now, one hand over her eyes. David didn't believe he had organs or blood or bones anymore. He felt like a husk of himself and maybe it wasn't so bad, because perhaps he'd finally reached that place he'd been striving for...where he felt nothing. Where he could be that distant and unfeeling man like his father.
Then Tess's hand dropped, and he saw that she was crying and the tears caused everything to come flooding back: his panic, his shame, his absolute terror and the certain knowledge that he didn't deserve the beautiful creatures that had been entrusted to him. He saw his wife reach for the box of tissues on the side table, and she grabbed a fistful that she passed to him.
Because he was crying too. He mopped up the wetness as best he could, while avoiding her eyes. He didn't know what he wanted to see less: her condemnation or her abhorrence of his weakness.
"You once told me," Tess said, "that accountants never cried..."
"...unless there's an audit," he finished with her, his voice a rough croak. But that's what this was, wasn't it? An examination of his accounts. His records were completely open now. The numbers laid bare.
But it was all revealed for him as well. What a fool he'd been to try to separate his heart from her, from those who sprang from what they had together.
You couldn't duck love. It was the nature of being human to want the connections. And it was his own nature to hold close to his family with everything he had.
He dried the final dampness on his cheek with the heel of his hand, then got down on his knees, shoving aside the coffee table to make room for himself. "I love you. Forgive me for what I did that morning and for how I've been since then. Stay married to me. I promise I'll do better."
"You won't go back to the way you've been?"
He shook his head. "I won't be that stupid."
Her hand came out to brush his face. More tears overflowed the most beautiful eyes in the world. His OM girl who hadn't quieted his wild mind but who'd brought light and life to his tame world. "You can't get rid of me so easily," she said.
No, you can't duck love.
Relief unbalanced his heart, and a supreme sense of rightness steadied it again. "Thank you," he said, dropping his head so his cheek pressed against her knee. "Thank you for being my wife and their mother."
Tess tugged on his arms then, bringing him to the cushions beside her. They embraced, but she resisted his kiss. "Germs," she said.
"Are you kidding? Russ barfed all over me. If I'm going to get it, I'm going to get it."
The argument persuaded her, and they kissed until she claimed to be dizzy from it. And knowing what she'd just been through, he didn't insist, instead drawing her against his chest and cuddling with her, their gazes on the fire.
He idly ran his fingers through her hair, and her contented sigh released the last knot of his tension. "I'm sorry I had the vasectomy without telling you about the appointment."
She shook her head. "We had agreed. It was just another sign of your distance that I objected to."
He pressed a kiss to her head. "Did you really want more children?"
"After the past two days? No. Or maybe it's the whole Cheetos thing." She tilted her head to send him a wry look. "I'm counting on you to train that out of the boys."
And that's how he knew they were going to be good again, because she was smiling and because she'd said I'm counting on you. It was the single most important job they had, he realized now...to be the person the other could depend upon.
And David Quincy, forty-plus years old, no longer feared the passage of time. Because age had wrought wisdom.
* * *
JANE HADN'T LIVED with anyone since graduating from college. Even during those years she'd rarely had time to socialize with her various roommates. She'd been a full-time student and a part-time nanny. The mother of the children she'd overseen had been head writer for a top-rated TV show. When the woman wrote a book on screenwriting, she'd asked English-major Jane to beta-read a draft...and a career had been born.
So waking up with a roommate who was also a workmate in your - his - own bed should have been a shock.
It was shockingly easy.
She rolled her head on the pillow