Page 11 of Rebound

Fresh tears spring to her eyes, and I instantly feel like shit.

“That, Elijah, would be children. You can’t pretend you don’t want your own. The way you talk about Luke, the way you were with Libby… It’s still there in you, that paternal instinct. And there’s nothing wrong with that, nothing at all. It’s one of the things I loved most about you when we met. You were so strong, so protective—I knew you’d make a great dad. And we planned that, didn’t we? We planned our family. I wanted two, you wanted as many as we could manage.” She gives me a weak smile, a peace offering.

I will always remember those late-night conversations, back in the days when we talked until the early hours, so fascinated with each other that we never ran out of things to say. She wanted a boy and a girl, wanted to name them Margot and Mikhail after her favorite ballet dancers. I said I wanted a minimum of six, but we compromised and agreed to settle for three or four.

God, we were so naive. So confident that we could make plans like that—that we were in control. In hindsight, I see that’s where things started to go wrong between us. After years of expecting it to happen naturally, sex became more regimented. We did it at certain times of the month, even certain times of the day. It was less like making love and more like a medical procedure. Amber tried herbal remedies and drank foul teas and banned me from booze and riding my bike. We ate a god-awful diet with walnuts and salmon in every damn meal, and there was a strict no-jerking-off policy to keep my swimmers in prime condition. Despite it all, despite all the research she did and everything we tried, she would emerge pale-faced and tearful from the bathroom every month when she got her period. One time, she was a week late and so excited to do a test—but again, crushing disappointment was all that followed. I was upset too, but Amber was distraught.

When we finally saw a specialist, we found out that her fallopian tubes were too badly damaged for her to conceive naturally. We were devastated. And exhausted. There were alternatives—surgery and IVF, surrogacy, possibly even adoption—but at that point, I think we were too wrung out to make any decisions. We agreed that we’d give ourselves a break, try to break our obsession with it.

Then my mom got her cancer diagnosis, and all our energy became focused on that. It was an absolute double whammy, and truthfully, I don’t think our marriage ever recovered. Clearly, Amber didn’t. She refused to discuss it later and retreated further and further every day. Now she’s sitting opposite me, so close but a world away, crying into her cocoa as we discuss our divorce.

I want to go to her, to comfort her. Hell, I want her to comfort me as well. I want a time machine, to go back to those early days so I can figure out what went wrong and fix it.

I make to stand up, but she holds up a hand and shakes her head. “No! Please don’t. I can’t… I can’t cope with you being kind right now, Elijah. I just can’t. I’m sorry. I know this isn’t only about me and that this is a shock—but it’s the right thing. We hurt each other so much, don’t we? Every single day. It’s like a war of attrition that neither of us can win. I’m so fed up with all of it. I want to stop scoring points. I just want…” She blinks down at the mug in her hands and murmurs, “I want to be happy,” and it’s as though being happy is such an alien concept that she wonders if she used the right word.

“And you don’t think you can be happy married to me?”

“Based on the last year, I don’t think either of us can. I don’t blame you, and I’m not saying any of this to make you feel bad. We’ve both tried, and we’ve both failed, and I hate what we’ve become. I want better—for both of us. You deserve to have children. And I deserve to stop feeling like such a failure, like someone who’s let you and your family down. And neither of those things can happen if we stay together.”

I bury my face in my hands, feeling like crying myself. Is that really how she’s felt all this time? Like a failure and a disappointment not only to me, but to my entire family? Fuck. That’s too much pressure for anyone to carry. “Baby, I don’t see you as a failure. I have never seen you as a failure,” I tell her, my voice cracking. “Was it me? Have I made you feel that way?”

“No. Don’t do that to yourself, Elijah, it’s not all down to you—you’re a good man. It’s… God, it’s complicated, isn’t it? But if I’m being honest, I never quite believed you when you said that I was enough. I never really thought I was, and I know your family resents me. Your parents wanted you to have kids. You were the oldest, and there was this weight of expectation because you were lined up to take over the business. You were supposed to produce an heir. I couldn’t give you that, couldn’t give them that.I couldn’t give myself that. I’ve felt that loss every day and also felt… I don’t know, guilty?”

She has never spoken like this before. Never shared these feelings, this pain—at least not with me. Why not? And why now? She might say I’m a good man, but I don’t feel like one. I let her retreat when I should have been fighting harder for her. I suppose I assumed that she would always be around, that there would always be more time to fix things. To find our way back to each other. Was I wrong?

