How do I tell you it’s because of all of us without sounding like I’m blaming you?
I turned my phone on silent and put it aside. Pressing my elbows into my desk, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. This wasn’t Kelly’s fault. I didn’t blame him at all.
I wanted to be angry at Aaron for having feelings for Kelly, but didn’t that make me a colossal hypocrite? Hadn’t I been hurting for Kelly last night while I’d been hurting for Aaron? I didn’t even know what I felt. Right now, I was mostly scared. I was utterly terrified that Aaron was gone.
Somehow, I was supposed to work today, too, but I was useless for anything creative or administrative. I hadn’t even checked my email except to see if by some chance Aaron had reached out to me there. I’d accomplished absolutely nothing except letting my coffee get cold while I worked myself into a panic over how much longer I’d be wearing the ring on my left hand.
Was this that kind of crisis? Could we come back from this? I wasn’t going to know until I saw Aaron again, and especially since I was too much of a coward to reach out to him, God knew when that would be.
Sighing, I got up and took my cold coffee downstairs. I dumped it in the sink, then started to pour myself another—
The garage door opener came on.
I damn near dropped the coffeepot, but managed to put it down without incident. He was home? It was only one o’clock.
Oh God. How was this going to go down?
My hands were shaking too much to pour anything into my coffee, so I just pushed the cup away on the counter.
A moment later, the kitchen door opened.
Aaron looked like hell. Like instead of sleeping the way he usually did, he’d slept the way I did—fitful and restless.
From across the kitchen, we stared at each other. Neither of us spoke. Was he waiting for me to say something? Was he trying to figure out what to say? God, I wasn’t used to this tension between us. Even when we fought, which we rarely did, we gravitated back to each other and ironed things out. This was different, and it terrified me. Instead of a bump in the road, this felt too much like an actual dot on a timeline.
I cleared my throat. “You’re home early.”
Aaron nodded. “Yeah, I…” He put his laptop case in its usual spot and draped his jacket on the back of the chair. Without looking at me, he quietly said, “I wasn’t getting anything done. And you didn’t show up for lunch.”
I winced. I should’ve gone. I’d been too much of a coward, but I’d made him feel abandoned, and… Fuck.
Aaron sighed. “I came home because I needed…”
My heart sped up. Aaron looked at me again, his eyes tired but otherwise unreadable. He took a deep breath, and I braced myself for him to tell me he was moving out. Or that he wanted me to move out. Or…something.
I wasn’t ready when he said, “I want to fix this.”
It took me a few seconds to process what that meant. “You… You do?”
“Yes.” He swallowed hard. “I know we both said a lot of shit, and this is…” He shook his head and flailed a hand. “I don’t have a fucking clue because I’ve never felt this far away from you, and I don’t ever want to feel this far away from you again.” He moistened his lips. “Yes, I have feelings for Kelly. I can’t pretend I don’t. But you’re my husband. I love you, and I can’t—” His voice caught, and he took a ragged breath before he managed to whisper, “Tell me what you need from me, and I’ll do it. But I don’t want to lose you.”
The relief made my balance waver, and I tried to be casual as I rested a hand on the counter for balance. “I don’t want to lose you either.”
His brow pinched. “So how do we do this?” Sliding his hands into his pockets, he shrugged tightly. “I’m following your lead. If you can’t trust me…”
I sighed. “I do trust you.”
“But after I told you I wouldn’t get invested in Kelly, and I did?” He grimaced. “It’s not like I went out and cheated on you, but it kind of feels like I did.”