We end up outside, the cold sobering. I drop into a chair and stare at the patio slabs, suddenly terrified.
“Is this it?” I ask. “Are we just… like this now?”
She says she doesn’t know.
That’s worse than a yes.
I tell her I don’t want this. It feels inadequate, but it’s true. I don’t want this version of us; the logistics, the silence, the way we talk through the kids instead of to each other.
She says she doesn’t want to coexist. That she misses me.
I miss her too. God, I miss her. The way she used to laugh at my stupid jokes. The way she used to look at me like I was her safe place, not another responsibility.
“I don’t know how to do this right,” I admit, because it’s the truest thing I’ve said all night.
For once, I don’t try to fix it. I don’t suggest solutions or lists or promises I don’t yet understand how to keep. I just sit there, terrified she’s already halfway gone.
Her hand is close. I reach for it, then stop. The pause feels enormous.
When I take it, her fingers curl around mine automatically. Like muscle memory.
Relief floods me, sharp and undeserved.
“We try,” I say. “Properly.”
She nods, crying quietly, and I realise with a sick twist that I didn’t notice how close she was to breaking until she already had.
Behind us, the house hums on. Mess. Noise. Life we built and somehow lost control of.
I squeeze her hand.
I love her. I just don’t know how to be the man she needs yet.
And the worst part is, I’m starting to realise that loving her isn’t enough.
CHAPTER THREE
EMMA
TWO YEARS EARLIER
I had forgotten how undignified childbirth was.
Not the miracle-of-life part, the actual mechanics. The sweating in places you didn’t know could sweat. The way time collapses. The complete loss of privacy as what feels like the entire hospital staff takes turns inspecting your vagina like it’s a particularly tricky DIY project.
Dan stood beside me gripping my hand, eyes wide with pure terror. The same expression he’d worn during Paranormal Activity, after insisting horror films didn’t scare him.
“You’re doing amazing,” he said, voice wobbling.
I turned my head and glared at him with the full, unfiltered rage of a woman ten centimetres dilated.
“Shut up.”
“Okay.”
A contraction tore through me and I made a sound I’m fairly sure only whales and demons could hear.
This was not the birth we’d planned. In fact, it was the birth we’d very deliberately planned not to have. When I fell pregnant with our third, Oscar was six, Sophie was three, and we weredone. Capital D. The cracks in our marriage had already started to show, though apparently not enough to stop us from having the kind of careful, whispered, post-bedtime sex that landed me back in the stirrups.
