Noah quickly hugs me, then Wendy, who grabs him for a kiss on his head. "Bye, Mama! Bye, Daddy!"
"Put your coat on!" Wendy calls as Noah runs out of the house, carrying only his backpack. Taylor laughs and runs after him, unlocking her car. Liam grabs both of their coats from the closet, stopping to let Wendy give him a hug and a kiss. "Have fun, baby."
"I will," Liam says, before turning to me.
He pauses, and I tense, waiting. Then he drops his bag and the two coats in his hands, before surprising me and walking into my arms. I squeeze my oldest son close, and he whispers, "Take care of her, Dad."
"I will," I whisper and clap him on the back.
When we pull back, Wendy's eyes look a little glassy as she watches us. Liam swings his bag over his shoulder and smiles before following them out to the car.
Once we hear Taylor's car pull away, I turn to Wendy, who's watching me curiously.
"Are you okay, honey?"
The wordhoneybreaks me wide open.
"I have to say something, and I want you to listen and not interrupt, because I know you're going to want to. Okay?"
Wendy frowns in confusion, but she still nods. "Okay..."
"I neglected you, Wendy."
She opens her mouth, but I shoot her a look that makes her snap it closed.
"I erased you from my life, and that's not right. I didn't talk about you when I should have been singing your praises from every rooftop in Mercy Ridge. I gaslit you about couples therapy. I snapped at you, yelled at you, and made you feel small."
A tear tracks down Wendy's cheek, and my hands itch to reach out, cup her face, and kiss it away. But I don't think I'd be able to get the words out if I did. And I don't want to try to soften or sweeten my words with gestures. She needs to hear the words, from my mouth, the truth laid bare.
She needs to see my face, my regret, my love.
"I am so sorry, Wendy. Not sorry just because you felt that, but sorry because I did it. I made you feel that way. And I say now, as serious as I take our wedding vows, that I will never make you feel that way again. I will love and honor and cherish you every single day, for the rest of our lives. I won't let the fear I have of losing you override my love for you. I will treat you like every day is our last, because it might be. I cannot control that, but I can control how I treat you and our children while we're together."
Wendy stares at me for a long moment. Her brows are pinched, and her mouth is in a tremulous line, but she looks thoughtful as she processes my words.
She inhales deeply through her nose and squares her shoulders.
"You did," she says, her voice firm. "You treated me awfully."
"I did," I nod, gesturing in acome-onmotion with my hands. "Let me have it."
"Atlas, that year was..." she shakes her head, her face pinching even tighter. She grounds out, "I felt so alone. I felt like I wasn't doing anything right, but I couldn't figure out what. I felt taken advantage of, doing all of this work, wearingall of these different hats, and being so damn exhausted at the end of the day just to come to bed and... you were either not there, or sleeping as far away from me as you could, like I was diseased!"
I flinch at that, but I let her continue. She needs to say this and let it out.
Her pretty little heels click against the hardwood as she paces back and forth.
"I felt ugly, Atlas. You wouldn't even look at me—I even bought new lingerie for after our couples therapy. I felt like an idiot taking it off that night after you acted like you had no idea where I was!"
Her broken face hits me right in the gut. I didn't know about that, about the lingerie. She's never, for a single second, been ugly.
Not when she was hours deep in labor, not when she's sick with the flu, never—but I made her feel like that.
"I questioned every single move I made. What was it that I did? But I didn't do anything. It was this event that I wasn't even aware of, but I took it upon myself because I just thought I was the problem. And every time I think of how you were struggling, I get so sad..."
She closes her eyes, and her face shudders slightly. "And then I think of how I was treated, and I get so angry. But I don't want to feel that anger—"
"You should, though," I gently cut in, her eyes snapping open as I step closer to her. "You deserve to feel angry."
