Page 96 of If the Ring Fits

My phone buzzes again—a text this time.

Adrian

Please talk to me

Just talk, Rowena. Please. I need to explain

Explain what? Why he changed his mind about us? Why he wants a divorce? Dread sets deep into my gut. I don’t want to hear his explanations. I can’t. I’m not ready.

I stare at the screen, my thumb hovering over the virtual keyboard. The urge to respond is overwhelming, but I know what will happen if I do. One word from him, and I’ll lose the fragile grip I’ve been holding onto. My mind keeps flashing back to the divorce papers. The stark finality of it all. If I let him back in now, if I allow myself to feel what I’m holding at bay, I’ll break apart completely. I need to keep my distance to protect myself, to survive this. For Soleil.

I finally type a reply.

Rowena

Please stop calling me, Adrian

Not because I don’t want to talk to you, I know we need to. But because if I do, I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep it together. I need space to figure things out, to be strong enough to face everything that’s coming. For Soleil

Please. Just give me some time

I hit send, my heart sinking as I do, then fibrillating as another ping pierces the silence.

Adrian

I’ll do as you ask

But I’m always here if you change your mind

“It’s not me who changed her mind,” I say, staring at the screen, his last words blurring as fresh tears roll down my cheeks.

The silence that follows is worse than his calls, but it’s the silence I need right now. A silence where I can rebuild the pieces of myself, one fragile sliver at a time.

Adrian is true to his word, and I don’t hear from him again. After a week of this hollow existence, emptier even than the half-life I was leading before, I leave Soleil with Nina and Hunter to go to my appointment with Adrian and the lawyers.

After feeling loved and desired by him, then the opposite—rejected and repulsive. After seeing him being the perfect dad, calling me and Soleil his sunshines, and then receiving divorce papers not two days later. Now I stare into his dark eyes as we sit alone in this cold room, cleared of all the leeches with him asking me why I spilled coffee on our divorce papers, and I’ve no idea what to say.

43

ROWENA

Now

“Rowena,” he says, his voice low and serious. “I need to know. Do you still want to be my wife?”

I open my mouth to speak, but the words stick in my throat, trapped by the warring emotions within me.

At my indecision, his gaze still inscrutable, Adrian speaks again. “How about I go first?”

I shut my gaping mouth and nod.

His eyes bore into mine with a single-mindedness and determination I’ve never seen before. “I love you.” Three simple words that make the ground tremble underneath my feet. “I love our daughter.”Ourdaughter; he didn’t call Soleil my daughter. “I want us to stay a family.”

Am I losing my sanity? Am I still asleep? Is this a dream? Adrian can’t be saying those things. He can’t mean them. “B-but you served me divorce papers.”

He shakes his head, frustrated. “I arranged everything almost a year ago; we were supposed to stay married sixmonths and then divorce. The firm sent the documents following my instructions last June. I didn’t think they’d just send you the petition without notifying me first.”

“So it was a mistake?” I ask, still incredulous.

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