“Yes, I thought of that, how happy your family always was. I had had to learn how to deal with my parents’ divorce. And, you know, my mother. She takes a certain amount of strength. But you never had any practice at all, did you?”
No. Happy childhood, happy family, easy time in school, happy marriage to the most wonderful man . . . it had been so easy to have a beautiful life, up until then. She had thought working in top kitchens was the most brutal thing possible in life, and she had shifted away from that brutality into the calmer intensity of food styling, easily enough. She had had no idea. How could she not have the babies she wanted? She was—she was happy. Unhappy things were for—unhappy people.
What an idiot she had been.
A happy idiot, though.
Images flashed across her mind of all the women in her support group, of her own mother-in-law, the cool, distant Anne. One of the leaders of her support group often said that they weren’t supposed to think about deserving and not deserving, that it was a cruel concept made to hurt. But Kai struggled with it, as with everything else.
In her bedroom—their bedroom now?—she touched her jewelry box, stroking it a moment, eyeing him sideways as he buttoned a pressed, white shirt. She had always found it so hot when he dressed for dinner with his mother. It had always made her palms itch with the desire to unbutton him again, to wrinkle his shirt, to tousle his hair, to make him late, but to make him late laughing, every cell of his body sated and relaxed.
His wedding ring glinted from time to time as his fingers moved on the buttons.
She swallowed and looked back at the jewelry box. And then, on a breath, she opened it and reached into the little secret compartment in the back. Beside her, Kurt’s hands went still on his buttons.
Taking the rings out, she bit her lip, looking up at him. And then she held them out to him tentatively, afraid to ask, despite everything he had said and done, still afraid to hope that much for forgiveness.
But he fisted his hands and thrust them into his pockets. “I didn’t take them off in the first place,” he said low and harshly. “If you want them back on your finger, Kai, you put them the fuck back on. You make the choice.”
She stared at him, and then her eyes filled with tears because he was so right about that. She started to slide them onto her fingers, wedding band first.
His hand closed suddenly over both of hers, stopping the act. “But if you put them on—they stay on,” he said roughly. “You promise me—you promise me—that if ever anything like this happens again, you’ll let me take you to counseling. We can put it in writing, if you want, so I can hold the damn contract up in your face when you balk and make you stick to it.”
Kai laughed despairingly. “You can’t—I can’t put you through this again. If this happens again, you have to find someone else.”
He stared at her and then suddenly grabbed her chin, too hard, to force her to look at him. “Kai, no, I don’t. We don’t know what might happen. You might decide one day that you want to try one more time, and we don’t know how that might work out or how much it might hurt if it doesn’t. We might adopt, and something happen. One of us might get cancer. Someone might get in a car accident and have brain damage or lose a limb. We don’t know anything. We’re not the same people who couldn’t imagine much worse in our lives than maybe breaking a toe playing Frisbee. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, God.” He flung his hand away from her chin. “That’s what I promised to love you through.”
She bent her head, her eyes stinging, so humbled by him. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “I just—I just couldn’t drag myself out of it.”
“I know. Kai, I’ve read every book there is to read on the subject. I may never feel it the same way you feel it—it hurt you so much worse than it hurt me—but I understand. I would have done anything I could to make it better. That’s why I let you go, in the end, because it was the only thing left to do. The only thing you thought would work.”
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, as if she could never say it enough.
“So am I, Kai. I’m sorry that I couldn’t help. I’m sorry that I couldn’t bear it for you. I’m sorry that all I did was make it hurt you so much worse, until you had to get away from me. My God, I’m sorry. Do you know how fucking small it is, to be a man, and watch my wife be destroyed for my sake, as she tries to have my kid, and not be able to do one damn thing about it? I’m sorry. And I’m angry. And like you, I just have to get through that. To the other side. But Kai—” He stretched across the distance between them and closed both hands strongly around hers. “There’s no point in getting to the other side, if it’s not with you.”