After everything he’d been through, this was where he’d ended up: playing mental health nurse to his wife during the prime of his life. He should’ve been sitting here with someone else. Laughing loudly, sipping wine, cracking big American jokes with that easy, obnoxious confidence, the kind that makes the next table roll their eyes.
That should have been him.
Not this.
Not me.
The next thought that crossed my mind terrified me. It broke my heart in a slow, splintering way and squeezed the breath right out of my lungs. It was as if Cynthia were whispering it straight from beyond.
Maybe I needed time to face my past.
Alone.
So I could give him a better version of myself—more than whatever I was now.And if he found someone better to be with, who was I to trap him in constant drama with me?
“Daniel,” I said, my voice heavy.
I noticed how he’d been watching me the whole time. Analyzing my every move. His eyes looked wild, tense.
I took a deep breath. “When I told you earlier that the thing that haunts me most is not knowing my past, I meant it.”
He nodded.
“I feel like until I know who I really am, maybe it’s better for you if you and I—”
“I do have some family left,” he said suddenly.
This caught me off guard. “You do?”
He scooted his chair closer to mine. “Well, not by blood. But he raised me. Even before my parents died. They were gone a lot, and they weren’t the affectionate type.”
“He?”
“His name is Hudson.” Daniel smiled. “He’s the estate manager at the Breakers. Lived there his whole life. So did his father and grandfather.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Remember before we moved in together? When I was gone for a few days?”
“Yeah. You said you had something important to do. I thought it was work.”
“Well, I went to visit him. I wanted to invite him to our wedding in person. So it wouldn’t be just you and me.”
I hadn’t seen that coming. “Why did you never tell me about him?”
“Because it’s the Breakers. I don’t like going there. I don’t even like thinking about it. It’s not fair to him, I know. But something about that place and the people there... It pulls me right back to that stormy night.” His head tilted back as he looked up at the sky, seeming to search for words like they might be written in the clouds. “I know pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t exactly healthy. And I’ve been working on it. I really have. Lately, I feel more at peace with it all.” He looked back at me. “I just don’t tell you these things because you already have so much to deal with. You don’t need my crap on top of that.”
I placed my other hand over his. I felt terrible. My husband hadn’t told me about his past, not because he wanted to keep secrets, but because he was worried about me.
“It must’ve been horrible,” I said. “Everything you went through as a child. Feeling like you have nobody to talk to.”
“It’s not that bad. It all happened so long ago. And I’m ready to move on from the past. I have a wife now. Maybe one day we’ll have a family of our own. And Hudson could be part of it. I’d love for you to meet him.”
“At the Breakers?”
He nodded. “You could see where I grew up. It’s beautiful. Peaceful, even. Exactly what the crisis counselor at the hospital said you might need. This whole Europe trip. All these people, all this noise. Maybe it was too much, too soon. I think it would do us both good to find some quiet. Some space to breathe.” He looked at me with a soft expression. “And bringing my wife back home to the Breakers has always been a dream of mine. I just wasn’t ready before. But I think I am now.”
My chest ached. Meeting Hudson at the Breakers clearly meant a lot to him. In some way, it felt like he was asking me for this—after never asking me for anything before. How could I turn him down, after everything he had done for me? And if I was being honest, I wanted to see the place where he grew up. And meet someone who had known him as a kid.
