29. Nora
NORA
At the porch steps, I stop. The house is quiet. Warm light spills through the narrow window by the door. Inside, my parents are probably pretending not to wait up.
All of them love me. All of them are tired of watching me ache over Daniel Welling. I am tired too.
Miles closes the umbrella and shakes rain off it onto the walkway. Then he looks at me. Not at my dress. Not at my mouth. At me.
"You can tell me no forever," he says. "I don't want a yes you give because you're bleeding. I don't want to win because he failed. I want you to want me."
There is no way to answer that without hurting him. So I do not answer right away. Rain taps against the porch roof. Somewhere inside the house, a floorboard creaks.
Miles is right in front of me. Kind. Angry for me. Good with June. There. Always there.
I think about dinner with him. Just something normal.
Pizza eaten too hot from paper plates. June stealing olives off my slice.
A bed where nobody smells like airport soap.
A man who answers his phone. Then I think about Daniel at the gallery, face hard and pale, standing beside me without touching me because I said alone and he heard me.
His voice in my kitchen when he said he had never crossed that line.
I believed him. God help me, I believed him. And I want him back. Not all the time. Not cleanly. But in flashes so hard they make me angry.
Miles takes one small step closer. He stops there.
"Can I?" he asks.
He does not say kiss you. He does not have to.
My pulse jumps. If I say yes, he will be gentle.
He will be careful. It will be sweet, and it will not ruin me, and maybe that is exactly why part of me wants it.
No storm. No boardrooms. No mother-in-law with a lawyer's smile.
No billionaire husband across an ocean, telling himself money could fix the wife he left behind. Just Miles. Just peace.
I lean up. I really do. Weak and aching, I let my body move toward his because I want the quiet. I want to be the woman who chooses the good man on the porch and lets everyone else deal with the wreckage.
Miles goes still. He lets me come to him. His mouth is close enough that I can feel his breath.
And then my whole body stops. Not because I am noble. I stop because the truth rises up and hits me hard.
I do not want Miles enough.
I want relief. I want proof that someone can choose me. I want to hurt less for five minutes. That is not the same thing. And he deserves better than being the soft place I land because my husband broke the floor.
I step back before our mouths touch. Miles closes his eyes. Just once. The pain on his face is quiet and decent and somehow worse than if he were angry.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I almost did it. That's not fair to you."
He opens his eyes. "No," he says. "But stopping was."
That hurts too. I wrap my arms around myself.
"I wanted peace," I say. "I think I confused that with wanting you."
His mouth tightens. There is the hurt. He does not hide it completely, and I am glad. Not because I want him hurt, but because if he smiled and told me it was fine, I might scream.
"Thank you for telling me," he says.
I nod. I cannot seem to lift my head all the way.
Then Miles's eyes shift past me. Just a flicker. Not dramatic. Not enough that I would notice if I were not already split open and paying attention to every small change in the air.
I turn. Across the street, under the maple in front of the Feldmans' house, Daniel's car sits at the curb. Black. Low. Expensive enough to look rude on this block.
My stomach drops so fast I actually put a hand on the porch railing. The back window is tinted, but the streetlight catches enough for me to see movement inside. A shoulder. A hand against the glass, then gone.
Daniel. I know it like I know my own name. He saw. Not the whole drive. He could not have heard me tell Miles I loved him. But he saw me lean in. He saw me almost kiss another man.
For one terrible second, nothing happens. Then the back door opens. Daniel gets out. The rain hits him immediately. He stands beside the car in his suit from the gallery, no coat, hair damp already, one hand still on the open door.
He looks at Miles first. Not politely. Not distantly.
There is nothing distant about him. Jealousy moves across Daniel's face so fast and hot that my breath catches.
It is not pretty. It is not reasonable. It is the old Daniel under all the ruin, the man who used to pull me behind a pillar at charity dinners because someone looked at me too long.
He flinches like Miles's hand is on me, even though it is not. Like the almost is enough to cut him.
He wants to cross the street. I can feel it. He wants to come up these steps, put himself between me and Miles, remind me I am his wife, and the sickest part of me wants him to do it. I hate that part. I also miss her. The woman who had a husband who wanted her so badly it made him stupid.
Daniel takes one step away from the car.
