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“What will you do now?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m out on the high wire without a net.”
Her eyebrows popped up. “That’s so unlike you. I’m impressed.” She hesitated. “I wonder . . . I wonder if you can forgive me.”
Daniel was afraid if he opened his mouth, he would do something incredibly unmanly, like cry.
“I don’t want a divorce.” She kept talking, saving him from himself. “If you’re willing to sacrifice your job for our marriage, I’d be crazy not to love you.”
Her hand tightened on his. “Seeing you on the floor in Pastor Wilson’s office . . . it was the worst moment of my life. It’s one thing to be apart from you because I said so, when I controlled the situation. It’s completely another to realize I might never see or talk to you again. Everything was totally beyond my control. I had to give it up to God, knowing only he has control. I realized I need you, I love you, and I’m stuck with you, for as long as He lets me have you. I’m hoping that it’s a long time, because we have lost so much time, we have so much to make up.”
He managed swallow his emotions long enough to string sentences together. “You need me?”
“Yes. Do you still need me?”
Daniel opened his mouth and shut it. After a second, he was able to get the question out. “What about Brown?”
“I went to Joshua’s house tonight to tell him—that’s where I was when Christopher snuck out. I realized when he kissed me so soon after you did that my feelings for you have been knit together by sixteen years of shared experiences and hopes and dreams. Joshua barely scratched the surface.” She sighed, her face lined with sadness. “I feel horrible about what I’ve done to him. I told him it was a case of temporary insanity. He agreed. But he also conceded that he had told me he would stand aside if I decided to try to make my marriage work. And I’ve decided. I want it to work.”
“How will you and Joshua . . . I mean you’re both employed by the same law firm.” Daniel tried to imagine that. Could they deal with it? Could he? Anything to have her back. Anything.
“Not for long. That wouldn’t be fair to him. None of this is, but there’s no way we could continue to work together. I’m thinking about going back to criminal law, maybe even the public defender’s office. I need a change. I need to get back to the kind of law that made me become a lawyer to start with.”
“You’re sure?”
Her look was so white hot he could feel it probing inside him. “The question is are you sure? We can’t get back together if you’ll resent everything that’s happened. You won’t hold it over my head and make my life miserable? I need to know now, because I couldn’t handle that.”
“No. I won’t do that.” He’d have to work at forgetting it. Forgiving would come first, forgetting would take longer. “There’s something you have to do for me.” He lifted his free hand to her face, touching her soft skin. She didn’t move a muscle, her gaze locked in his.
“What?”
“We keep going to the counseling sessions.”
She didn’t flinch. “That’s a given. The things that have happened, the words that have been said. They won’t disappear overnight. It’ll take some time for us to trust each other.”
“The kids need to go, too.”
“Absolutely.”
They stared at each other.
“How will we do this?” The expression on her face was an open invitation.
Daniel’s heart resumed beating in the old regular rhythm for the first time in a year and a half. He knew how he wanted to handle it, but he didn’t want to scare her away. He wanted his life back, the kids, the house, the family vacations, the Sunday mornings at church, the barbecues in the backyard, the spontaneous basketball games, the late night movies. He wanted it all. “Well, we could start with a hug. I need to know I’m the only guy—besides family—whom you’re planning to hug from now on.”
She leaned into him.
A second later, he had her in his arms, his mouth on hers.
“Danny.”
It was a few minutes before he could answer. “Yes.”
“I think we should consider getting married.”
He pushed back so he could see her face. “We are married.”
“Again, I mean.”
