Page 7 of One Last Time

“You’re fine where you are.”

She didn’t even look away from her work. With the girls in bed and the day almost over, Haven needed to get all her energy and stress out of her mind, or she was never going to fall asleep. That’s just how her mind did things, and she wouldn’t apologize for it. After all these years being married, Andino knew how her nights worked.

“Okay,” her husband murmured. “How was your day?”

“Busy. My meeting at the club went well. The new policies went over pretty good with everybody, so that’s one less issue for me to worry about. The girls didn’t give your mother any trouble, and they tired your father out.”

“Did you miss the traffic at noon?”

“Hit the tail end of it.”

“Of course,” he muttered.

“Same as every other day. What about you?”

Andino grunted something she couldn’t understand. Glancing up from her wide wipes of the counter, she found him staring out the bay window of their kitchen. It wasn’t as though there was anything interesting to watch out there. A dark yard—a few trees.

Interesting.

Yet, she had to admit that he looked damn good sitting in his chair with the sleeves of his dress shirt rolled up around his elbows, the top two buttons undone, and his tie lost somewhere. She would probably find it on the floor between this room and one of the girls’ bedrooms because he was the one who put them all to bed and read them their nightly stories.

They loved their daddy.

Haven did, too.

More than she could explain.

“What was that?” she asked.

Andino glanced over at her with a sheepish smile—something he rarely did, and she quite liked the sight of it all the same. “Sorry. I said my day didn’t go as planned, that’s all.”

“Oh?”

He shrugged. “But I like listening to you talk about yours more even if you are stress cleaning while you do it.”

Haven grinned.

That would be Andino.

Just calling her out like that.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his tone soft.

“Well, nothing, really.”

He arched a brow. A good sign that he didn’t believe a single word that was coming out of her mouth and wouldn’t mind telling her exactly that, either.

“Okay, nothing,” Haven said, “as in nothing should be wrong, right? Look at our life, Andino. Look at everything we have and who we are and how lucky we are. Why would anything be wrong? I should be grateful, not—”

“Having privilege doesn’t mean you’re not human, Haven.”

She let out a heavy breath.

Why did he have to be right?

“What’s wrong?” he asked again. “The truth this time, you know?”

She made quick work of drying the counter before she tossed the rag aside and rested her palms along the edge. Staring at her husband across the room, she thought about every little thing that had been weighing on her mind since she received the call from the specialist’s clinic about their next round of IVF.