The last time I was here, sheer sadness and disappointment overwhelmed me. While the sedatives they gave me at the hospital have mostly worn off, I still can’t manage to pinpoint any emotion I’m feeling about returning to this condo in Sacramento.
Honestly, I can’t even fathom how I’m going to explain my sudden cross country move to my ex-boyfriend’s place to my family.
I’ll worry about that tomorrow. Hopefully, I can think more clearly by then and come up with a believable excuse. I don’t want them worrying about what happened at my apartment, and about my mental state, any more than necessary.
As Rob hauls my bags into the bedroom, I look around the open-concept space with a different perspective.
It shouldn’t be on my mind at all, but I can’t stop thinking about his admission that he bought this for me.
“Okay, that’s everything for now.” Rob wanders into the kitchen, then opens the fridge. “You must be starving. Let’s tackle dinner first, then we’ll make arrangements to get the rest of your stuff here, and start laying out plans for the rest of the week.”
The trip to California is kind of fuzzy, thanks to the sedatives, but I still find it hard to believe I just flew five and a half hours on a private jet, with limousine service to and from the small airports.
“Rob?”
“Yeah, babe?” He continues to scrounge in the fridge, acting like this is any other normal evening.
Maybe for him, parts of it at least, are.
“Why did you carry all my things up here by yourself? I mean, don’t you have people to help…with that sort of thing? We did kind of just have the equivalent of servants…at our service…for the past few hours.” Wow. That sounded even dumber coming out of my mouth than it did in my head.
He gives up in the kitchen and slowly makes his way to where I’m still standing in the entryway. “The fewer people who know you’re here for now, the better. Security is really tight in this building since a lot of professional athletes live here, but I don’t want to take any chances until we know what we’re up against.”
“What is it you think we’re up against?” No matter what I say, Rob absolutely refuses to admit I might have imagined yesterday’s events.
He wraps his arms around my shoulders gently, studying my reaction like he’s testing the waters, before pulling me against his chest. “I don’t know yet, and that’s all the more reason for us to take every precaution. If Jackson tracked you to New York, he can easily find this address, too. It’s not like I’ve ever been hiding. We still have some amount of secrecy on our side until we can pin down his actual location, though. Very few people know you’re here, and he has no reason to think you wouldn’t be where he found you. For once, I’m grateful our marriage is a secret.”
That piques my interest more than anything has in hours. “It was your idea to keep it a secret in the first place. Why wouldn’t you be grateful it still is?”
A low chuckle rumbles through his chest. “Baby, do you have any idea how hard it’s been to keep this secret? I only wanted to be sure my dad couldn’t interfere until all the legal stuff was ironclad, so he couldn’t hurt you ever again. It was never supposed to be a secret forever.”
With my cheek pressed against his chest, and no filter in my brain whatsoever, I spill out that which I might normally withhold. “You say I’m a secret to protect me, that you kept our marriage quiet for me, but it still feels more like something you did to me.”
He flinches as I throw his own words back at him.
But, I don’t regret them.
Maybe because I still feel somewhat numb.
Or maybe because it simply needs to be said. I’ve been carrying that doubt with me since his proposal. It should feel better than it currently does to let it go.
Rob doesn’t push me away; doesn’t retreat like he must want to. Instead he hugs me tighter.
“I know,” he admits. “I know it must feel that way. I robbed you of all the things we celebrated with Jeremy and Alyssa.” He presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Thank you for telling me. For getting that off your chest.”
A hint of anger simmers beneath my skin at his easy acceptance of blame and his patronizing attitude. I should pull away from his embrace, but find myself unable to step back. There’s that odd mind-body disconnect again. It, apparently, hasn’t worn off. “That’s it? No defending yourself? No promising me we can get a divorce as soon as our deal is over?”
“Do you want a divorce?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. I hate that I seemingly have no ability to censor myself just now.
“I don’t want a divorce, Evie,” he murmurs into the top of my hair.
I struggle with the fog in my head to clutch coherent thoughts, then turn them into actual words. “Why not? We’ve both admitted we’re no good for each other. No one even knows we’re married. A quiet divorce in eight months is the only thing that makes sense.”
He pulls back to gaze down at me, cupping my cheeks in his hands. “But, what if we could be? Good for each other, I mean,” he clarifies at my undoubted look of confusion. “We already agreed to working on ourselves as the terms of this bet. What if we come out on the other side, ready to give forever another shot?”
Though my emotions don’t feel as sharp as usual, tears form in my eyes, anyway. “Even if the doctors can somehow miraculously treat my endometriosis in eight months, that doesn’t mean I’m going to be good for you.”
“Maybe because the endometriosis was never the problem,” he counters.