“Amber,” I say softly, overwhelmed with emotion. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know that’s how it made you feel. That you were going through so much. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“To start with, because I needed time to process it all. I was so upset, and I knew you were too. But then, not too long afterward, your mom got sick.” Hand shaking, she brings the mug to her mouth and takes a small sip. “That was a long, hard battle that we all fought, especially her. Then she died, and… well, the time never seemed right. You were hurting, I was hurting. Your whole family was broken in so many different ways. Do you remember? It was like you were all made of glass and someone threw you from the top of a building. You all shattered, and the last thing you needed was me bleating in the background while you tried to glue everyone back together.” She grimaces, those brown eyes full of suffering. “I spoke to my parents about it though.”

I recoil, shocked. Amber and the wolves are not close and never have been. The only family member who ever showed her any love was Lucille. Amber seemed way fonder of my mom than she was of her own, and she used to tell me all the time how much she loved being part of our family.

“What did they say?” I ask, dreading the reply.

She raises her eyebrows at me. “Well, as you can imagine, it was a very inspiring talk. My dad basically told me I was lucky you still wanted me, considering I was defective, and that I should be grateful for whatever scraps I could get. My mom very helpfully added that he was right and that no other man would want me now either. Then they both asked about the terms of our prenup.”

“You’re notdefective,” I say, snarling, my hands balling into fists at my sides. I should fly to DC and put Ronald Warwick’s fat head through a window for saying that. How dare he?

“He didn’t use that word, honey, don’t go all macho on me. I think he actually said ‘subpar,’ which now that I come to think of it isn’t much better.”

I love it when she calls me honey. That hint of Southern belle peeks out when it slides from her lips, and it makes me feel warm inside. There are so many things I love about this woman, but apparently there are also many things I don’t know. Am I really going to lose her?

“He’s an idiot, whatever word he used. And we never had a prenup because I believed in us. I still do. I don’t want this, Amber. I don’t want a divorce. I want to work things out.”

She gives me a sad smile. “That’s the shock talking, darling. And maybe your pride. You know you don’t like to lose. But ask yourself this—how many times in the last month have you enjoyed a peaceful hour in my company? How many times in the last month have we laughed together? How many times have you genuinely looked forward to coming home and seeing me? Now compare that to how many times we’ve fought, cursed, glared, or avoided each other… The math doesn’t lie. I know this hurts right now, but the truth is we’ve been hurting for a long time. I’ve come between you and your family, and I don’t even make you happy. It’s like… death by a thousand paper cuts, every damn day. I can’t go on like this, and I don’t think you should either, Elijah.”

Jesus fuck, my head is all over the place. I’m so shocked I can barely think. She’s being way too open, way too reasonable, way too honest. I don’t know how to handle this Amber.

“Today was not a good day, admittedly.” I scrub my hands through my hair. “But it wasn’t any worse than usual, not by our standards.”

Her laugh is a delicate sound that seems so out of place in the middle of all this. “Oh, sweetie. Are you listening to yourself? You just proved my point. I don’t think either of us should be settling for ‘no worse than usual,’ do you? Do you really, truly want to spend the next few decades measuring our days by how bad theyweren’trather than how good theywere?”

I stare at her, this wife of mine. Wrapped in a blanket, hair a mess, face clear of her normal glamorous mask. I have loved her since the day I met her. Since I saw her sprawled on a picnic blanket on the college lawn, listening to music on her iPod, a daisy chain in her hair. Eyes closed, singing along to that Dido song “White Flag” so badly that I had to laugh. On our very first date, I knew she was the woman I would marry, the woman who would be the mother of my children. The woman I would grow old with. Now it looks like only one of those predictions came true.

The worst part is, I can’t even deny what she’s saying. We do torture each other and bring out the worst in one another. We are a fucking disaster zone, and I spend as much time despising her as I do adoring her. She’s right—we don’t share peaceful evenings in or laugh together, and yeah, sometimes it’s a goddamn relief when I get home and she’s not here. How many times have I ducked out of her charity events for work or dumped her when one of my brothers needed me? How often have I really tried to talk to her, to reach out and connect? When was the last time I genuinely put her first?When did I last tell her that I love her?

“Let’s leave,” I say. “Right fucking now if you like. Pack a bag and head off somewhere new. Somewhere nobody will find us. I’ll give up work and my family. I’ll give up anything, Amber. I love you, baby. I don’t want this to end.”

She can’t hide her surprise, and for a moment I think she’ll go for it. For a moment, I’m exhilarated and terrified and pumped up all at once. But then she shakes her head, smiles that sad smile, and says, “And what would we do, Elijah? Run a beach bar in Mexico? Hide out in a cabin in the woods? Live the rest of our lives in barefoot bliss?”

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