Chapter 15
I almost smiled.
“That sounds like Martin.”
Julian looked toward the window.
“I won’t.”
“Thank you.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
He turned back.
“Sophie left.”
“I know.”
“She told you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what I was doing, Claire.”
“I think you do.”
He waited.
“You were trying to become someone you used to be.”
His eyes changed.
“Sophie told me about the restaurant. About the stories you told her.”
He looked ashamed.
“I missed that life.”
“No. You missed who you were in it.”
He considered that.
“Maybe.”
“You could fail back then without the world knowing. You could be scared. You could need somebody. Now everyone expects Julian Mercer to know exactly what he’s doing.”
“You never did.”
“What?”
“You never expected that.”
“No.”
“That should have made it easier.”
“It should have.”
He smiled sadly.
“You were the only person who still looked at me and saw that kid in the apartment.”
“I still do.”
His eyes filled.
That was the closest I came to breaking.
He stepped toward me.
“Then is there really nothing left?”
There it was.
The question I had known would come.
Maybe he had known too.
For thirty days, our marriage had been suspended between past and future.
Now there was nowhere left to hide.
I loved Julian.
That was the truth I had avoided because it complicated everything.
I loved the twenty-one-year-old boy.
I loved the thirty-three-year-old man.
I loved the impossible ambition.
I loved the way he used to reach for me in his sleep.
I loved memories that would probably hurt for years.
But love was not a command.
It did not require me to stay.
“I spent twelve years choosing you,” I said.
He swallowed.
“I know.”
“And somewhere along the way, I stopped choosing myself.”
“I never asked you to.”
“No. That’s the worst part. I volunteered.”
His eyes dropped.
“I gave things up because I thought that was what love meant. You let me because it made our life easier. Neither of us noticed what it was costing until there wasn’t enough of me left outside this marriage.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I believe you.”
He looked at me sharply.
Perhaps forgiveness frightened him more than anger.
“But believing you’re sorry doesn’t mean I should come back.”
He nodded slowly.
A tear slipped down his cheek.
I had seen Julian cry only a handful of times.
His father’s funeral.