Chapter 199
Kaiden
The house had thinned to murmurs and plates, a soft clatter of forks and Mum telling the dishwasher who was hose. Out in the garden, honey still hung in the air. Inside, the hallway was lemon and old paper, I ducked into the small bar oft the study and reached for the good stuff, the bottle that lives on the back shelf and always wears a little dust live a crown. Cut crystal. No ice. The first swallow burned like a promise kept late.
“You hiding,” a voice asked from the doorway, “or drinking?”
Luca. My father with my mouth and my temper, leaning a shoulder to the Jamb like he had all night. He didn’t come in until I set the glass down. He doesn’t crowd; I got that from him too.
“You doing okay?” he asked, simple as a hand offered palm up.
“No,” I said, because the word was there and I was too tired to pretty it. “We still can’t… Mia and L…” I huffed a taught that tasted wrong. “We can’t get pregnant. She’s drowning quiet. She thinks I can’t hear it because she smiles while she sinks.*
Dad moved to the sideboard and poured, not much, just enough to be company. He waited,
“She’s hiding things from me,” I said, softer. “Clinics I didn’t sign my name to. ‘Offsite compliance‘ and other bullshit printed on paper. She keeps it neat and out of sight so I won’t go to war on her behalf. And she…” I rubbed my thumb along the rim of the glass until it sang. “She’s pulled back from the. Not so much from Hunt. He’s always been better at the… coddling. He knows how to put a blanket on a fire and call it warmth. I come in with a hose and drown the house?
“You’re not wrong about either of you,” he said, dry. “And you’re not right enough to build a religion on it.”
I looked at him. He looked back. Same eyes, older patience.
“Hunter is good at holding,” Luca went on. “You’re good at carrying. Different muscles. Same job.”
“It doesn’t feel the same job when she won’t let me touch her,” I said, and the truth of it sat heavy on the bar between us. “She lets him. Not always me.”
He took a sip, made a face at the drink like it had personally offended him, and set the glass down with care. “You know what men like us do when something hurts? We sharpen. We get cleaner, quicker, harder. We bring a solution like a blade and we expect the world to say thank you.”
“That’s the job,” I said. It came out defensive even to me.
“It’s a job,” he said. “But not the only one. Your wife doesn’t need a cleaner edge. She needs a place to set the weight down and hear it hit the floor. Sometimes that’s a lap. Sometimes that’s a chair in a room that smells like antiseptic three in the morning. Sometimes it’s your chest and your silence.”
“I offered,” I said. “She’s… proud.”
“So are you,” he said, with that annoying accuracy that makes you want to punch and hug a man in the same breath. “Tell me this, when she goes to these clinics you don’t like, who is she protecting? You, from your anger? Or herself, from watching you break with her?”
I closed my eyes and saw the folder with her name on the tab. Saw the note she didn’t write and the hour she walked our-
Chapter 199
there alone. “Both.”
“Then stop making it easier to go alone,” he said, gentle, “You think stepping back is mercy. Sometimes it reads la absence.”
The words found eve
unguarded place I keep. I let them.
“Your mother and 1,” he said, mouth tilting at his own history, “we did not arrive at this family by following instructions. There were years I mistook distance for control, It cost us time. Don’t pay that price if you can spend something else.*
“Like what?”
“Your pride,” he said, no hesitation. “Your schedule. Your need to be the one who fixes. Bring a chair instead of a plan. Bring a hand instead of a war.”
He reached across, not to squeeze my shoulder, he knows I hate that, but to straighten the glass I’d turned half a degree out of true. It felt like a benediction anyway.
“You’re allowed to be angry,” he added. “You’re allowed to want what you want so bad your teeth ache. You’re not allowed to turn yourself into a knife and call it love.”
A breath left me I didn’t know I’d been trapping. “She’s depressed.”
He nodded like I’d finally named the right beast. “I know the look. Your mother carried it once.” He left when unspecified, mercy in omission. “It doesn’t scare easy. You do not out–logic it. You outlast it. With hands. With food. With walks when the sun shows up. With the thousand little things that say, ‘You are not alone in this body.“”
“I don’t like that she leans into Hunter when she won’t lean into me,” I said, letting it be ugly. “I know I shouldn’t care how the support arrives as long as it does. I still care.”
“Jealousy is a sign you’re in it,” he said. “Use it like
Weather report, oh, the wind is up, tie down the furniture.”
I laughed, unexpected and honest. He tipped his glass in salute.
He picked up the bottle, poured a finger more into my glass, none into his. “One for courage,” he said. “Not to talk. To
listen.”
I lifted it. It went down cleaner than the first. When we stepped back toward the noise, he put two fingers to the back of my neck, a press, quick, and gone, the way Hunter does when he doesn’t have words. The same signal, passed down.
At the threshold, he paused. “Kaiden.”
“Yeah?”
“You are not failing your wife,” he said. “You fix it with your hands. Learn anyway.”
are learning a
another way to keep her. It feels like failure b
you can’t
I carried that line out into the garden like a warm stone in my pocket. The music caught us. Mia looked up, found me. I crossed to her and didn’t bring a plan. I brought a chair, and my hand, and the patience I was borrowing with intent to own. Hunter flicked a glance over, reading the room the way he does. I nodded once. He relaxed a fraction. We both did. Then I grabbed her hand and kissed the back of it softly.
“Hey baby. You look beautiful today.” I whispered,
Chapter 199
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