Page 45 of Revelry
The hand that had been playing with her hair needed something to hold, so I slid it down to her hip, pulling her closer.So that was it,I thought.She lost the guy she loved. That’s why I saw death in her eyes.
But it wasn’t that simple.
“The sad thing is, he’s still alive.”
I furrowed my brows, watching as her face twisted in pain. I didn’t know what she meant, but I pulled her even closer, our hands resting over my chest still laced together.
“I married my high school sweetheart, Keith, when we were twenty. He was my everything. He was absolutely all that I felt I’d ever need in my life.” She shook her head, and now her eyes were on where our hands stuck together. She wouldn’t look at me. “It’s a long story, one I’m sure you don’t want to know, but over time, our love changed. More specifically,hislove changed. It became conditional.”
I thought it had been difficult to show her my demons, but as she undressed hers in front of me, I found the lump forming in my throat even harder to swallow. I knew it from the first time I saw her—those eyes hid pain, they hid fear—and she trusted me enough to show me why.
“I didn’t see it at first, but every day I slipped further from who he thought I should be as a wife.” She shrugged, and her eyes welled with tears I knew would fall if she so much as blinked. “He was working hard to make his dreams as a dentist come true, and I was working at mine to open my own boutique. But the more my dreams took off while his grew only slowly, restricted by school and processes with many setbacks along the way, the more he resented me.” She sniffed, resisting a blink. “I didn’t think it would ever matter to him, that I made more or that I was well known. I’d always seen us as a team. But I’d travel for fashion shows or explore boutiques in other cities with Adrian and Keith would be stuck doing residency at school or, when he opened his practice, working to build clientele. He couldn’t go with me, and so he blamed me. I wasn’t home at night to listen to him tell me how his day was. I was too busy doing what mademehappy.”
My heart ached right under where she rested against my chest. This smart, beautiful, driven woman, who was one in a million, was ashamed of everything that made her so.
“And you know what? Maybe he was right. Maybe I did fail him. Maybe I’m not fit to be a wife.”
Her voice quivered a little and I pulled my hand from hers to brush the pad of my thumb against her cheek. That’s all it took for her to squeeze her eyes closed and let two symmetrical tears fall. Those tears were linked to the knot in my throat and I forced a swallow.
“Why would you ever think you aren’t fit to be a wife, Wren?”
“Because,” she said automatically, her voice weak, eyes still closed as she leaned into my hand. “No matter how I tried, I could never be what he needed. Failure is my biggest fear, and every single day I failed him in some way. I watched the love drain from his eyes foryears.” She sniffed, and I gritted my teeth against the urge to lash out about a man I didn’t know. “When it all ended, he called me selfish. He said I would never make a husband happy as his wife. At first I was angry and sad, but honestly, he’s right. Iamselfish.”
I leaned up, cradling her small face between my hands. “What makes you selfish, huh? Because you have a dream and you fight for it?”
“Maybe,” she argued. “If I loved him the way I was supposed to, shouldn’t I have dropped everything for him? Shouldn’t I have put his dreams above my own?”
“What was stopping him from being happy? Not just with his career, but with you?” I shook my head, thumb lining the soft skin of her cheek. “Wren, if he lovedyou, he would have been proud of you. He would have supported you the same way you supported him. You can be married and still have dreams of your own. It’s about being a team in all aspects, not just the ones that benefit him.”
She opened her eyes then, wet lashes framing them as she looked at me again. She watched me for a moment, as if I’d said what she’d been feeling all along, like my words had validated her, or maybe like she didn’t believe me at all.
“So he asked for a divorce?” I asked, wanting her to keep talking.
“No,” she answered, eyes still on mine. “I left.”
I couldn’t help it, I smiled. It turned out she was strong enough to realize shewasgood enough—whether he saw it or not. Really, I didn’t even believeshetruly saw it yet, what her leaving meant. She was more brave than she even knew. It was my only thought as I traced the lines of her face.
And that’s when I noticed.
“You’re not wearing makeup,” I said softly.
“Not since I took it off when you were here the other night.”
I leaned in, pressing my lips softly to hers. I kissed her with all the words I didn’t have to make her see how astounding I already knew she was, and I’d only known her a month.
“You’re beautiful.”
I meant that, not just because she didn’t need makeup, but because she had courage. She was strong. I was running from every feeling that crippled me while she did whatever it took to get her life back.
She inspired me.
The last person to do that was Dani.
Wren shook her head, swiping at the tears that had stained her face. “Ugh, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I just unloaded all that on you. I haven’t talked about it much, about him.”
“Hey,” I said, tilting her chin with my knuckle. “I unloaded on you, too. And I don’t know if I speak for you when I say this, but... it felt good. To talk to you about it. About Dani.”
Wren nodded, her eyes soft. “It felt good for me, too.”
