exist.”
Her voice became hoarse. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up every morning and realize that the person who promised you forever decided… not to?”
“Harper,” he whispered.
“Why didn’t you come back?” she demanded. “That night.”
Why wasn’t I worth coming back for?
A distinction without a difference to the person left alone in the room.
“Because… I couldn’t do it again.”
“Please be honest with yourself. For once. Do what again?”
“Walk in the door and face another fight,” he said quietly. “I was tired of always being the bad guy. Tired of never being enough. Tired of seeing anger in your face every time you looked at me.”
“I wasn’t angry. I was desperate. That was your own guilt.
You blamed me so you could deflect and escape the actual issues.
Do you understand that? You mistook panic for hostility.
You saw the volume, the sharp gestures, the tears, and labeled it all ‘anger’ because that was easier than recognizing a woman drowning in plain sight. ”
“For what?” he demanded. “For me to magically become someone else?”
“No!” she shouted, her hand shooting out to grip the table’s edge, knuckles white. “For you to show up! For you to try! That’s all I wanted.”
He swallowed. “I thought walking away would fix it.” Silence fell heavily between them.
How on earth does that sound logical in any way?
I wasn’t trying to fight him. I was trying to wake him up. But what if I were too angry? What if I drove him away? Stop! Don’t do this to yourself. He left. Not you.
“Who does that to someone they supposedly love?”