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She hesitated, tempted, before thinking better of it and shaking her head. “I don’t think so, I’ll stay in and read.”
He looked disappointed but nodded, accepting her excuse without argument.
They sat quietly for the next few moments, both of them staring out at the still rainy and gray view, only Fifi’s squeaky toy breaking the oddly companionable silence between them.
“Did you get the link to the wedding album?” He finally asked, and Lilah tensed.
“I did.” She twirled her glass round and round on the marble surface of the counter. “Gramps looked really happy, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad.” She hesitated a moment, not sure if she wanted to ask the next question. Not at all certain she wanted to know the answer. “You once said he didn’t know about your reasons for marrying me. But that was when I believed you’d married me because of the business. Did he know... it was because of his illness? Did he ask you to?”
Ben held her gaze, his eyes intense and sincere. “No. He didn’t ask me to do that, Lilah. Not once. He kind of implied that it was something he’d always dreamed of and maybe he manipulated me into it. Maybe I allowed myself to be manipulated but he never asked. I never offered. The idea was mine alone. And I found myself more than willing to implement it.”
“Why?” The question was a helpless whisper.
“Because I wanted to make him happy. I just never considered how selfish it was. How unfair I was being to you. I married you fully intending for it to be a permanent arrangement but never once considered your long-term happiness. I thought if I was willing to make such a sacrifice for Cyrus, surely you would be too. And that was the premise I worked from.”
She worried her thumbnail cuticle with her teeth as she stared at him assessingly.
“Did you really think I knew about Gramps’s illness?”
“Yes. Cyrus led me to believe he would tell you. And then he went on to say that your way of coping with grief was to ignore it and pretend everything was fine. I thought it was unhealthy as fuck but…”
“But you were so used to believing the worst of me, you didn’t even question it,” she completed for him and he grimaced.
“I’d seen you do it with break-ups. I thought you were immature. I based that opinion on the reckless girl I thought I knew eight years ago…and never once took the time to get to the know the woman you’d become since then. That asthma attack when you were in college terrified me. It was easier to just base everything I thought I knew about you on that one horrifying incident—and take it upon myself to insure it never happened again—than it was to recognize that in the fifteen years I’d known you, that was the worst I’d ever seen it. And that it had been as a result of forces completely out of your control. I was unfair. And I’m so fucking sorry.”
She stopped worrying her cuticle and instead started plucking at her lower lip with her thumb and forefinger as she pondered his words.
“I’ve had a couple of bad scares since our marriage,” she pointed out.
“And both of those times were because of me. I was responsible for causing the one thing I’d done my utmost to prevent for the last eight years. I always carry an inhaler in the pocket of whatever jacket I’m wearing in case of emergencies.”
Well, that was an unexpected and touching revelation. And explained why he had an inhaler on hand at the wedding and the night she’d read Gramps’s letter.
She cleared her throat, moved by the unexpected confession, but she still had to set him straight. “That’s really sweet, Ben, but it’s not up to you to manage my disease. You can’t control when these things will happen.”
“I was the stressor…”
“Again, my disease, doesn’t matter who or what the stressor is… you’re not responsible for my asthma. You can’t swaddle me in bubble wrap, or prevent me from making stupid mistakes, you can’t protect me from life’s ugliness. I never wanted that from you. All I ever wanted was a lover, and a husband. Someone who was in love with me as a person and who loved me as an equal. Someone who wanted to spend as much of their waking moments with me as possible, who wanted to laugh and cry with me. Play with me. Just be with me. Someone to hold my hand when I’m scared, and breathe with me when I can’t physically manage it on my own.
“And I wanted to be that person for him as well. A friend and lover. A companion to share his pain. It’s the simplest thing in the world. But it’s not something I can have with you. I know that now.”
