Chapter 10 | Liz

Chapter 10

Liz

“ W as that really necessary?” I ask, turning on Julian, who is hovering by the front door, nervousness wafting off him. Zoey retreated to her room, but the lack of a slamming door proves that she’s listening in. Good. Maybe she’ll learn something.

“Considering I didn’t know where you were for the last several days, yes, it was completely necessary.” Okay, maybe he’s not nervous per se. Julian perches on the back of the couch and fixes me with a glare. “I guess I could’ve reported you missing instead.”

I roll my eyes. So much hyperbole. “As you called neither my mother, sisters, or father, and I texted you that I was perfectly fine, I think that would’ve been an overreaction.”

“Maybe.” He shrugs. “Maybe not.”

Oh, I do not like this mood he’s in, as if he has the upper hand because I walked out the door. “Tell me what you want, Jules.”

“What I want?” He stares at me as if I asked the stupidest of stupid questions. “I want my wife to come home. It was one kiss. How could you leave in the middle of the night and essentially ghost me?”

“I think I earned the right.” Ice coats my tone, and resentment rips through the wall I keep it shoved behind. And it feels right. Through all the pain and questioning and forgiveness in our life together, I never stopped to wonder if I resented my husband for his emotional warfare—intentional or not. But it’s rising in my gut and spilling over into my heart and mind and words.

“Wow,” he says, his tone acerbic. “You’re going to hold that over my head?”

“Which that , Jules?” It’s a challenge, one I badly want him to meet. We don’t fight like this, but maybe we should. Maybe if we fought more, we wouldn’t be here.

He holds up his hands in supplication. “This isn’t why I came here.”

“Isn’t it?”

“No. I didn’t. I mean, yeah, I’m pissed, but...” His face softens, and he has the gall to reach for me. “Come on, Liz. This is us.”

Dammit. Same old Julian. Yell. Be mad. Be anything. I want to say those things, but I don’t. Instead, I ask the one question I was too scared to ask before. I know the answer, but to hear it from Julian’s mouth will be the deal-breaker.

“Were you tracking my cycle and purposely making sure we never got pregnant?”

Julian drops his head into his hands, giving me all the answer I need, but then he speaks. “I was scared, Liz.”

“Of what?” I hiss.

“Of being a father? Of losing another baby? Of letting you down?”

My body trembles in frustration and truth and finality. He was scared? “Did you even stop to think what all those months of negative tests would do to me?”

He looks up now, and his face is a portrait of sorrow. Of course he knew. He held me while I cried myself sick after that first miscarriage. He stood next to me while I asked my doctor question after question about the possibilities of another failed pregnancy.

“I... Our marriage is easy, and I didn’t want to lose that.”

“You lost it, Jules. It’s gone.”

He sighs and takes a step toward me. “It doesn’t have to be.”

He’s pleading, but for once in my life, it has no effect. I inch backward until the coffee table is between us. Of all the ways he’s broken my heart, this is the worst. This is the one I don’t know how to get past.

“Yes, it does.” I run a hand across my forehead, rubbing the ache away but also stalling and steeling myself for what I’m about to say. “I’m not coming home yet. You left me over and over again, and every time I took you back. I’ve been understanding when, really, I didn’t have to be. And right now, I need a break from you and me to figure out...”

His eyes cloud over, and I know he’s filling in a million different endings to that sentence. Figure out what I want, if I can forgive you, if I can be your wife, if I still love you.

“For how long?” he asks when I don’t continue.

“I don’t know,” I say, and it’s the truth.

Julian white knuckles the couch. “Don’t do this. It was a moment of weakness.”

“Which part?” I clasp my hands behind my back so that he doesn’t see them shaking. “The lying, the cheating, or the scheming?”

He sucks in a shaky breath. “I can’t do this without you.”

My resolve wavers, but I shove any doubts down deep, in the same place I used to keep the resentment. Julian has survived without me, and he will again. I cross the living room and take his hand in mine. “I need some time to see if I can get past any of this.”

“Do you think you can?” he asks, his eyelids brimming with tears.

“I don’t know, Jules. This is... a lot.”

He kisses my forehead, and it’s so heartbreakingly tender that my own tears start to spill over without warning. “Then do what you need to do.”

And then he’s gone. The front door clicks shut, and the rest of my world crashes at my feet. A shudder rocks my body. I collapse into a heap of tears right there on the living room floor. And then Zoey is there, her arms holding me up, holding me together. She doesn’t let go. She doesn’t ask questions. She holds me as I hope someone held her all those weeks ago. Zoey murmurs words of sympathy that barely make sense yet soothe the raw edges of the hole I punched through my own heart.