But why the hell should I? He’d made the comment. He’d dropped the grenade. I was just the one left holding the pin.
It wasn’t even the sex. That wasn’t the problem. The sex was ... the sex was great, honestly. The problem was the silence that had come after. The way he’d looked at me like I was the alcoholic he wished I weren’t.
I’d been doing the damn work myself. I’d been going to meetings. I hadn’t been drinking. I hadn’t been acting out. I’d been showing up—at least in the only way I knew how. And then he’d opened his mouth and made me feel like none of itmattered, like all he saw was someone he had to fix. Someone broken.
I’d been broken before, yeah. I’d been a fucking disaster. I’d made choices that had wrecked people—including myself.
I’d never wanted his pity, but everything had changed when he became my husband. When the ring went on and the paperwork was filed. When we’d walked out of that courthouse pretending it was business, pretending it was fine.
Lucia came back toward us. “Tía, I think they like me!”
Marco took a step back, slipping his hands into his pockets as if putting distance between us would make his words fade.
It didn’t.
I forced a smirk and nudged Lucia’s shoulder. “Of course they do,cariño. You’re the queen of the ducks.”
Lucia smiled brightly, but my thoughts were still tangled elsewhere.
After the park, Marco took us to get food. Nothing fancy, just one of those quiet little Italian places tucked away on a side street where the lights were low enough that everything felt softer, warmer somehow, and the pasta tasted like comfort.
Lucia was over the moon. She got to pick whatever she wanted off the menu, and Marco—usually the picture of logic and reason—didn’t complain when she pointed at the biggest plate of spaghetti known to mankind. Of course, she barely ate a quarter of it, but Marco didn’t seem to mind. I tried not to read into that, even though my brain immediately started wondering what it meant.
After dinner, instead of letting us navigate the subway, he drove us back to Isabel’s place, which honestly raised morequestions than answers. Why had he even been on the subway all those times if he had a perfectly good car sitting around?
I shifted my attention to the blur of streetlights flashing past the window, thinking back to those moments we’d crossed paths underground. That first time, when the creep wouldn’t leave me alone and Marco had barely had to move to scare him off. The time I’d dozed off on his shoulder, exhausted, and instead of shaking me awake or moving away, he’d just sat there perfectly still, letting me rest against him, until my stop came.
And then there was the other time, with Lucia. I’d spotted him first, watching quietly from across the train car. He hadn’t said anything. Marco never made the first move. He never acknowledged anything unless I practically dragged it out of him.
When we finally got to my sister’s place, Lucia was already half-asleep in the back seat, her head tipped against the window. I scooped her up into my arms, carrying her upstairs, while Marco stayed behind in the car because I’d asked him to. I wasn’t ready to explain him yet—not to Isabel. Not when I couldn’t even explain him to myself.
After a quick hello and a promise to call soon, I left Lucia safely tucked in with Isa and made my way back downstairs, still wiping some kind of mystery glitter off my shirt that Lucia had left behind. It was everywhere. On my jeans, in my hair, on mysoul,probably. She was like a walking glitter bomb with tiny opinions and no volume control. I loved her for it.
Marco was still in the car, right where I’d left him—hands on the wheel, engine idling, eyes straight ahead as if he hadn’t just been sitting in the dark rethinking his entire life while I was upstairs pretending I didn’t want to check if he’d left.
He didn’t look at me when I slid back into the passenger seat. He didn’t have to.
We drove in silence for most of the way. The tension in the car made me hyperaware of everything. The low hum of the engine. The way his hand flexed on the wheel. The heat from the vents warming my legs like I wasn’t already flushed from just being near him.
When we got to my apartment, he locked the car doors immediately.
“What’re you doing?” I asked.
The look he gave me wasn’t good. It was serious. More serious than I’d ever seen him. I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Let me out,” I demanded.
“No.”
I blinked at him. “Are you serious?”
I pulled at the door handle.
Still locked.
Of course it was.
I turned my head slowly, brows raised. “Did you child-lock me in your car?”
