“Life happened. She climbed the corporate ladder, and I stayed the same. Same job. Same habits. Same guy she’d married, except now she had a corner office and galas andfriends with titles in front of their names.” I paused. “I didn’t fit anymore. Not in her world. I think she tried to pretend it didn’t matter for a while, and I tried to pretend I didn’t notice, but we both knew.”
Sloane shifted against me, her head settling more firmly into my shoulder.
“We drifted,” I said. “Slow at first. Then faster. Separate schedules. Separate rooms. Two people living in the same house with nothing left to say to each other.” I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the blanket. “Two years ago, I came home early, walked into the garage, and found her with some guy on the hood of our car.”
Sloane’s breath caught.
I kept my voice even, flat, the way I’d trained myself to tell it.
“I didn’t fight it. She said she wanted a divorce, and I said, fine. Moved out the same week.”
The silence that followed stretched long and heavy between us. Sloane’s hand found mine under the blanket and held on, her grip firm, grounding.
“I worked too much,” I said. “I know that. I probably drove her toward it in ways I don’t want to look at too closely. But honestly, Sadie disappeared from the marriage long before that day in the garage. I just couldn’t let go of the idea of her, of the version of her I’d fallen in love with in college—I kept waiting for that person to come back. She never did.”
I rubbed my thumb across Sloane’s hand.
“I wanted a family.”
The words left my mouth quieter than I intended. They hung in the night air, vulnerable and exposed, and I almost wished I could pullthem back.
“She kept saying later,” I continued. “Later, when things were financially better. Later, when the timing’s right. Later, later, always later.” I let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Turns out she simply didn’t want a family with me.”
Sloane tightened her grip on my hand.
“She left for some guy with a big loft downtown,” I said. “Finance type. Money. Status. Everything she’d been building toward. It made sense. That’s what she always wanted. I wasn’t honest enough with myself to see it.”
I paused, debated whether to say the next part, then decided Sloane deserved all of it.
“When I moved back into the house after she’d cleared out her things, I found a pregnancy test in the bathroom trash. Positive.”
Sloane went very still against me.
“She never told me,” I said. “Didn’t know I knew. But I did the math. The timing didn’t line up with anything between us.”
The ocean moved beneath the boat. Stars burned overhead, ancient and indifferent.
For a long time, neither of us spoke.
Then Sloane’s voice came, barely above a whisper.
“I’m sorry.”
I shook my head slightly. “Don’t be. It’s done.”
More silence. The boat creaked. Somewhere near the bow, Jeff murmured something to Ethan about a course heading.
Then Sloane asked, her voice gentle and careful, “Do you still love her?”
I thought about it, gave the question the honest weight it deserved instead of the reflexive answer I could easily hand out.
“No.” The word came without hesitation and surprised me with its certainty. “Whatever I had for Sadie died in that garage. Watching her with someone else on the car I’d made payments on for three years—something just died. Clean. Like a breaker tripping.”
She turned slightly in my arms, tilting her face up to search mine in the dim light.
“Do you miss her?”
I considered that, too. Longer this time.