“You want kids, Rob. Lots of them, even though you’ve never come out and said so. None of the specialists I’ve seen have ever been able to guarantee I can have them, even if they claim to be able to manage my pain. I’m never going to be able to magically fulfill every wild, dirty, steamy fantasy you’ve ever had. And…” I glance down at my chest. “No one can take away these scars.”
Instead of nodding in agreement, as I expect, a smirk showcasing that dimple I love so much makes an appearance on his face. “Every fantasy I’ve ever had has included you. So, sex isn’t the problem, either. Especially because you were ready way before I was.” He taps my temple with a single finger. “Use that feminist brain of yours. You know there’s more to love than sex. And that it doesn’t always include penetration.”
That rational argument aside… “I’m not going to randomly turn into a super model worthy of being on your arm, either.”
“The only worth you’ve ever struggled with is your own,” Rob contends. “To me, you’ve always been the most beautiful woman in the world.” He pulls his lips between his teeth, studying me carefully, before releasing them. “Maybe I’ve been going too easy on you…”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Please, go easy on me. My brain cannot keep up with the medications from the hospital still affecting me.
“You’ve tasked me with changing the fiber of my very being. In college, you begged me to sleep with someone else and abandon our wedding vows. A few months ago, you asked me to be happy and content with a life without you in it. All I’ve ever asked is for you to be happy and healthy.”
“Having twenty-day periods and being in abject pain is neither of those.” Not to mention, I only asked those things of him for the very same reasons.
Rob places a kiss on my forehead. “The doctors will handle your diagnosis, Evie, but the harder work is all yours.”
“What harder work?” God help me, but I can’t think straight. The slightest doubt he’s using that knowledge to his advantage pecks at my clouded brain.
“I’m amending the terms of our bet.” He nods resolutely, like his physical appearance should sway me further. “No matter what I say or do, you’ll never believe me when I tell you that you’re worthy or beautiful. You have to know it for yourself.”
Goddammit, brain, work. Think. “We don’t even really have a bet. We have an agreement. You do your part; I’ll do mine. It’s more like blackmail.”
“Then, let’s raise the stakes, shall we?” Rob cocks his eyebrows, an expression of pure, unexplainable glee spreading over his face. “The original terms still stand. I’ll work on me; you’ll work on you. Not just allowing the doctors to help you, but really letting yourself live and breathe again. Feeling worthy of yourself for yourself.”
Even with my mind fuzzy and continuing to spin out of control, I can’t help but point out a flaw in his logic. “We haven’t bet anything.”
His expression crumbles. “You’re not certain you want a divorce. I’m sure I don’t. We’ll bet that.”
I blink slowly, trying to make sense of his offer. “We’re betting an inevitable divorce?”
“Not inevitable. We,” he squeezes me in his arms for emphasis, “are inevitable. Everything else is our choice.”
I don’t feel like life has given me many choices. What happens, happens. I simply roll with the punches. “You have a new life now, Rob. I’m not a part of it. We aren’t inevitable.”
He makes a humming sound in the back of his throat. “I thought so, too, until you called me while you were running from Jackson. Just to tell me you loved me, you were sorry for everything, and you would have happily agreed to be my wife, even if only for a day.”
Holy shit. I said that? Out loud? To Rob?
“I’m sorry for everything, too,” he whispers, his hand caressing my cheek. “As much as I had myself convinced I’m no good for you,” he bends down to brush his words across my lips, “in the same way you feel you’re no good for me… There’s no denying we have each other’s names inked on our bodies. Whatever shit we put ourselves through is always with the other’s interests at heart. Bottom line—we love each other. And maybe…maybe nothing else matters.”
“That’s not true.” I claw my way through fog to be the voice of reason. “Everything else matters.”
“I think this is a good idea, anyway,” Rob mumbles, his lips brushing against my hair as he speaks.
“What is?”
“We already agreed to work on our separate issues, to live better lives. We haven’t said anything about working on us.”
I never agreed to his newly stated terms. “There is no us. We’re friends, yes, but we can’t be more than that.”
Stay strong, Evie. Don’t give in. Don’t let him use your greatest weakness against…him.
He steps back, holding me at arm’s length with a slightly infuriating smirk on his lips. “Yes, we can. If we try, which we’re going to. Starting right now.”
He disappears into the bedroom, returning with the same leather notebook and list I’d made for him clutched in his hands. Sitting on the couch that still bears an imprint of his body, he pats the spot next to him. “Come on. If we’re gonna do this, then let’s do it right.”
A tiny part of me wants to point out we never do anything right, but I can’t muster up the energy to argue. Instead, I sit beside him and…oh my God.
I sink down into heaven.
“It’s nice, huh?” He chuckles at my undoubtedly blissed-out expression. “Now you see why I sleep here every night.”
