Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131486 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
“What the…but you’re on—”
“Birth control, yeah. I’m not pregnant. I just thought…being so late, I had to make sure. My cycle actually started last night.”
Air whooshes from my chest in a rush, relief slumping my shoulders. “Damn, babe. You had me ’bout to lose it.”
She smiles faintly, licking her lips and training her gaze on the hands in her lap. “I know it’s for the best that I’m not, but those few minutes from the time I peed on that stick to when the negative sign popped up, I was…” She looks at me, uncertainty written on her face, in her eyes. “Hopeful. I wanted it, Si. So bad.”
I’m quiet, not sure how to respond. This—her having more kids—was an impasse we never found a compromise for.
“It made me realize,” she goes on, her tone careful, measured. “I mean…I knew this…have always known it, but it reminded me how much I want more kids.”
Tension creeps across the line of my shoulders, tightening the muscles in my back, balling my hands into fists on my knees.
“With you.” Her gaze is steady, sure now. “I want more kids with you.”
Her words land on me like bricks, and I have to force myself to stand under the weight of them. I walk to the rear of the closet, rubbing my mouth. Facing shelves of shoes and purses instead of facing her.
“I know what the doctor said,” she continues. “I’m not saying I have to carry children. Adopt? Foster?”
“You weren’t open to that before.”
“I wanted a replacement for Henry, hoping it would help take some of the pain. I thought I needed that, and anything you said to the contrary felt like you just didn’t understand, but I’m open now.”
She touches my shoulder, and I turn to face her.
“This isn’t really about us making more kids,” she says. “It’s about us making a life together…again.”
“This isn’t what we agreed on,” I remind her quietly. “We said this isn’t a reconciliation.”
“I don’t know what the hell we’re doing anymore.” She breathes out a laugh, her eyes searching my face. She bites her lip in the way that always precedes something she’s hesitant to say out loud. “But we don’t have to remarry for you to come home.”
Home.
The word startles a humorless laugh out of me. I grip the back of my neck with one hand, angling an incredulous look at her.
“Home?” I ask, acid creeping into my tone. “This home? The one you threw me out of?”
She flinches like the words are a slap in her face, and I guess in some ways they are, but I won’t take them back.
“I deserve that,” she says, her voice flattened, but still puckered with hurt.
“It’s not about you deserving anything, Yas.” I drop my head back, staring at the closet ceiling. “I don’t want to make you feel bad, but it’s true. I left this house because you told me to. We divorced because you wanted that. I didn’t, but I’ve come to terms with it. Now that we’re sleeping together, you want to wave a magic wand that wipes all of that out because your uterus is twitching?”
“That’s not it.”
“Nah.” I shove my hands into my pockets. “Doesn’t work like that. You sent me away. It’s not as simple as me just coming home.”
Even as I say it, I can’t deny that I came straight here from the airport because I couldn’t wait to see her and the kids. How that word “home” beat though me like a pulse the whole ride here. How, if I’m honest, this is where I want to be more than anywhere else. It’s always been. A year ago, I would have sold my soul to hear her say these things. So what’s holding me back?
“It can be that simple.” With a flurry of quick blinks, she swallows deeply, the muscles of her throat moving. “I think on some level, I knew it was a mistake as soon as you left. On some level, even though we were fighting all the time, I still wanted you here.”
“Yeah, right.”
She strides over to a row of drawers on the far wall of the closet and opens the bottom one, pulling out a pair of shoes. She throws them to the ground like a gauntlet.
“Are those my…” I squint, my brain catching up to the evidence of my eyes. The UNCs I searched months for. “You found them?”
“They were never lost. I kept them.”
“So you lied to me when I asked you about them?”
“Surely lying to you about a pair of sneakers is low on the list of things I did wrong.”
“Why lie about it? Why keep them in the first place?”
“I don’t even know.” She shrugs. “It was instinct. I just…did it. I think I needed to keep a part of you here with me.”