Making It Last (Camelot 4)

What was the problem?

He was here. He was trying to fix their marriage, because he believed it was fixable, and he believed it was worth fixing.

He was doing everything he could think of, and she was doing nothing.

She was the problem. Her.

“I’m afraid,” she said.

That was it. That was all. She was afraid.

“What are you afraid of?”

“Everything.”

She walked closer to the water, close enough so the wavelets would run over her feet as they chased each other up the beach. Because her hand was clasped in Tony’s, her vector toward the ocean pulled their arms taut between them.

He drew closer, and their line went slack.

Then he came closer still and halted completely, but she didn’t. Not until she had to stop walking or let go of his hand.

She stopped.

He pulled her back.

Reeled her into his arms.

“Tell me.”

Her nose pressed into his clavicle. Her heart pressed into her throat.

She didn’t know what to say. She’d started this, but she didn’t know how to finish it.

I’m a mess.

I’m alone.

He would hear an accusation in anything she confessed. He would think it was his fault, and she didn’t want to add anything to his burden, or anyone else’s. She wanted to be strong enough all by herself.

But she knew that if she said nothing, then nothing could change. Something had to change. It had to, because she couldn’t do this anymore, and part of that was his fault. Tony had long since stopped asking if it was okay for him to work a fourteen- or fifteen-hour day. Tony didn’t want to talk about their other options, didn’t ask her to contribute, get a job, find ways to economize. He brushed her off when she made those kinds of suggestions.

When life got hard, he bore up, and he didn’t ask if she could stand to bear up, too. He just assumed she could, and she would.

She wanted to be able to be as strong as Tony, but she wasn’t. She just wasn’t.

“I miss you,” she said.

She paused. Took a breath. Tony didn’t reply.

“I miss you, and I hate that you’re never home.”

She tucked her head so she wouldn’t have to see his reaction. His brea

th came slow and calm, more regular than the waves, and the evenness of it gave her the courage to say, “I think sometimes that you wouldn’t come home at all, if it weren’t for the kids. That you come home to see them, and we talk about them, and that’s all I am to you anymore. Some kind of annex to the boys, like the nanny, except we share a bed.”

“That’s not true.”

His voice was soothing. Not offended. Just direct.