“I had to,” he says softly. “If I’d come home and said, ‘Hey, Jayne, I’m thinking of stepping away for six months,’ you’d have told me not to.”
He’s not wrong. But still. “And now I’m supposed to be grateful you made a unilateral decision about us?”
“Aboutme,” he corrects. “I made a decision about me so that I can show up forus.”
I stare at him. I can’t decide whether to hug him or shake him. “You’re going to resent me for this.”
“Never.” His eyes soften. “Baby, what I would resent, and it would be directed toward myself, is if you quit your job because we’re in a place in our lives where our kids need us, and I’m an absentee father and husband.”
I turn away, because if I look at him for too long, I’ll lose my footing. “What are you even going to do? Sit around here all day?”
He exhales, leans against the counter. “What were you planning to do, baby?”
I raise my eyes and see the truth in his eyes. He’s doing this. He’s stepping up in the biggest way possible. In a way that I didn’t even think about because there was never going to be a time when Dr. Rhys Prescott would actually stop being a surgeon, even for six months.
“I…was going to…do stuff,” I say lamely.
“I’ll do the same.” He comes up to me and pulls me into his arms. “I’ll be with the kids. I’ll learn to cookmore than spaghetti with olive oil. Maybe fix that leaky faucet in the downstairs bathroom and?—”
“Please get a plumber to do it,” I cut him off, my heart suddenly so light, it’s flying away from my body.
“Hey, if I can fix a heart, I can fix a faucet,” he says in mock outrage.
“Last time you tried to fix the leaky pipe in the basement, we needed to redo the floors down there,” I remind him.
He kisses my nose. “I want to learn how to exist without always being on call, whether I’m officially on it or not. I want to learn to live a life that’s for my family and myself. I want to go out on dates with you like we did the other night. I want to not be so tired every night that I fall asleep exhausted. I want to not be so exhausted that every time you try to talk to me, I shut you down because I have a six am surgery.”
I want to believe him.God, I do.But a part of me that’s small and mean and scared whispers that he won’t last a week before he starts itching for the OR again.
He seems to read my thoughts. “You think I can’t do it.”
“I think you’ve been married to your job longer than you’ve been married to me.”
He gives me a long, deliberate look. “Not true in years, but I agree that’s how you feel based on how I’ve been behaving.”
“I just—” I shake my head, words failing me. “What if you hate it here? What if you end up hating me for being the reason you did this?”
He kisses my lips this time. I taste him. Mint and coffee. Familiar.Mine.
Tory Chehade can go fuck herself.
“Jayne, I want to make one thing clear. I didn’t do this for you.” He nuzzles his nose against mine. “I did this for us and for me. For the kids. For my family, whom I love very much. Because I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I built a life I’m not actually living.”
I look up at him, searching for the arrogance, the impatience, the defensiveness that’s defined so much of our marriage lately. It’s not there. There’s only…hope.
“You really did it.”
“Yeah.”
“And there’s no going back?”
He smiles faintly. “Not for a while. And not the way things were.”
The kettle clicks off behind me. I hadn’t even remembered it was on. He lets me go, and I pour the water into a cup where I have a bag of tea waiting.
“You want tea?” I ask.
He nods. “I’d love some.”
