How could it still hurt this bad to look at him whenAmberlywas sitting right there?
Why did she still love him?
Daisy blinked and hoped he didn’t see any of the emotion in her eyes.
I can only control myself.
“They had a good day?” she asked.
“Yeah. Monsters.” He shook his head, the affectionate smile on his face so ... him. “I think they ate an entire bag of Swedish fish in like an hour.”
“So I can expect for them to be very hungry for dinner.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what time you do dinner these days.” There it was. A touch of unearned defensiveness and just a little bit of resentment, breaking right on through his affable, lovable-dad thing.
She touched her tongue to the roof of her mouth and let it hold back the words that rose inside her. He said nothing. Like he was daring her. Challenging her.
“Why is that?” Her tongue didn’t hold. Neither did the words.
“You know what I mean,” he said, light and easy like he hadn’t started something on purpose.
I can only control myself.
“No, Jonathan, I don’t know what you mean.” She smiled. “I don’t gatekeep that information from you. You could have it if you wanted to. You could live in this house if you wanted to.”
“Is that right?” There was an edge to his voice now, and it scraped her raw.
“Not under the current circumstances. But nobody made you leave.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “You did, actually.”
Oh, she’d made a mistake. She’d set this up wrong.
“Let me revise that. Nobody made youcheat.”
“Daisy,” he said, in the low, conciliatory way he had always said her name when she was mad at him. It was so intimate, so familiar. It spoke of years and years of knowing just how to calm her down, just how to make her melt. She hated that he still had that knowledge. That he knew how to placate her. That he knew how to kiss her. Touch her. That he knew what she looked like naked. That she knew what he looked like naked, and he was the only man she had ever seen ...
She had been holding off a breakdown.
But she hadquitthe job, finally. She had really taken steps to separate herself from him, and here he was, standing there looking like her husband, when he just wasn’t. Wasn’t the man she had married. Wasn’t the man she had thought he was.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said.
“What, exactly?”
“Likethis. It doesn’t have to be ... toxic.”
“Toxic.” The word echoed inside her.
“You didn’t need to quit.”
“This is about me quitting as your bookkeeper?”
“Yes. I mean, no. It’s about our family. It’s about our kids. But no. I don’t want you to quit. I need you. It’s ours, Daisy.”
It’s ours.That was ... She just couldn’t do this. She couldn’t take the lying. She couldn’t take him standing there all handsome and being this much of a liar. She just couldn’t. He didn’t see it as theirs; everything was his. Including her. That was why he was bringing this up.
No matter how much he stood there, nonconfrontational and smiling, he was mad. Furious at her for leaving.
