Page 7 of Light

Especially with the day and night still ahead of us.

Which, God help me, will really be as boring as the plans look on paper.

I allow myself a below-the-breath chuckle of the F-word. Saying it any louder will only make the sentiment—and the disbelief beneath it—more real.

But yeah, this is really me, really thinking this. The guy who, just four years ago, was ringing in the new year with coke-spiked champagne and some willing Amsterdam beauties, who is now craving to be in one bed, with one woman, well before midnight.

Dear God, I can only hope.

Surged with that hope, I kick the covers back and hoist out of bed. Five minutes later, with a pair of workout shorts covering my junk in all the right places, I head out the door, down the hill, and toward the shoreline. Hopefully a predawn run will clarify shit in my psyche again—and rebuild the thin wall I’m fighting to keep erect between my reality and my imagination.

Emmalina and Bean and the love that binds us? Reality.

Faline and her obsessive power trip fuckery? Not my reality.

Nor will it ever be again.

I have to keep believing that. I have to keep choosing that. Even if it takes living this “reality” a little while longer. And even if that means I’ve got to get through a few hours tonight in disguise as a science nerd with a hard-on for UFO debates, escorting my equally “nerdy” wife to an intimate New Year’s Eve “party-gathering-semi-fundraiser thing” with the neighbors.

Okay, so seventy people could technically still be “intimate”—and if not, in the grand scheme of things, it could still be worse. Mel and Maddie Makra, our eccentric and energetic hosts, have confirmed that Emma’s parents, who always ring in the new year from someplace exotic and expensive, won’t be attending, thank God. That means that though we’re attending the soirée as fabricated people, we’ll get the chance to quietly bid on some silent auction packages benefiting our very real charity, Richards Reaches Out. And yeah, I do mean quietly. At this point, I’m even wondering if “Steve and Sophie’s” attendance will be noticed, considering how Maddie and Mel have made it pretty damn clear the fundraising element of the evening is a blatant bid to score the first post-wedding appearance of Reece and Emma Richards.

Yeah, I’m completely serious.

And no, Merriam-Webster isn’t accepting new submissions for their “Irony” listing.

At any rate, this is going to make things interesting.

So bring on the interesting. I’m ready. I can do this. It’s just a couple of hours and only with seventy people. What could possibly go wrong?

The charge resonates through me as I pause atop the berm to catch a breath and watch the first tendrils of dawn sneak over my shoulders on their way to the water. But like the light on the ocean, my thoughts are illuminated by murky hues. There’s no depth to those waves, still rolling beneath the sky as gray masses, crashing quietly against the sand to punctuate my instinct’s response to its challenge.

What could possibly go wrong?

Plenty.

Plenty.

Plenty.

Chapter Two

Emma

In terms of everything Reece and I have faced together, the leftover strain from our morning tiff is nothing more than a semicolon in the narrative. Which is why I’m tempted to check myself into therapy for continuing to obsess over it. Yes, on New Year’s Eve. Yes, in the crazy-ass sequined dress into which I’ve just changed for the Makras’ party tonight. Go big or go home, right? And since home isn’t an option right now, I’m diving all-in for big. Besides, I can definitely say this will be the first—and only—time I’ll attend a Newport Beach society party clad in a gold-sequined maternity tent—errrr, dress.

Okay, so technically, I’m not really the one in the dress. Thank you, Sophie Sarsgard, alter-ego extraordinaire, for saving a little of my real-life dignity. So there are some upsides to the whole “total incognito” game besides not fearing for mine or my baby’s life every other minute. And now that my sister has decided the “Sophie the nerd” look can withstand a few stylish choices between the hideous jumpers and mom-to-be jeans, I’m not as testy about having to appear in the knocked-up-Solid-Gold-dancer look for a few hours either.

But the thing I am still testy about?

How my husband let things stand between us this morning.

Not real walls, though they might as well have been. Walls I thought we’d already toppled between other things like kidnappings, explosions, family betrayals, friends dying, the destruction of half our city, and a “little” thing like my surprise pregnancy. Through it all, we always pushed our way back to each other. Forged a new path with each other. Leaned on and cried with and loved each other, at last arriving at the truth that we couldn’t do it without each other. No noble heroics. No it’s-for-the-best secrets.

No “it was nothing” nightmares.

A nothing that’s been gnawing at me all day.

No. That’s been eating away at me for three days. The seventy-two full hours in which my life partner has been slowly, subtly veiling himself from me. Oh, not all of it—but just enough, tucking back a little more each day, that I haven’t noticed just how murky our connection has become until now.