Whatever. He chose his secrets over me months ago. Nothing new.
“It’s a big ship,” I say, my voice flat, looking out at the water instead of him. “It’ll be pretty easy to avoid each other when we aren't on duty for the wedding party.”
He looks at me again, jaw tight. Present in a way he hasn’t been for a long time—so why now?
“I didn’t come on this boat to avoid you, Ash,” he says with a frustration I haven't heard in a long time. “I’m here because I’mtrying to find a way back. I’m trying to be a man you actually want around.”
For a second, I see a flash of the man I married. But then I remember the theme ofRunaway Husbands. The book was emphatic: when confronted with the consequences of their behavior, people will say anything. But the truth is, they don’t fundamentally change; they just find more sophisticated ways to perform. If I believe him now, I’m setting myself up for the same silence that nearly broke me a month ago.
“It’s a little late for that, don’t you think?” I ask. And then I realize… he lost his laptop. He’s bored. Suddenly I’m interesting to him again. “That’s not why you came on this cruise. You’re here because it’s the right thing to do, that is, if you ever even cared about me and my family.”
“Of course I care. You think I’d let your sister walk down the aisle alone? You think I wouldn't be here for you?”
“Youhaven’tbeen here, Beckett. I’ve given you a million chances to clear things up. But you refused. Nothing’s really changed. So… you lost your laptop. Buy a new one.”
The silence after that is heavy.
“Right,” he finally says.
Somehow, that hurts more than if he’d argued.
If he’d argue, it would mean he wanted to fix things.
There was this moment, sometime last June, when something in him flipped. He became closed off, angry in a way I’d never seen him before.
The first time I noticed the shift, I was sitting at the kitchen table, paying bills the way I always did. And I was looking at his paystub.
No bonuses this month.Huh.
“Well this is just sad,” I’d said. “Aren’t you selling that Micro—PIPE stock anymore?”
He didn’t look up. Just muttered, “Nope.”
“Slacking off these days?” Teasing. I was only teasing.
I guess he wasn’t in the mood for that though.
He pushed back from the table, grabbed his keys, and just… walked out.
He’d never left without telling me where he was going, not even after our worst fights. We’d made a silent sort of pact about that…
Hours later, lying in bed alone, I stared at the ceiling, my phone conspicuously silent.
I kept telling myself it wasn’t a big deal. That I’d just happened to poke at something already bothering him, pricked his pride. Everything would smooth out the way it always did.
Still, my fingers kept twisting the edge of the sheet. My chest felt too small for my lungs, and beneath the worry was a slow simmer of anger—at him for walking out when he should have realized I had only been teasing.
All he had to do was actually talk to me. I’d have apologized.
When the garage door finally groaned open, my exhale almost hurt. Relief, stupid and shaky, flooded me.
The door clicked. And in the dark, I heard the rustling of him undressing.
I hadn’t decided whether to confront him or feign sleep when the mattress dipped under his weight.
But he made the decision for me.
He didn’t say a word—just reached for me in the dark.
