“Your poor eye,” she whispered, delicately prodding the skin around his left eye. “Does it still hurt?”
“I’d forgotten about it,” he admitted. Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t open his eye very wide.
Her palm cupped his cheek and she leaned in to kiss him.
He could get used to this treatment.
“So, should we talk about what happened?” she asked after ending the kiss, her eyes boring into his.
“I thought that was what we were doing,” he replied, tenderly stroking her tangled hair behind her ears to reveal more of her face.
“Talk about what this means.”
“I don’t know what it means, Kenna,” he admitted, his voice a low growl. “Do you?”
“Not really.”
“Why don’t we do something completely different, then?” he suggested after a short hesitation.
“Different how?”
“We’re always trying to define things. Create rules and boundaries. Everything needs to be in a neat little box and that’s the only place it’s allowed to exist.”
“Generous of you to usewe, Smith. You and I both know that you’re talking about me. Rigid and nonconforming.”
“No, not really. I’m guilty of it as well. I expected our marriage to be one thing and when it wasn’t that, it frustrated me, pissed me off. I lost patience. And because it wasn’t what I wanted it to be, I blamed you.”
“You expected a real marriage. What you got was a-a travesty.”
“My mistake was in expecting arealmarriage under the circumstances. I pushed you into it and then I expected everything to be immediately perfect. You were the same woman I’d found so inordinately fascinating in those months before you got pregnant, but after our marriage, I wanted more. Expected more.Demandedmore. I wanted you to trust me, let me behind your shields, show me all your vulnerabilities…but I hadn’t done a single fucking thing to earn your trust. I selfishly believed a wedding ring entitled me to that trust.”
He lifted her left hand and thumbed the pale, naked strip of skin where her rings had once rested. His expression was filled with regret and sadness, but he didn’t comment on the missing rings.
“When I left, I did a great job of trying to place all the blame for the failure of our marriage on you. But you were right when you said it wasn’t—isn’t—true. And it wasn’t fucking fair.”
“You were unhappy for a year? More?” she asked. “But you never said as much. Never sat me down to talk about it.”
He swallowed and his eyes flashed with regret and lingering grief.
“It shows how completely oblivious I am to the intricacies of human emotion that I believed you were content. Happy to stay with me. Happy with our arrangement. I was sofoolish.”
“Kenna, I—” She dropped a finger to his lips, silencing the anguished words of apology he’d been attempting.
“Smith, I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty, I just want you to understand me. By now, you must know that I’m worse than most at picking up emotional cues. Learning how you felt onlyafterI allowed myself to trust our relationship was devastating.” Hearing the despair in her voice, knowing that it existed only because of him and his blundering cruelty, was absolutely gut-wrenching.
“I’ll never be one to wear my heart on my sleeve,” she continued, her voice lowering to a whisper. “I can’t function like that. Every raw emotion on display. I’m too private and too afraid of being hurt. When we got married the way we did, for the reason we did, youdidn’tfeel like someone I could trust. Our marriage didn’t feel real…or permanent. And then when we lost the baby, it felt like the writing on the wall. You kept pushing me and pushing me totalkabout how I was feeling. I just couldn’t. Not because I didn’t care—Idid. I wanted that baby so much, Smith.Somuch. And the miscarriage broke my heart. But I found it so hard to talk to you about that loss because Iknewthat if I allowed you to comfort me, if I leaned on you, it would hurt that much more when you left me.”
“Fuck, Kenna…Fuck. I wish I’d known.”
“But that’s the problem, isn’t it? How could you have known when I didn’t tell you? How could I have told you, when I didn’t believe you would stay? Just a vicious cycle of miscommunication and misunderstandings.”
“Then we should break the cycle,” he decided.
“How?”
“That’s what I started to say earlier,” he said, tracing the delicate line of her cheekbone with a reverent finger. “By placing zero expectations on ourselves. On this. By just letting it be, and seeing how it evolves.”
“No pressure,” she whispered.
