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“Yeah.” He nodded. “I was trying to save a marriage she had already grieved and moved past.”

That sentence went somewhere deep. Maybe because I knew what it felt like to believe one relationship had ended while someone else apparently didn’t know.

I took a sip and he noticed me getting quieter but didn’t ask why.

“The divorce itself was easy after that,” he continued. “Painful. But easy.”

“How?”

“Because by the time I accepted it, I didn’t want to fight someone into staying.”

I looked at him. “You loved her?”

“Absolutely.”

He continued. “I loved who we were. I loved the family we created. And I’ll always have love for her because she gave me the best thing that ever happened to me.”

His entire face changed and I smiled before he even said the name.

“My son.”

“There he is.”

Nash laughed. “You know me.”

“Every conversation eventually becomes Eli.”

“He’s great.”

“So I’ve heard and I believe you.”

“I never wanted him to come from a broken home.”

I stopped smiling.

“But eventually I had to ask myself what broken actually meant.”

I watched him. “Two parents in the same house?”

He shook his head. “That isn’t automatically whole.”

My chest tightened because my parents flashed through my mind.

Nash continued. “I knew after everything that Eli was never going to get the best version of either one of us if we kept trying to force something that didn’t exist anymore.”

“That had to be hard.”

“Hard as hell.” He rubbed his palms together. “But it was right.”

He leaned forward. “We split everything fifty-fifty. I don’t want him feeling like he has one real home and one place he visits.”

I liked that.

“He has clothes at both houses. His own room at both. His shit everywhere at both.”

“You sound thrilled about the shit everywhere.”

“I stepped on a Lego last week and almost gave him up for adoption.”