Page 77 of The Husband I Left

I make a sound that is half laugh and half snort. “Of course I do.”

He takes a breath. “Alright.” He runs a hand through his already rumpled hair and then crosses his arms over his chest, and he doesn’t look polished or composed or any of the things Oliver has always been to me. He just looks tired.

“You were right about me. I am everything you said I was before you left. Every single word. You were right. I was a spoiled, selfish man who treated people as if they were disposable, and I am not going to stand here and pretend otherwise.” He meets my eyes directly. “I married you to get revenge on my father. I can’t change that. I can’t take it back.”

I wrap my arms around myself and wait.

“But I also wanted you,” he says. “From the moment I met you, Genny, I wanted you more than I’d wanted anyone in my life. I married this wonderful, wild person who was so completely unlike anyone I’d ever known, and instead of recognizing what I had, I stood by and watched my mother spend two years trying to sand you down into something more manageable.” His jaw tightens. “I let her do it. I told myself you were fine, that you were adjusting, that this was just how things worked.” He looks at the floor. “And when Victoria came back into my life, it felt like I had won. That’s the most pathetic part of all of this. All those years she kept me at arm’s length, and then she left me, and suddenly I had a chance to even the score. I didn’t even like her that much, even when we were dating. I just didn’t like to lose.”

I don’t say anything.

“And then,” he says, and his voice changes, goes a bit rougher, “you walked into that gala with Evan. And I looked at you, and I saw the woman I married, the real one, the one I almost let my mother destroy, and I realized.” He stops. Swallows. “I realized I was about to lose the only thing that had ever actually mattered. And it was entirely my own fault.”

I snort. I can’t help myself. “I think the only thing you miss about being married to me is the sex.”

The corner of his mouth twitches. He drops his chin slightly, and I can see him trying very hard to keep a straight face. “I did enjoy the sex,” he concedes. “That’s absolutely true.”

“Oliver—”

“But it’s not the only thing.” His voice steadies. “It’s not even close to the only thing.”

“Name one,” I say, pointing at him. “Just one thing. And it has to be specific. If you tell me you miss my laugh or my fabulous sense of style, so help me God, I will—”

He’s definitely trying not to laugh now. “I miss—” he stops. Thinks. And when he speaks again, the amusement is gone. “God I miss so much. You bringing me lunch at the office. The notes you used to leave for me. You used to wait up for me when I worked late. Do you remember that? You’d have hot chocolate ready, and you’d be on the couch, and I’d come in, and you’d look up at me with that smile, and we’d sit there and drink hot chocolate and talk. About nothing. About everything.” He looks at me directly. “It was always the highlight of my day.”

I open my mouth. Close it again.

I remember that, too. I remember he’d take off his suit coat and loosen his tie, and we’d sit there together and I’d think: yes, this is it, this is the real him, this is who he is underneath all the rest of it. And I’m the only one who gets to see this part of him.

I also remember the night he waved me off.

He’d come in just as I’d just finished pouring the hot chocolate into the mugs and I picked them both up and turned to him and he walked straight past me on the way to his office, phone attached to his ear, and he just waved me off when I tried to get his attention. He’d closed the door without looking back, and I went to bed alone that night and tried to convince myself that he’d just had a long day at work. That something important had come up.

Something in my chest cracks right down the middle, and I start crying. Not just a few stray tears. Actually crying. I collapse on his couch because my legs don’t want to hold me up anymore, and I bury my face in my hands and sob.

“Genny — hey, what’s wrong, what is it—”

“I remember that,” I tell him, wiping ineffectually at my face. “I remember that, and I remember the first night you walked straight past me and shut yourself in your office, and I just — I stood there thinking I did something wrong, Oliver, for months I thought I—” I can’t stop the words spilling out of me now. “I really thought I’d done something wrong, and I didn’t know what. And the whole time it was just your stupid grudge, and I was standing there with your hot chocolate not even knowing — and you were so mean, you just — you stopped seeing me, and I kept trying harder and your mother kept telling me what I was doing wrong and I kept trying to fit myself into all these spaces that weren’t shaped like me and—”

“Genny.” Oliver moves, and then suddenly he’s beside me, and his arm goes around my shoulders, pulling me into him, and I should resist this, I know I should resist this, but I don’t. I turn my face into his chest and cry some more.

“You’re right,” he says, and his words are half muffled as he has his face pressed against the top of my head. “I was a bastard. I was a selfish, shortsighted bastard, and I am so sorry. I am so sorry, Genny.”

“You were really mean,” I inform his chest.

“I know.” His arm tightens slightly around me. “I know I was.”

The crying slows by degrees. Oliver’s hand moves in a slow circle on my back, and it’s both deeply embarrassing and wonderful. Part of me wants to step back, collect what’s left of my dignity, and flee across the hallway. The rest of me wants to stay right where I’m at, possibly forever.

I lift my face from his shirt and look up at him.

His jaw is tense, and his hair is rumpled, and his expression is wrecked. His eyes meet mine and don’t move away.

“I really want to kiss you,” I tell him before I can stop myself.

His expression shifts immediately. “Genny—”

“I mean it.”