Page 81 of Happy After All

Before, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted children. Then I was pregnant, and we had decisions to make, and I had decided that Ididwant the baby.

So much.

Chris said he did too, but sometimes I think he wished he did.

For me.

At least, that was part of the rage I had internalized, and definitely part of the more hateful things I said to him. That he didn’t want to be a father anyway. That this was convenient for him, because what he actually wanted to do was pursue his career and go out every night, and if we had our daughter, he wouldn’t have been able to do that.

He would have left it all to me.

Maybe it was true. Mostly, I think it was me needing to make him hurt the way I did.

We finish eating our cake, and I stand up. Then I extend my hand. “I’ll take that.”

I take the clean plate from him.

He probably wants me to go, but I’m not sure I want to.

“Can I ask what ... triggered this?”

“You just asked,” he says, his words a little fuzzy.

“Sorry. I did. So ... why tonight? Or ... yesterday. Joshua Tree. That’s what triggered this, isn’t it?”

He nods. “Yeah.”

I don’t need to know everything tonight. I take his hand and lead him to the bed.

“Lie down,” I say.

He looks at me. Somehow that look cuts through everything—all the pain, the grief, the long-held secrets—like a knife, and I feel the stirring of desire.

I feel an electric need to move toward him. To take the difficult feelings and turn them into something else. It feels like it would be easy. To take hold of him and let go of the pain. To find ourselves connected, not sitting across from each other with all that distance between us. Not when we both know.

But he is very drunk, and he’s in pain.

He’s also looking at me with absolute, undisguised need. Normally I find him tough to decode, but the alcohol makes it so I can read him.

It makes it so he can’t disguise it quite so well.

I see the desire on his face, open and obvious.

He wants me. Even now. It kills him that he wants me. I’m not the problem. It’s his desire for me.

And how very broken he still is.

“Go to bed,” I say.

To my surprise, he obeys me. He strips his shirt off, revealing rangy, well-defined muscle and dark chest hair. I’m only human, and in spite of the uncomfortable pack of emotions running around inside me, I look at him.

I can’t help it.

I move away from the bed quickly. I hold on to the paper plates like they’re a shield. His eyes are already drifting closed. He really is that drunk, and I can’t get rid of the feeling that the information I got tonight was stolen.

“Stay,” he says, his eyes closed, the word barely audible.

My heart clenches. I can’t deny him. I can’t deny myself.

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