I don’t, actually. “The very expensive bed in the master bedroom is quite nice, too.”
“That’s your bed.” He gives me a pointed look. “You can invite me into it, kick me out of it, or anything in between.”
“I haven’t been here to tell you anything.”
He picks up my hand, placing it against the spot on his chest where my name is hidden beneath his shirt. “You have always been here. And in my heart, I had no right to sleep in your bed, even without you, after not staying faithful to you.”
“If you’re adding things for me to work on, then I want to add letting go of guilt to your list.”
He brings my hand to his lips for a kiss, then points at the wrinkled piece of paper atop the notebook. “Okay. I promise I’ll work on that. But, that’s on my personal list. Just like feeling worthy is on yours. Now, we’re going to make a list of things we have to do together.”
Skepticism tickles the back of my mind. “This sounds like couples’ therapy.”
“It’s not too far off.” Rob smiles, revealing that dimple which could make me do anything he asked of me. “I actually got the idea from back when I saw Cathy after the attack. Every session, she told me I could talk as much or as little as I wanted about what happened, but I was always required to do three things.”
Rob’s never spoken much of what his post-attack therapy entailed, other than being prescribed medication. As much as counseling didn’t work for me in the past, I’m curious as to how it might help in the future. After today’s events, there’s no denying I need professional support. “And those three things were?”
He opens the notebook, flipping until he comes upon a fresh page. “I had to write down one fear, one thing I did wrong, and one thing I did right.”
That makes…absolutely no sense. “Just in general, or specifically about my attack?”
“She left that up to me, but her reason behind it was actually kind of brilliant.”
I gesture for him to explain after a pregnant pause.
“Fear dictates almost all human actions, even if we don’t recognize that. Fear of success can be as debilitating as fear of failure. Sometimes, though, fear is a good thing.”
Yeah, I’m not buying it. “Fear is the main reason I attacked Mike and was committed, restrained, and medicated out of my mind today. So, no, I don’t think it’s a good thing.”
Rob’s big hand locks around the back of my neck and he hauls me to him until our foreheads rest together. “Fear kept you alive today, so you could be here with me tonight. It could have just as easily been Jackson who broke into your apartment instead of Mike. I never want you to feel guilty for protecting yourself.” He straightens up and looks directly into my eyes. “Even from me.”
I chew on my lip in frustration as Rob straightens up and watches me closely.
“If I’m supposed to protect myself from you,” I gesture to the paper, “then why are we doing this little exercise? Isn’t this just more proof we’re no good for each other?”
Rob’s eyes grow bright, even as a frown forms on his lips. “Whether you realize it or not, you pushed me away in college out of fear. Namely, the fear that someone else could ever take your place in my life. Your strong sense of self-preservation leads you around like a leash, instead of a tool you control. I want to help give you a sense of power back, both for yourself, and for us.”
There’s that meaningless word again—power. So easy for those who have it to throw it around like something that’s accessible to everyone.
“You can’t give someone power, Rob. It’s an intangible thing.”
He pats my knee like he’s soothing a disgruntled child. From a safe distance.
“You have power, baby. You just don’t see it. I give you power over me every day, just like I have power over you.”
“Well, yeah.” I cross my arms over my chest, wanting to sink further into the arms of the cushiest couch on the planet and forget about this stupid conversation. “If you had no power over me, I wouldn’t be here.”
He raises an eyebrow at me, clearly thinking I’m being ridiculous. “If you really didn’t want to be here, you would’ve fought me tooth and nail. Of that, I have no doubt.”
Fine. He’s got me.
I just need to feel safe for a little while and regroup. Though it’s completely unhealthy, Rob is still my security blanket.
“What does any of this have to do with your therapy sessions in high school?”
“I didn’t realize it at first, but Cathy asking me to write these things down helped me see something I couldn’t parse out in my head. Everything I did, whether good or bad, was a direct result of some fear I had.”
“While that makes a bit more sense, I’m still not seeing the connection to us.”
His eyes grow sad, a faraway look in them reminiscent of his PTSD in the months following my attack. “I didn’t tell you about us back then because I was afraid if you knew one thing about the days you forgot, you’d remember it all. So, the fear was your memory returning. The bad thing I did was lie to you; the good thing I did was let you use me to feel safe.”
I rub my forehead in frustration, the irony that he’s still letting me use him for safety like a punch in the gut. I’ll never be free of his pity. “Then, I would argue that therapeutic method isn’t very effective. We’re still in the same exact situation. Nothing has changed.”
“Everything has changed,” Rob insists. “It took months of constantly writing all this stuff down for me to see the real patterns. My deepest fear wasn’t you getting your memory back at all.”
I meet his gaze when he doesn’t offer anything else. “What was it, then?”
“Losing you.”
