“I know,” he murmurs. “And I’m sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure it doesn’t stick.”
We stand there like that for a while, holding on, breathing the same air, trying to bridge the gap between words and forgiveness.
Eventually, I pull back, wiping my face with my sleeve. “The kids probably think we’ve run off.”
He smiles weakly. “Maybe they’ve taken over the house by now.”
“I wouldn’t put it past them.”
We head into the living room, where Ruby is asleep on the sofa, a bread roll still clutched in her tiny fist. Sophie and Oscar are arguing over the remote, their voices rising and falling like an old, familiar song.
Dan crouches beside Ruby, gently easing the roll from her hand. He looks at her face, completely oblivious to the chaos we just went through and something in him shifts.
“She looks so much like you when she’s asleep,” he says quietly.
I sit down beside him. “Let’s hope she doesn’t have my temper.”
He smirks. “Oh, she definitely does.”
That makes me laugh, and for the first time all evening, it feels real.
When the older two are finally in bed and the house falls quiet, Dan and I collapse onto the sofa. The air between us feels fragile but calmer, like the aftermath of a storm when you can still smell the rain.
He takes my hand again, rubbing circles over my palm. “I know I need to do better.”
“So do I,” I admit. “We both do.”
He nods. “We used to be so good at being a team.”
“We still can be,” I say softly. “We just got lost in the noise.”
He leans his head back, eyes closing. “I don’t want to lose this. You. Any of it.”
“You won’t,” I whisper. “But we need to stop treating each other like punching bags when life gets hard.”
He opens his eyes and meets my gaze. “Deal.”
We sit there in the dim light for a while, saying nothing. The silence now feels different; heavier with truth, but also lighter somehow.
Eventually, he says, “You know, I wasn’t lying about the back rub offer.”
I chuckle. “You’re pushing your luck.”
“Maybe,” he grins, “but you’re smiling again.”
And I am. Somehow, after everything, I am.
I shift closer, resting my head on his shoulder. “You drive me insane sometimes.”
“Mutual,” he says with a smirk. “But you’re still my favourite kind of chaos.”
The words settle in the quiet room. We don’t fix everything that night. We don’t even pretend to. But as his arm wraps around me and the steady rhythm of his breathing fills the space between us, I realise something important: Marriage isn’t about never breaking; it’s about choosing, over and over, to put the pieces back together.
And tonight, for all our cracks and tired hearts, we choose to try again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
EMMA
