“I know.”
“So, I need to go,” I plead. “Just for a while. Just for us to find our footing again. We can’t do that living in the same house.”
“I disagree.”
“Please, Fox.”
He looks at me for a long, long moment.
“Okay.”
It’s not the oldokay. This is giving me what I ask for when he doesn’t want to wear the same simpleokay.
“But I want you to know.” He holds my gaze. “I’m not going to stop. I’m not accepting this as a conclusion. You can go and be somewhere that’s yours and think.” His jaw sets in the way it does when Fox has decided something. “But I will fight to make you believe me.”
“And how will you do that?”
A ghost of a smile touches his lips. “I’m going to court my wife. Properly. From the beginning. In the way I should’ve done two years ago.”
That’s one of the most romantic things I’ve heard my husband say.
My heart melts. Turns into a puddle.
“I’m just giving you fair warning,” he adds.
I look at this man—in the dark, on our anniversary, after a whole marriage of not quite knowing what was real—and I think, “I love you.”
I don’t say it.
But I think it,completely, without the armor of anger or the protection of performance, just the plain and inconvenient truth of it.
27
WIN HER BACK
FOX
She leaves a day later.
My heart, the organ that didn’t used to do this shit, is fucking breaking.
I help her pack, which is either the most useful thing I have ever done or the hardest, and I have been turning that question over since I said “Okay, she could leave”and meant it—which is the thing about the newokay: it means what it says, all the way through, no management underneath.
She doesn’t take much, just her clothes. It’s her way, I think, of telling me she’s coming back, that this sojourn is temporary.
Oh, she’s coming back.
Honesty and truth are all good and fine, but I will lie, cheat, manipulate, and do whatever I need to do to get her back in our home and in our bed.
I love her.
I’m not going to lose her.
I have given her my truth; beyond that, I have no problem whatsoever with emotionally blackmailing the hell out of her.
But I also want to woo her, make her feel special, ask her to be mine, and not because she’s knocked up, because I want to knock her up in our bed, in our home, so we can build a future and a family together.
I carry her suitcase to her car.