My heart lurches. Then he stops. He looks down at the wet pavement like he is physically forcing himself to stay there.
His shoulders rise once with a breath I can see even from across the street.
When he looks back up, his face is rough with it. Not calm. Not soft. Controlled. Barely.
"Nora," he calls. His voice carries through the rain, low and scraped.
I cannot move. Miles says nothing. Daniel's eyes are on me like there is no street between us.
"I wouldn't blame you," he says. His voice is rough. Not generous. Not easy. Like each word has teeth.
My hand tightens on the railing. "Daniel."
He flinches at his own name. Actually flinches.
"I hate it," he says, and there is a broken laugh under it, bitter and awful. "Christ, Nora, I hate it so much I can't see straight. I want to be the man on that porch. I want to be the man who drove you home. I want to come over there and carry you inside like I still have the right."
My whole body goes hot. Miles looks away. Daniel does not. He is not being polite now. He is bleeding in the street.
"But I don't have the right," he says. "I gave it away. I left you alone so long another man learned how to stand beside you better than I did."
I press my lips together because the sound in my throat is too close to a sob.
"So if you choose him because he was here," Daniel says, "because he's kind, because you need one night where loving someone doesn't feel like walking through glass, I won't blame you."
Rain runs down his face. Maybe it is only rain. Maybe it is not. I cannot tell, and that wrecks me.
"I will hate every second of it," he says. "I'll hate myself more. But I won't punish you for surviving me."
Nobody speaks. The whole block feels too quiet. A porch light clicks on two houses down, because someone on my parents' street would decide this is the moment to inspect the weather.
Daniel seems to realize where we are. He takes a step back. His hand finds the car door again. The jealousy is still there. The hurt. The want. All of it. He does not make it my job.
That is what undoes me. Not the speech. Not the wanting. The fact that he wants to rip the world in half and still does not cross the street.
He gets back in the car. The door closes. Then the brake lights glow red through the rain, and Daniel's car pulls away from the curb. Slow. Controlled. Gone.
I stand on the porch with Miles beside me and my husband leaving again. Except this time, leaving is not abandonment. This time, leaving is restraint. And somehow that hurts worse.
Miles exhales. "Do you want me to stay?" he asks.
My chest feels like someone has put their fist through it and left it there. "No."
He nods. It hurts him. I see that too.
"You don't deserve this," I say.
"Probably not," he says, and there is a tired little smile in it. "But I signed up after reading several warnings."
Then he steps back. "Go inside, Nora."
I do not move until he is halfway down the walk. "Miles? Thank you for bringing me home."
His face softens in a way that makes me feel like a worse person. "Always," he says.
Then he catches himself. Too late. We both hear it. Always is a dangerous word. He gives me one last nod and walks to his car.
I go inside before he drives away. My mother is in the living room pretending to read a magazine upside down. Excellent. Normal. Very subtle. She looks up. Her face changes when she sees mine.
"Baby."
"I'm okay."
"You are not."
"I know. I just need a minute."
She looks like she wants to argue, then hears something in my voice and nods. "June's asleep," she says.
I go upstairs before my mother can ask about Daniel. Or Miles. Or the article. Or why I look like I just walked out of a life and came back carrying pieces of it in my hands.
June's door is half-open. I stop there first. My daughter sleeps on her stomach with her butt in the air and one little hand curled around the corner of her blanket. The yellow star lamp makes her hair glow soft gold-brown against the sheet.
She is real. She is not a secret. She is not a headline. She is not a reason for grown adults to say words like optics and exposure while holding champagne. She is my baby. Daniel's baby. Our baby, whether I know what to do with the our or not.
My phone buzzes in my hand. I look down. Daniel. Not a call. A voice message.
My thumb hovers over it. I should not play it outside June's room. I should become a person who makes sensible choices for at least ten consecutive minutes. I play it anyway.
Daniel's voice fills the quiet hallway, low and rough and too close.
"Nora. God help me, Nora, I probably shouldn't say anything more, shouldn't be this desperate.
But I want you to know, you're the only woman I want that way.
And if you'll have me back, if you'll even consider it, I'll take you back.
Even if," his voice cracks here, wild and desperate, "even if you spend the night with him and I have to pretend like I don't know about it. "