Chapter 6
The next week was the hardest of my life.
Mark moved back into the house, but he slept on the couch.
He didn’t push me to talk, didn’t push me to forgive him.
He just did things.
He got up at 2 a.m. every night to feed Liam, so I could sleep.
He made me coffee exactly how I liked it every morning, left it on the nightstand before I woke up.
He took Liam to all his doctor’s appointments, took notes, asked a million questions, like he was terrified of missing even one second of his son’s life.
But every time I looked at him, I saw that cold, empty face in the hospital room.
I heard his voice saying that baby might not be mine.
The hurt was still there, sharp and raw, every time he got too close.
Jake moved in with Richard and Eleanor.
I saw him once, when I dropped off some of Eleanor’s things she’d left at the house.
He was in the front yard, fixing the fence, his sleeves rolled up.
He looked smaller, somehow, without the anger.
He saw me and walked over, his hands in his pockets, awkward.
“Lila,” he said, quiet. “I owe you the biggest apology of all. You did nothing. You were just… in the way. I used you to hurt her, and that was unforgivable. I get it if you never want to talk to me again.”
I looked at him.
At the same scar on his wrist that Eleanor had.
At the same shape of eyes as Mark, as Richard.
He wasn’t a villain, not really.
He was just a kid who’d been abandoned, who’d spent his whole life hurting, and had made the worst kind of choices because of it.
“I don’t forgive you yet,” I said, honest. “But I don’t hate you either.”
He nodded, like that was more than he deserved.
Eleanor started going to therapy three times a week.
She told me once, over coffee, that for the first time in 32 years, she didn’t feel like she was carrying a boulder on her chest.
She and Richard were happier than I’d ever seen them.
No more secrets between them.
No more lies.
Mark started therapy too.
He told me he was working on why he’d been so easy to manipulate, why he’d doubted me so fast, why he’d let fear take over instead of trusting the woman he’d promised to love forever.
One night, I woke up at 3 a.m. and went to get a glass of water.
The nursery light was on.
I walked down the hall and stopped in the doorway.
Mark was sitting on the floor next to Liam’s crib, his back against the wall, holding Liam’s tiny hand through the slats.
He was crying, quiet, his shoulders shaking.
“I’m so sorry, buddy,” he whispered to Liam, who was fast asleep. “I almost lost you. I almost lost your mom. I will never, ever let anyone make me doubt us again. Not Jake. Not anyone. Not even myself. I promise. I’m going to be better. For you. For her.”
I stood there in the doorway, tears running down my face.
For the first time since the hospital, I didn’t just see the man who’d hurt me.
I saw the man I’d fallen in love with.
The man who was trying, harder than he’d ever tried at anything, to make things right.
May you like
I didn’t go in.
I turned around and went back to bed, but for the first time in weeks, I slept through the rest of the night.
