“I came here to say thank you,” she says quietly. “For defending me. I know it cost you something with Maxim.”
“It cost him something. Not me.”
“He’s your son.”
“And you’re my wife. The twins are my children. When he insulted you, he insulted all of us. There are consequences for that.”
“You keep saying that. The twins are yours. I’m yours. Like it’s that simple.”
“It is that simple.”
“Nothing about this is simple.”
“Then we make it simple. You’re my wife. They’re my children. We’re a family. Complicated or not.”
She makes a sound that might be a laugh or might be a sob. “A family. We barely speak to each other. The twins don’t trust either of us. Your son hates me. This is the worst family I’ve ever seen.”
“It’s still family.”
“Is it? Because most families don’t have hate-sex in studies and sleep in separate rooms and lie to each other constantly.”
“Most families aren’t built on forced marriage and hidden paternity. We work with what we have.”
She reaches up and touches the side of my face. Her hand is cold. Shaking slightly. “I hate that you defended me tonight.”
“Why?”
“Because it makes everything harder. It makes it harder to hate you. Harder to keep walls up. Harder to remember that you’re the man who forced this marriage and threatened to take my children.”
“Then stop trying so hard.”
“Stop trying to hate you?”
“Stop trying to fight reality. We’re married. We have children. We’re in this whether you like it or not. Fighting it just makes both of us miserable.”
“We’re already miserable.”
“Less miserable, then.”
Her thumb brushes across my jaw. Her eyes are searching my face for something. I don’t know what. “What are we doing?” she whispers.
“Right now?”
“All of this. This marriage. This family. Pretending we can make this work when we both know it’s broken.”
“We’re not pretending. We’re trying.”
“Trying to do what?”
“Figure it out. One day at a time.”
“That’s not a plan.”
“It’s the only plan we have.”
She leans forward and rests her forehead against my chest. I can feel her exhaustion in every line of her body. “I’m so tired,” she says. “I can’t keep fighting like this.”
“Then don’t.”
