He drew a breath, easing his fingers on the plate before he cracked it, and set it to dry. “I’ll go get my snow boots from the car.” He had put snow gear into the back as he always did when driving in winter weather, just in case. Like the dishes, it used to profoundly reassure him when he was packing up Kai’s snow gear, too, and a big box of energy bars, in case they got stranded—doing everything in his power to keep his wife and their world together protected and happy. Packing up just his own snow gear felt—shitty. Really, really shitty.
“All right,” she said, smiling at him tentatively as he left. He was probably pushing this too soon, getting everything wrong again, but God, he did not want to spend another Christmas Day like last one. Just this grinding agony of minute after minute of a day to get through. Knowing she was by herself and that her agony must be even worse. And that there was nothing he could do to help; everything he did only made her misery more unbearable.
He knew why men killed themselves when they lost their families.
He just hadn’t had that option, last Christmas. He knew he had to hold through and get his family back.
He hadn’t even been able to drink himself into oblivion, because—well, for one thing he didn’t even know how to get drunk. He’d done it once as a college student and not liked the experience at all. Kai had often tried to tease him into drinking an extra glass of wine, but he had always worried about what he might do if he lost control—what if it was something she would find ridiculous or offensive?
But that Christmas Day, he would have been happy to test out getting drunk again, except—what if she called? What if she just couldn’t make it through that Christmas Day and needed him? He had to be able to drive.
God.
Anything would be better than that Christmas Day again.
Except, maybe, failing to make things right this time, too. What if he hit a point when he had to give up all hope?
No, don’t think like that. She had smiled. She had made waffles. She had put hearts on them, which was the kind of sweet, silly thing she used to do for him. He’d had to start acting silly himself, because otherwise all the emotions that rushed up in him might have come out as, God forbid, tears. He’d cried for her once—all those words she was wielding back then breaking him like a damn rack. It had actually seemed to work—she’d softened, as if the tears had shocked through to her heart and she’d remembered that hers sometimes beat for him, too. She’d wrapped her arms around him and whispered she was sorry, she was sorry, she didn’t mean it, she was so sorry—and they had made love. It had been so sweet, and he had been so glad, that things might finally work out, that she finally understood he did care—
And she had left him the very next day. Crying herself. “I just can’t. I just can’t do it anymore.”
“But—Kai, why? I thought—didn’t we—”
“I just can’t.”
God.
He pulled his snow pants and snow boots on, sitting on the edge of the bumper, zipped his ski jacket up to his chin and pulled on his gloves—nice, thick armor everywhere—and went back into the house to pull her out into this snow. Hoping it wasn’t the wrong thing to do.
The way she walked on the snow at first, anyone would have thought she was a kitten seeing snow for the first time. Which broke his heart a little, but his heart was so used to being broken by then. She was the one who had taught him to play in the snow, before he quite understood that adults were allowed to. He still remembered how she’d done it, the sideways evil laughing look as she tested a handful of snow before she lobbed it straight at him. She had lousy aim, and he’d just smiled at her when it bounced off his shoulder, shaking his head indulgently as he kept walking. The next one had hit him square on the back, sliding harmlessly off his jacket. So she had run up to him and kissed him, and God knew, he should have expected what was coming, but it was their first snow together, and he had just sunk delightedly into his kiss, until a cold handful of snow went straight down his collar and he yelped.
After which, what was a man supposed to do? He’d had to get her. And it had been so much fun. He had felt like a kid again, until he caught her at last and rolled her under him in the snow, when he’d realized—no, it wasn’t childish. No, he was an adult, his body at that moment felt very, very adult, and this was how his adult life could be, with her. Happy. Thrilled. Aroused. Zinging with energy and fun. Forever.
He’d proposed to her that night. She’d been so happy, too. As if, in offering himself to her, he had offered her the whole world.