Chapter 3 | Liz

Chapter 3

Liz

O ur bed hasn’t felt as empty as it does now in all the time Julian was away. It’s too cold without the comforter but stifling under it. My emotions boomerang between fury and melancholy and uncertainty. His absence weighs heavy in the air, and an unbearable ennui suffocates me. Both my options seem wrong—leave Julian or make it work. We’ve been here before, and I know deep in my soul that we will be here again. Julian will break us and fix us and break us until we’re unfixable. But to him, we’ll never be unfixable.

I toss off the comforter again. The chill from the air conditioner cools the burning in my cheeks. I swipe away a few tears and sigh as my eyes land on Julian’s book and reading glasses. Every night for exactly twenty-five minutes, Julian reads. But tonight—the first night I’ve ever banished him to the guest room—the book sits unopened. An hour ago, the washer buzzed, so at least I know he’s not sleeping in his travel clothes. Not that it would matter. I don’t care if he’s comfortable. He deserves much worse than the guest bed.

Standing up before I can decide otherwise, I grab his book and glasses and walk across the hall. The door is partially open, but I knock before entering. Julian lies across the bed, one hand cocked behind his hand, the other holding his phone. He squints up at it, trying to read, I assume. He hates reading on his phone. He must have finished whatever book he brought to St. Louis. The thought brightens my mood marginally. If he had time to finish a book, he didn’t spend all his free time with Sheila.

“I brought your things.”

He stares at me from his prone position, his body tense and rigid. “Thank you.”

I hold the book against my chest like a shield. Tears dance under my eyelids. Even at our worst, we’ve always been comfortable with each other. The second the thought crosses my mind, I know it’s not the truth, but there’s never been a moment like this. Mainly because Julian never stayed around to have one. He leaves, and I pick up the pieces. He comes back, and I welcome him with wary-but-open arms. Don’t cry, don’t cry. For once, my body obeys.

Julian comes around the bed to stand in front of me. He stops a few feet away, his eyes downcast, arms crossed protectively across his chest. “Can I... Can we talk?”

I shake my head. “I don’t think we can.”

“Can you listen, at least? Please?” He says it in a pleading sort of way, and even though I’m tired of listening to him, I nod and sit at the edge of the bed. Nothing he says will make a difference. Not really. Julian will leave. If not right now, eventually. It’s a truth I haven’t considered in years. After the wedding and the miscarriage, he never wavered. Until now.

He takes the book and glasses from me and tosses them back toward his pillow. The glasses clink against the headboard, and I cringe at the sound.

“Those are new.”

“They’re fine.” He links his fingers through mine.

The familiar tingle that accompanies his touch is still there. A shiver passes through me, and my insides rumble. My heart hiccups. All I’ve wanted for the last three days is his hands on me, his lips on mine... Absolutely not .

“I should go, Jules,” I say, pulling my hand from his.

“I love you, Liz.” It’s a shout into the void that keeps me rooted in place. Finally, the words he should’ve said all night. “Those words don’t even properly convey what I feel for you, but they’re the best I have.”

Untrue. There are at least seven films about our love on his computer. But I’ll take the words. For now.

His eyes search mine. “That’s why nothing happened with Sheila. Not because I was scared or because there wasn’t the opportunity because, well, honestly there was. But I love you, and I vowed to love you forever. And I meant it.”

He takes my hand again, and I allow it. Desire ripples through my body again, but it’s different. It’s not the ache of days alone but the overwhelming need to be intimate with my husband. To feel the connection he’s desperately trying to save. It would be easy to jump into his lap and smother the rest of his speech with my lips, but I refuse to move. He deserves to grovel.

“I have no intention of breaking our wedding vows—any more than I know I did today—not tomorrow or next year or thirty years down the line. Everything I told you on that rooftop before our wedding still stands.”

An odd memory to recall in this moment. He means it in a good way, and of course, our wedding is a marvelous blur of a memory. But that moment on the roof of the hotel where we had the wedding, when I was uncertain if Julian was planning on making the ceremony or slinking out into the night again, was awful. He’s always claimed that he wasn’t running or even thinking about it. That he simply needed a moment—several long moments—away from the cameras and the pressures and all of it. I chose to believe him then. I want to continue to believe him now.

“I choose you, Elizabeth Grace Madden. Always.”

He kisses me then. It’s not soft or slow or repentant. It’s possessive and desperate and so hard that my entire body spikes to life, as if I’ve touched a live fuse. My fingers curl into his hair, and when he nudges me back onto the bed, I let him. I should stop this. It’s a mistake. His lips touched someone else’s only hours ago. But I can’t. I love him. I’ve always loved him.

He hovers above me, eyes darkened with passion and his desire obvious where our bodies touch. “God, Liz. I love you so freaking much.”

I freeze at his words. They aren’t helping. No, if he talks, I’ll remember why we’re making up. If we’re even making up. This isn’t like any make-up sex we’ve had before. It’s better, which leads me to believe that things are much worse than they’ve ever been.

I hold a finger to his lips and pull him down to me. “No more talking.”

A s I watch the sky darken, all the emotions of the past several hours crash down on me. Having sex made everything worse. I knew it would, but I hoped that maybe we would come out of it reconnected. Instead, desperation wafts off me, left behind from every touch and kiss. Julian clung to me, pulling me closer and deeper, moving our bodies as one until we exploded together. Desperation that deep isn’t connection—it’s goodbye. Julian is again fighting whatever part of himself refuses to let him stay with me. He lost the battle at eighteen and again at twenty-four. We were kids then, playing at love, and I overlooked the flaw. I demanded he make recompense, fully knowing that I would always take him back. But we’re not kids anymore. The stakes are higher, the break more complicated. That’s why it’s taken so long for him to succumb, but he will succumb. This time, I will be the one to go.

My hands shake as I grip the doorknob. Julian is the love of my life. And tonight, I will leave him so that he can’t leave me again. I’ll break my own heart to save it. Sitting around and waiting to be left isn’t an option, not now after all these years and all we’ve been through. Not when he kissed another woman and lied to me and hid things and plotted. A resolve builds in me. This is about much more than Sheila Sampson and an airport kiss.

Ten minutes later, I’m still sitting in the driveway. My resolve hasn’t wavered, but I’ve spent too long in a storybook romance, and this is exactly when the sign appears. The small or big thing that makes me stay—Julian running out of the house, a meaningful and relevant song coming on the radio, a perfectly timed phone call that makes my troubles seem trivial. But nothing presents itself. With a last look at our house, I pull out of our driveway and say goodbye to the last seventeen years of my life.