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“What do you mean? Of course it matters.”
“Ten years from now … What about us?” He looked up at her, his eyes troubled. “What about us one year from now, or two? Because if you’re not with me … if you’re better off without me …”
His gaze fell to the sand again. “If you’re not with me, it’s like before. Before we met, I didn’t much care what I did. And I think that’s how it would be again. Without you.”
And then she understood, all in a rush.
He thinks you’re getting divorced, you dope. He thinks you’re going to leave him. That’s why he flew back to Jamaica. That’s why he looks so damn scared.
But she would never.
She hadn’t considered it. It took her breath away, even to know he’d been thinking about it.
She found his arm, higher up, and clutched it. Her nails made marks in his skin, and she tried to relax, but she found that she couldn’t. She couldn’t even get enough air.
“Tony, I’m with you.” She felt choked. “You know that, right?”
But he didn’t know. Tony never gave himself enough credit. He didn’t know how amazing he was. Everything he’d accomplished, everything he gave her and their family.
He didn’t know what she thought, how she felt, because she didn’t tell him. She’d walled herself off, kept too many secrets, hid too many disappointments because she didn’t want to hurt him, and now she was hurting him any
way.
“Next week,” she said. “Next year. The year after. Ten years from now. I’m not going anywhere. I’m—I’m not leaving you, Tony.”
“You’re not?”
She looked into his eyes. “No. I didn’t even think of it.”
He took her face between both hands and kissed her.
Amber hooked her hands at his elbows, and he was trembling. Or she was. She didn’t know, he kissed her so deeply, so long, with so much feeling in it that she knew she was right. He’d come here because he’d been afraid. He was still afraid.
She was making him afraid, and it had to stop.
He put his tongue in her mouth, his fingers plowing through her hair, pressing her into his body. Demanding everything she would give him, so she gave him all of it.
Her love. Her fear. Her heart and her body, her disappointment in both of them that they should have spent so long cowering, afraid, instead of looking for each other.
They could have been side by side this whole time. Holding hands in the dark.
When he broke the kiss, it was only to say, “I didn’t know what to think, bun. You’ve been so—so quiet. Even when you were talking.” He buried his face in her neck and held her tight. Tight.
“I know I have. I know, but I wasn’t going to leave. I thought …”
She’d thought they would go on in the marriage no matter what. Plod forward into the future, one foot in front of the other, indefinitely.
But she didn’t want that. She didn’t want to lose Tony by leaving him or driving him away until he left her, and she didn’t want to stay with him and lose him, either. She wanted him right here. Wanted to feel this close to him, arms around him, his mouth on hers, sharing the same breath.
She wanted to be his wife.
And it seemed possible, then, that this was a choice she could make. Hadn’t she already made it? Back when they met, stuck together in a basement during a tornado, she’d decided she would say whatever she liked to him and not give a damn about the consequences—that she’d rather be bold and go after what she desired most than live in fear. When she got pregnant and he’d broken into her apartment, she’d made up her mind that it was Tony she wanted, for better or for worse. For richer or for poorer.
Here they were, worse off than they had been, poorer than they wanted to be, but so what? She had Tony.
She had this chance—this third chance or fifth chance or tenth chance—to pick Tony again, to choose their life together, and to ask herself—really ask herself—how to make that life into what she wanted.
To leave off feeling resigned, doomed, and remember that this was all the life she would ever get, so she had to make it hers.
