Knock. Knock. Knock.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. Hold your damn horses!” Jos shouted while making her way to her door.

I couldn’t help but smile as I stood on her front porch waiting. I’d decided back in Washington that I would just wait until I got back home to surprise her.

Home.

This place surely didn’t feel like home anymore to me. I knew what that felt like now, and home was back on an island, traipsing around with a ghost.

Time. You just need time, more than a day back here.

Those were the words I kept repeating in my mind, hopeful that one day soon I could convince myself of their truth.

“What. The. Fuck!” I turned back toward the door at the sound of her voice. Damn, I had missed her so fucking much. I barely had a chance to shoot her a grin before I was pulled into her embrace. “Seriously, bitch! What are you doing here and why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

“I wanted to surprise you,” I replied, still stuck in her death grip.

“C’mon, we haven’t talked in like three weeks.” Jos released me from her hold before grabbing my hand and pulling me through her door. “How’s everything? Did Dan finish the project?” she asked rapid-fire before turning back to me.

One look at me and the smile melted off her face and was replaced with a look of concern. I knew then that the thin veneer hiding my emotions was completely transparent. Jos always read me so well, I shouldn’t have been surprised. “Ros, what the hell happened?”

I tumbled down onto one corner of her sofa, sinking into the soft cushions and pulling a throw pillow onto my lap.

“What didn’t happen?”

The minute the words were out of my mouth, I knew I had fucked up by not planning out what I wanted to say before I had even knocked on her door. I couldn’t just tell her what Dan had done. It wouldn’t have been fair to reveal his indiscretions without admitting my own, but Jos would jump all over that and be pissed I hadn’t told her sooner.

I just wasn’t ready to go into details about Archer and me, and I wasn’t sure that was a truth I could or would ever admit in full to anyone. I couldn’t lie because Jos read me better than anyone out there. She would know I wasn’t telling her everything. I decided to go with as close a version to the truth as I could stand to tell.

“Did Dan come back with you? Is this just a visit?” I knew she was going to hit way too close to the truth if I let her keep asking me questions.

“Yeah, Dan’s back too. The project is pretty much done.”

“So what’s wrong? Why do you look like someone killed your kitten?”

I winced as I braced myself to say the words I was already regretting. “Everything is fucked, Josie. I’m going to say this and I want you to let me just say it and not interrupt, got it?” Jos rolled her eyes at me but nodded her head in agreement. “Okay. Dan cheated on me. He fucked someone he worked with.” The words rang out like a shot.

“What in the actual fuck, Ros?” she screamed before clasping her hands over her mouth to prevent any other words from slipping through. I threw a dirty look her way that said, You promised, without having to say anything. That was the beauty of our friendship. Words weren’t always necessary. She got the message.

“It was just the once, and before you ask, yes, I believe him. He’s fucking wrecked. But that’s not the only issue.” Her eyes widened at that. “I cheated on him too.” I forced the words past the sudden lump in my throat, pushing the confession past the ache that threatened to close off my airway and vocal cords.

“Ros, you’re kidding, right?” She jumped out of her seat and sat next to me, wrapping her arms around me, but not so close that we couldn’t see each other’s faces.

“I wish I were. And before you ask, it was just some random guy I met and it was only once. I told Dan though, so yeah, we both fucked up pretty bad. But he still wants to work things out and I want to try too.”

The final words came out with a gush of air from my lungs. Relief and anxiety all twisted up together in my gut, the perfect cocktail of my undoing.

“God, there’s so many things I want to ask you. I want to know everything about this guy and how it all went down. I still can’t believe you.”

“I can’t, Jos. I really don’t want to talk about it. I met him at a really weak moment and I made a mistake. I’m never going to see or talk to him again, so I just want to move past it.”

My tone brooked no argument and my words were close enough to the truth that I could tell Jos bought it, even if her natural desire was to keep badgering me with questions. It hurt to say what had happened with Archer was a mistake, but in some ways, especially for what it meant for my marriage, it was a mistake.

“Okay. Maybe not today, but one day soon you will give me all the details about this. My question right now is, do you want to work things out with Dan? After all of this, don’t you think it’s a sign? Maybe you should just cut your losses and walk away?”

I sighed and grasped the pillow tighter. I wasn’t sure how to answer that honestly without getting into all the details about Archer, how to tell her how conflicted I was feeling when I’d left so many pieces of my shattered heart behind in another place, with the ghost of a man who wasn’t the one I’d made vows to love and honor eternally.

“Yeah, I do. We’ve already decided to go to marriage counseling. We need this if we’re going to be together and we should have done this a long time ago. Jos, I can’t help but think that if we had tried to fix all of these things before we left, none of this probably would have happened.”

I had been thinking about that a lot over the last couple of weeks. Ignoring all the issues between us had left our marriage wide open and vulnerable to any threats from the outside, left us too weak and alone to fight them off. And in they’d come in the form of a sexy co-worker and an irresistible spirit.

Realizing all of this, admitting my role in all of it to myself had been devastating. I could withhold some of the facts from Dan, but I couldn’t hide them from myself. Revealing the true nature of my betrayal would only hurt Dan more, and despite his role in this, he didn’t deserve it. I would have to learn to live with only the pieces of my heart left.

While regret plagued me, I still couldn’t bring myself to regret Archer. If anyone ever asked if I could go back in the past knowing what I do now, would I change anything, would I keep it from happening knowing I could have a whole heart, I knew that I would rather live in fragments having known the kind of love that existed between Archer and me.