My eyes sting, but no tears fall. It’s worse than that, just an ache that won’t quit, a burn under my skin that no amount of pretending can put out.
And in the quiet, with only the occasional bark of a dog down the street, the thought slips through before I can shove it back down.
If things were different, it would still be Jace. Always Jace.
Chapter Three
Cracks in the Vows
Jace
The Present
The house is quiet and not a peaceful quiet, or the kind that settles in your bones after a long day. It’s the kind that hums with things unsaid.
The TV is on in the living room, some reality show playing low, but Sierra isn’t watching it. She’s curled on the end of the couch,legs tucked under her, scrolling through her phone with a glass of wine balanced in her hand. I’m at the table with my laptop open, film queued up, trying to focus on the grainy clips of wide receivers’ cutting routes. I tell myself I’m being productive. Truth is, I’ve been watching the same play on repeat for five minutes and couldn’t describe a single detail.
The takeout containers are still on the counter, half-empty cartons we barely touched. She ate in the living room, I ate standing at the counter. Neither of us asked about the other’s day.
Our nights look different these days, compared to when we first got married. Parallel lives under the same roof. She drinks her wine. I pretend to work. Words stay locked somewhere between us, and the silence grows heavier by the day.
I glance at her. She’s beautiful, always has been, but there’s a distance in her face now, a weariness that wasn’t there when we started this. She laughs sometimes, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. Tonight, she hasn’t even tried.
I close the laptop with more force than I need to, and the sound makes her jump. Her gaze flicks up, then back down to her screen.
“You’re somewhere else again, aren’t you?” she says finally, her voice soft but sharp enough to cut.
I press my thumb to the bridge of my nose. “Just tired.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her eyes lift this time, and I hold them. I don’t know what she sees, maybe the truth I’ve been trying to bury since the day I said vows I meant but couldn’t live up to. She deserves better than the shell I’ve become, better than a man who’s sitting here wishing he could turn back time and choose differently.
I look away first. “A lot going on lately.”
She doesn’t argue, just hums under her breath like she’s filing the response away with all the others. I can almost hear the box in her head labeledexcuses.
Eventually, we drift through the motions of the night. Lights off. Dishes ignored. We climb into bed without a word. She turns onto her side before I’ve even pulled the sheets up, her back to me, the same as every night lately. She used to fall asleep with her head on my chest, her hand splayed across my stomach like she needed to know I was there. Now she faces the wall, a gulf of cool sheets between us.
I lie there staring at the ceiling, the shadows from the streetlamp outside cutting across the room. I think about the curve of her shoulders under the blanket, the rise and fall of her breathing.
I care about her. I respect her. I love her. But hell, I don’t know if I’ve ever beeninlove with her, and maybe that’s the problem. Because it’s not the kind of love that keeps you awake, restless and reaching for each other, desperate to hold on until sleep finally drags you under. It’s not the kind that carves itself into your ribs and won’t let go, no matter how many years pass.
I press a hand over my chest like I can quiet the pulse that’s racing for all the wrong reasons. My vows were supposed to be a promise, a line I wouldn’t cross. But every day I wake up wanting someone else, someone Ican’thave and shouldn’t want.
Every time I picture Sarah’s face, I tell myself it’s wrong, that I made my choice. But wanting doesn’t listen to reason. It doesn’t bow to vows. It just lives there, constant and pulsing under my skin.
And that truth sits in the room with us, louder than the silence, and heavier than the distance.
When the lights go out, the quiet doesn’t soften. It stretches, pulling wider, until it feels like we’re lying in two different worlds instead of the same bed. Nights like this always drag her back. Not Sierra, Sarah.
Her presence is louder in these moments than it ever was when she was near. Every crack in this marriage, every silence between me and Sierra, pulls her name to the front of my mind. She’s always been there, even when she wasn’t.
Seeing Sarah last night has my head spinning more than usual.
I tell myself to focus, to stay in the present, but my mind drifts anyway. Back to a night after college, during a holiday break. One moment I never really learned how to forget.
It was before Sierra and I ever got serious. I ran into Sarah downtown, when everyone was back home for the holidays.
