Handing the paperwork over to Ethan might have been the hardest thing I’d ever done.
I knew it was the right thing to do. I knew there wasn’t a single chance of me changing her mind, not now, probably not ever. But every part of my body had physically recoiled when Ethan’s open palm faced upward, expectantly awaiting a handful of documents.
A part of me regretted giving them to him. That part of me, horrible and disgusting and thinking only with his heart and not his head, wanted to keep them and run away somewhere she’d never find me. It wanted to convince Ethan to keep her tied up in the legal system for years, wanted to cherish the only fucking thing I had left of her in privacy somewhere in the Himalayas, wanted to take Noah with me and homeschool him and lose my mind. But I wasn’t that horrible.
I was just very horrible.
“You’re beating a dead horse,” Carrie said, her gaze locked on the flickering streetlight in the distance. The warm, dark blue hues of twilight were fading rapidly into nightfall, and the rolling hills were beginning to disappear against the horizon. She sipped at her glass of wine. “You can’t undo what you did. You’ve fucked up, you’ve felt bad, now you’ve got to get back up.”
“I can’t just get back up, Carrie,” I sighed. “I am the lowest of the fucking low. She did everything — everything I asked of her, bent over backwards, tore herself to pieces for me. And the one thing she asked of me, I avoided doing for her.”
“Yeah, and you’re a piece of shit for it.” Her lipstick stained the edge of the glass as she held it against her lips. “I’ll never let you live it down. But you’ve got to get yourself together for your fucking son, Dame.”
She wasn’t wrong. I’d won custody and then failed spectacularly at being a parent recently. Chicken nuggets for dinner every night, an endless stream of Disney movies on the television to entertain him, and shutting myself into the kitchen pantry with a couch cushion to scream into weren’t exactly good parenting choices when it was nonstop. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cooked a proper meal for myself, or more importantly, Noah.
“I can’t.” The lip of the glass tinked against my teeth. “I’ve tried.”
“You’re here,” she offered. “That’s a start.”
“I showered for the first time in a week this morning. That’s not a start.”
“Have you talked to her?”
I shook my head and took a sip of wine. “I tried, for the first couple of days. She didn’t answer my calls or reply to my texts. I can’t blame her.”
She rolled her lower lip between her teeth as her fingernails plucked at the chipping red paint of her lounger.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Hmm?”
“You’re worrying. You’re doing that thing with your lip.”
She sighed and finally tore her gaze from the distance, turning to look at me instead. “I just don’t know how much I should say. I basically made a promise to her that I wouldn’t blab to you about the things she told me, but I don’t know how much salt that’s worth anymore.”
Oh, fuck. “She talked to you about me?”
“Of course she did, Dame. She was your wife.”
“She’s still my wife,” I rasped. The court date wasn’t for another week.
Caroline picked up the bottle of wine from the cooling bucket and poured herself another glass before topping up mine. “She had feelings for you,” she said, and my jaw steeled.
“I gathered that much.”
“She wasn’t sure if she could tell you. She didn’t say it, but I got the impression that she was scared you didn’t feel the same toward her,” she stated. “I think she was worried that for you, it was an opportunity to put things on someone. A weight-carrier, if you will. I think she was a lot deeper into it than you realize.”
I swallowed. That didn’t make me feel better. “She wasn’t that to me.”
“I don’t think she knew that. And if she did, it wasn’t until after your little speech in court.”
“I will have only made that worse by doing what I did.” I chugged my glass in one go before refilling it and wishing it was something stronger.
“She told me that if it wasn’t for her parents, she wouldn’t want the annulment,” she continued. “She was struggling with that. She wanted it, but she didn’t want it at all. And I think she was scared of what that meant for her, and for you, and for Noah. I think she loved you, Damien. And I think you ruined it so badly it might not be fixable.”
I poured myself another serving and didn’t bother with society’s expectations of the max allowance in a wine glass. I filled it entirely, and downed half. “I think you’re right. On all accounts.”
Knowing that a part of her didn’t want the annulment did nothing for battling demons inside of me that didn’t want it, either. But it did give a minuscule amount of comfort to know that I wasn’t the only one.
“She wanted me to say it,” I said. “That I loved her. I couldn’t.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I sighed. “Maybe it was because the last person I said that to in a relationship cheated on me and hid a son from me, and then died. Maybe it was because I was terrified to give myself to her when I have Noah to worry about. Maybe I’m not sure enough about it. Maybe it’s because if I do and we’re together, she has the potential to hurt not only me but also my son if she leaves. She’s young, Carrie. That word doesn’t hold as much weight for her.”
“So you don’t love her?” she asked, one brow raising.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t not say it. And for her, you basically confirmed that by dodging it when she asked you.”
“I know,” I breathed. “I almost wish I had.”
The silence that fell between us was thick and weighted. The only sounds that cut through it were the gulps of wine, the sloshing of it between our teeth, and a handful of gunshots from the television inside where Lucas was showing Noah how to play Halo.
“Do you want it to work with her?” she asked.
“Of course I do. Desperately. But I’ve ruined—”
“Then you should try to fix it.” She set her empty glass on the table and turned back to me. “I’m sure you can figure out a way. Don’t let it go because you’re feeling sorry for yourself and don’t think there’s a hope in sight.”
“Car, you literally said that I’ve ruined it so badly it can’t be fixed,” I snapped. She was right then and she was wrong now.
“I said might not be fixable, asshat. The least you can do is try, and then if it doesn’t work, tough shit. You move on for your son.” She grunted as she pitched forward, her hands on her knees, and pushed herself upright until she was standing. “You need to think about whether what you’re doing right now is from a lack of trying or a lack of faith. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to her.”
