Can I honestly say Caleb didn’t want us? Can I honestly say it was never going to work out?
I can’t. Because I was too scared to push for the answer. Caleb is terrified of repeating what he lived through before, but I was terrified too. I worried that I’d keep trying and he’d say, ‘no thanks,’ the way both my parents did at various points—Jeremy as well. That I’d let my kids love him and he’d say ‘no thanks’ to them too.
I didn’t reply to his text today. I didn’t even ask him about Kate after I met her. I just ran away, so scared of wounding us that I denied us the very small chance we could have been healed.
“Because I wasn’t brave,” I admit to Henry.
He raises his eyes to me, questioning, waiting for me to make the same concession I am asking of him.
It’s not going to change anything, I long to argue. But I guess I can let Caleb say what he’s going to say. I guess I can let him tell me he’s moved on.
Henry rises, pressing his lips to my forehead—the way I kiss him at night. And then he points over my shoulder. “Okay. Caleb’s over there. If you’ll be brave now, I’ll be brave too.”
“What?” I stare at him, wondering if this is some metaphor I don’t understand or a game of pretend. But I follow his gaze...and see Caleb in the corner, talking to one of the teachers and watching us with that anxious furrow between his brows.
He has a plane to catch. I can’t imagine why he’d be here unless something disastrous has happened.
I rise slowly and walk to him, my heart beating so fast in my chest that it’s hard to breathe.
“Lucie,” he says, pulling my hands into his. “Can I...can we—?”
He looks around and then pulls me behind a pillar, where we are hidden from view.
My mouth opens, but he stops me. “Let me go first, okay? I’m not with Kate.” He binds my wrists with his large palms, begging me to meet his eye. “I had no idea she was coming, but I’m not with her. I love you, and I’m so fucking sorry it took me this long to say it. I’m so fucking sorry I freaked out last week. But if you’ll just take me back, I swear to God—” his voice cracks. He stops, swallowing. “I swear to God, I’ll do better.”
I press my face to his chest, and it all comes out—the pain I’ve held in for the past hour and the past week and the past month. His hold on me tightens.
“What about your flight?” I ask, wiping my eyes.
“I’m not going.”
“But—”
He shakes his head. “It’s done. You guys come first now, and I’m not putting it off until Monday or next year or when the twins have left for college. It wouldn’t have worked anyway...How the hell could I have you and the twins on the west coast when I was working in New York?”
I swallow hard to keep from bursting into tears again.
“I’ve been waiting to hear you say that since I was six,” I whisper, laughing and crying at once. “Maybe not the twins part.”
He pulls me closer. “I’m so glad you waited. I promise I’m going to make it worth your while.”
His lips press to mine, and then we walk out the side-stage door and reenter the auditorium from the back, sliding into seats just as the lights are lowering.
When the curtain rises, Henry steps up first and his robotic arm works without a hitch.
Sophie jumps to her feet before he’s even done. “That’s my brother,” she announces to the kids around her, loud enough that we can hear her all the way in the back, “so you all need to stand up and clap.”
And they do.
WE WALK OUTSIDE ONCE the show concludes to meet Jeremy, who theoretically got held up at work and is only arriving now. Caleb has remained in the school lobby at my request—Jeremy’s mom will do most of the parenting this weekend, but I want this tentative peace with him to last at least until the twins are home safely.
“Great job, buddy!” Jeremy says, thumping Henry on the back as if he was there. “Did you crush the other kids?”
“It’s not a competition, Daddy,” Sophie scolds. And while his father mutters something along the lines of that’s what losers say, Henry looks at me and gives me that secret smile of his—the one that rests entirely in his eyes and makes me think he might already be wiser than his father and I put together.
I hand Jeremy their weekend bags.
“So what are you doing while we’re gone?” he asks. “You could come with us, you know.”
I stare at him, incredulous. “I’m not sure your girlfriend would appreciate that.”
“I think that’s over. She wasn’t coming until tomorrow and I can tell her to stay home.”
Oh my God. The fact that Jeremy never seems to realize he doesn’t still have a chance should no longer shock me, but it does. I shake my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Well, think about it. I can send a car for you if you change your mind.”
I drop to my knees and pull Henry and Sophie into my arms, praying the conversation hasn’t given them some renewed hope about me and their father.
“Remember,” Henry whispers. “You promised to be brave.”
I laugh and kiss his cheek. He doesn’t want me and Jeremy together. He wants Caleb in his life, and that’s what I want too.
I return to the lobby, where Caleb is typing on his phone. My stomach tightens, waiting for him to tell me some new emergency is calling him away.
But when I reach him, he puts the phone in his pocket and rests his hands on my hips. The parents milling around do double takes—let them. I’ve moved on and I want the whole world to know. Especially the Toms of the world, who are likely to get punched in the face if they manhandle me henceforth.
“It occurs to me,” he says, “that we both have the weekend free. What if we went away?”
“You don’t need to talk to Kate?”
He frowns. “I said everything I needed to say. She knows I’m with you and that it’s serious. The divorce will need to be refiled, but that can wait a few days. Let’s just go. We can buy whatever we need on the way.”
He’s so certain about this, about me, that he doesn’t understand why I’m asking the question.
“Yeah, okay,” I say with a grin. “Let’s go away. If we can even find a place...It’s a holiday weekend, so—”
“I might have already booked something,” he says with a grin.
He wasn’t on his phone dealing with work. He was booking us a place. After more than twenty years of waiting for him, we’re finally on the same page.
IT TAKES two hours to reach our mystery destination. After running into one store for bathing suits, t-shirts and shorts, and another for toothbrushes, he pulls up in front of a massive wrought-iron fence and consults his phone for the gate code.
“I thought you said it was a cottage?” I ask as he punches the numbers in.
“It’s only three bedrooms, therefore a cottage.” He grins at me. “But I wanted to make sure we had some privacy.”
My nipples tighten under his darkening gaze, and there’s a flutter between my legs. It’s only been two weeks, but it feels like months since I was last beneath him.
We head down a long driveway and park in front of the ‘cottage,’ which is larger than his house and mine put together. I follow him through the front door and stare wide-eyed at the place he chose. It’s perfect—a daydream of black-lacquered hardwood and crisp white furniture.
He hits a button and the entire glass back wall of the house slides open to the long rectangular pool. Beyond it, a sweeping backyard leads to the sea.
“Holy shit, Caleb,” I whisper, walking toward the back. “For a guy who once complained about a nearly free walking program, you’ve really done a one-eighty.”
“Claiming the walking program was ‘nearly free’ doesn’t make it so,” he says with a playful growl, climbing into a lounge chair facing the ocean and pulling me into his lap. “You do realize that, right?”
I press a hand to his chest. "I bet it cost less than renting this place for an entire weekend.”
“Key difference: the walking program didn’t involve you naked part of the time.”