I’m getting ahead of myself. And maybe exaggerating the daughter thing. But I want him to know I’m planting roots and making connections here, because I don’t intend to disappear into the night ever again.
“Okay.” Merritt returns, kimono billowing and glossy curls springing with each hurried stride. I casually remove my hand from Luca’s. She doesn’t seem to notice the exchange, or if she does, she pretends not to. “Got Elsie situated. Did I miss anything?”
Did she miss anything? What kind of question is that? This isn’t a made-for-TV movie—this is my life.
“I was just telling Luca I needed to head out.” I retrieve my flip phone from my jacket pocket and text Delphine. It’s clear I won’t be able to have the conversation I need to have with my husband as long as his wife is around.
Merritt pouts, scanning each of us. Whether she’s confused or disappointed, I can’t tell, nor do I care. I’m sure she’s mourning the details she expected me to entertain her curiosities with tonight.
Luca clears his throat and rises, pushing his chair in but still bracing himself.
“Should we exchange numbers?” Merritt retrieves her phone from a charger by the sink. “I feel like we still need to sort through everything . . .”
“Yeah, good idea,” I say, stealing a knowing glance at my husband while his wife isn’t looking.
He refuses to return my silent sentiment, instead bearing the look of a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders.
He’s got a lot to consider now that I’m back in his life.
Big decisions to make.
Life-changing, even.
A second later, I manage to find my new number on my humble Nokia and prattle it off. Merritt double-checks that she entered the correct one. God forbid she loses her ability to contact me. It’s not like I’m going anywhere anyway . . . this is only the beginning.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MERRITT
“Where do we go from here?” I ask my pacing husband the second Lydia is gone.
Every time I look at him, all I envision is the controlled captivation in his eyes when he saw her tonight. While he tried to remain unreadable—likely for my benefit—I know him too well. There was something there. A flicker of longing, of wonderment. A piece of him left me in that moment and went straight to her.
Standing in the middle of our bedroom, Luca concentrates on an empty section of carpet by our dresser. I’m not sure he’s looked at me for two entire seconds since he walked through the door tonight. His rigid shoulders, stiff posture, and unusual wordlessness paint a portrait of a man bearing the weight of the world.
Kneading the tension from his jaw, he exhales. “I don’t know.”
He strips out of his clothes, tossing them aside without a second thought. Clearly he’s got more important things on his mind. Gripping the side of the bed, I bend to gather his dress shirt from the floor, releasing an audible groan.
But he doesn’t notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t care.
For the bulk of our marriage, he’s been a man-with-a-plan. He sees a challenge, he conquers it. If he doesn’t have an answer for something, he knows where to find it.
This speechless side of him is concerning.
“What does—” I start to ask another question when he silences me with a lifted palm. I’m not sure he’s ever done such a thing before.
I realize this is a lot to dump on this man’s plate at once, especially when he’s already dealing with the crumbling of his business empire, but I refuse to be muzzled so easily.
“What does this mean for us?” I ask.
Luca stops midstride, his darkened expression intersecting with mine in our lamplit bedroom. Head angled, he exhales.
“Do you even have to ask that?” He uses a tone reserved for unreliable waitstaff, not his loving wife.
But before I respond, everything about him softens, and he closes the space between us, leaning in and brushing his lips against mine in some bizarre pseudo kind of kiss I can only assume is meant to appease me like a silent apology.
“I’m sorry for snapping.” He holds me tighter.
I attempt to swallow, but my throat is dry. “What if she’s making it up?”
Luca says nothing, merely breathing, existing. He’s locked inside that complicated yet beautiful brain of his, which rarely shuts off as it is.
I nestle beneath his arm and rest my cheek against his smooth chest.
His heart thunders in my ear.
“Maybe she’s . . . ill?” I suggest. “Mentally, I mean. She was so casual about everything . . . a person doesn’t go through what she’s claiming to have gone through and then speak about it so offhandedly, you know?”
Was she flippant? Or is that what I chose to see? Everything happened so fast, I barely had time to process any of it. And when I left for a few moments to tend to Elsie, who knows what was said, what I missed . . .
All I know is I was gone for maybe a minute or two, and when I came back, she was suddenly in a hurry to leave.
Something had to have been said.
“Did she ask for anything?” I might as well be talking to myself here.
“No,” he finally says, his chest rising and falling with one hard breath.
“I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want to worry you when you were out east,” I say. “But she stopped by earlier in the week. Just . . . showed up at the door, eight o’clock at night. Told me her name and that she wanted to see you. I told her to leave. And I shut the door in her face. I thought she was some lunatic trying to con us.”
He stirs, his body tensing beneath me. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I had it handled.” There’s a sternness in my voice, as if I can force him to read between the lines. To remember we’re a team. And that we’re in this together. Always and forever. “I ran into her again in town. Twice, actually. Talked to her a bit. I wanted to be sure it was actually Lydia before I let her anywhere near you.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes. “After the week I’ve had, it would’ve been nice to know what I was coming home to tonight.”
“After the week you had?” I inch away from him, my skin growing hot.
Over the course of our relationship, I can count on one hand the number of times my husband has used a condescending tone with me—or withheld sympathy. He’s never placed his issues above mine. They’ve always been side by side, the way an equal partnership should be.
Exhaling, I reexamine this from a different angle.
United we stand, divided we fall is a sentiment that can easily apply to marriages.
“Getting upset with each other isn’t going to fix this.” I run my palm over his tightening chest, massaging wide circles into his woven muscles in a subtle attempt to calm him. “If I’d have dumped that on you over the phone, you’d have been stressed the whole way home, and you know it. You’d have driven like a maniac and walked in the door all worked up. Forgive me for wanting you home levelheaded and in one piece.”
He digests my words before placing his hand on top of mine, a move that somehow feels empty in this moment, like he’s simply going through the actions. A second later, he leads me to bed, peeling back the enormous duvet on my side. Is he putting me to bed? Or the issue? I climb in and wait for him to do the same, his feet scuffing against the carpet with an uncharacteristic weight to them.