The way he says it, with a low, almost breathless voice devoid of any sarcasm or humor combined with his deep blue eyes boring into me, conveys beyond the shadow of a doubt that is, to this day, his deepest fear.
“If that’s true, then you’re still letting fear control you, too. That’s why you insisted on bringing me here. Because you want to keep me safe.” Which is not the same thing as love. Not romantic love, at least. “You’re still basing your existence on mine.”
He nods, the sadness in his eyes not lessening. “Yeah.”
“I can’t be your reason for existing. What if that had been Jackson today? I could be gone in a heartbeat. Anyone could. I’d rather walk away now and let you get over it gradually than have the constant pressure of being the sole reason you’re able to live your life as you should.” No one can thrive under an umbrella of madness. The weight of it is crushing, even if only as a shadow.
“Rationally, I understand that,” Rob admits. “But, you can’t deny you were doing the same. You were ready to forfeit any chance of hope for the rest of your life based on the idea you would never find love and happiness with anyone other than me. You wouldn’t have gotten that tattoo.” He gestures to my hip. “And you wouldn’t have hated sleeping with someone else.”
I can’t argue any of that, even though I haven’t told him much, and the slight pull at the corner of his mouth means he knows it.
“Like I said before, fear and power don’t have to be bad things, as long as we make them work for us instead of them controlling us. Whether we’re ready to admit it or not, we still have a lot of fear to conquer before we can leverage the power we have over each other for good instead of for destruction. That’s why I think this might be a good idea.”
A heavy sigh escapes my chest, but it doesn’t lessen the burden I carry. “So, how will this work, then? We’ll each write down a fear, a good thing, and a bad thing every day in this notebook, then read them? And after several months, we’ll see patterns in our own behavior to help us change our ways?”
“Yes and no.” Rob tips his head back and forth, and in spite of my sour mood, the gesture is cute as hell. “Instead of trying to convince ourselves we don’t belong together for whatever reason because we can’t live with the pressure of failing one another, we need to flip the power we have over each other on its head. Redistribute it equally between us to use to our advantage instead of tearing each other apart.”
That’s a…surprisingly rational idea born out of the most irrational circumstances of our lives. I’m okay with this plan if it results in strengthening our bond. I’d do anything to keep him in my life. And maybe this will be a healthier way for us to realize friendship is all we can offer one another. “Okay. I’m still not sure how we can use this for relationship goals instead of personal growth, though.”
“You admitted you have resentment over me keeping our marriage secret. I guessed as much, but I didn’t know where your head was at, not really, about it. If we don’t communicate these things to each other, we’re just going to keep making the same mistakes.”
“So, we each write down a fear we have about our relationship every day, then also a good and bad thing about us being together? Is that what you’re proposing?”
“Yep.” He scrawls something on the paper, then hands it over for me to read.
Fear: You’ll never give me another chance
To make amends for all the things I did wrong by you.
I glance up to find him watching me carefully for a reaction.
He’s partially right.
I won’t give myself another chance to hurt him, to let him down.
He gestures to the paper. “Now write down what you admitted to me earlier.”
I take a deep breath, and commit to paper something I’ve never given voice to until tonight.
Fear: You kept our marriage a secret
Because you’re embarrassed to be my husband.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as he swallows thickly and tears form in his eyes.
“Here’s where I think we need to change up a bit what Cathy asked me to do.” He gently pulls the notebook back into his own lap. “Instead of us writing down one good or bad thing we did, I think maybe we should write down one bad thing we don’t want from each other, and one good thing we’d like each other to do.”
I nod, watching in silence as he writes his own ideas.
He hands the notebook back for me to read when he’s finished. I wish more than ever I could remember us passing similar notes back and forth that day so long ago in biology class. Maybe having that tangible reminder of us coming full circle would help me overcome the anxiety mounting in my chest that this exercise will turn out like everything else…a dismal failure.
I take a deep breath and read what he does and doesn’t want me to do.
Bad thing: Don’t shut me out.
Good thing: Give me these full eight months
To make it right.
Then, give me a lifetime more.
“I know-” He pauses to clear his throat. “I know you can’t make me that promise right now, but that’s what I would like.”
“Are these supposed to be promises we want each other to make?” I whisper. I’m not sure I can ask him to promise me anything tonight.
I’m still not operating at full capacity, but I can’t help but think he’s changing the very fabric of our deal, right under my nose. And I’m not fully aware of how.
“It can be whatever you want or don’t want, right at this very moment,” he clarifies.
I think I can manage that.
Bad thing: Don’t make me any promises
You can’t keep.
Good thing: Give me a tour of this place
Like you would have if we’d moved in together right after
You bought it.
He pulls me against him, brushing his lips across my hair and holding me tight. “A tour, I can definitely promise you.”