Page 159 of Demo
Then he turns and walks out of the room.
It takes me a moment to gather myself, but when I do, I come out of the room and head toward the stairs. I see him down in the living room, staring out the front window, hands in his pockets. I sink down until I’m sitting on the top step. My feet are on the stair below my butt, and I rest my elbows on my knees.
“I’m not,” I say quietly.
Knox quickly spins and faces me.
I swallow. “Happy, that is. I mean, I guess maybe I’m happy. I’m not unhappy, at least. I feel like the distance—” I gesture with one hand between me and him “—has helped to clear my head, maybe.” I look down and pick at my fingernails, then blow out a breath and tuck a piece of hair behind my ear, but it just falls back in my eyes. “Florida was great. The sun. The warmth. Leanne had a baby, I’m not sure if you knew that.”
“Yeah, you mentioned she was pregnant in one of your texts,” Knox strolls over to the bottom step and rests an elbow on the railing. “I figured she must’ve blown, what, a month ago?”
I nod. “Yeah. Gerry, they named him. Not Gerald. Just Gerry.”
Knox nods and repeats the name, “Gerry,” like he’s trying it out on his tongue. “I like it.”
“Yeah. Anyway, it was nice. Being with family. And still being able to work. I feel like keeping that connection to this city really kept me grounded. Reminded me I wasn’t on some permanent vacation, you know? Head in the clouds and all that.”
Knox just stares at me.
“Total honesty?” I ask.
He nods slowly. “Just try not to kill me with it,” he says softly. His eyes are pleading, and I see his vulnerability.
“I let go of my anger a long time ago. I just realized, at some point, it wasn’t worth it. Either I hate you and that’s it, we’re done. Or I let it go and you and I move on, together. And the thing is … I don’t want tomove on,Knox.”
Knox tips his head like he doesn’t understand.
“I don’t want to start over. I want all of our past. I want our first date and our first romp—even if we don’t remember it—” I pause as Knox lets out a laugh. “I want both proposals. I want our breakups. I want all our loss and all our love. Even all our indiscretions. But, Knox, I don’t want to be weak. How do I get to have all of that with you without being weak?”
Knox is staring up at me from the bottom of the stairs, and just when I think he might slowly stalk up them toward me, he shocks me by bounding up them two at a time until—in just three lunges—he is crouched in front of me, his hands on my forearms as my own hands hang between my knees. He sinks his neck slightly into his shoulder blades so he can look me right in the eyes.
“My turn?” he asks, and I force a hard swallow and move my head up and down marginally—I’m surprised he can even see it.
“You are the strongest person I know. If our roles had been reversed. If you … had …” I watch him swallow and force out the rest of the sentence. “… been unfaithful, I wouldn’t have survived it. I would have fucking killed the guy, that’s for sure. I would have definitely ended up in jail. I might have been so full of vengeance and anger I would have spent the rest of my life making sure yours was a living hell. I would have pushed everyone else in my life away out of spite. And I definitely would have used it as a reason to get high.”
Knox wets his lips and continues. “I love you more today than I did when we stood in City Hall and promised each other forever. And that’s saying something because young Knox was really smitten with you.” That gets a chuckle out of both of us.
“I love you more now because even though the things I did should have had you destroying any vision of that future, since I didn’t hold up my end of the promise, instead, you carried that weight. You carried it for far longer than you should have. And eventually that shit gets heavy. And I signed those divorce papers because I wanted to take that weight off you.”
Knox takes my face in his hands and uses his thumbs to sweep away some more tears that I can’t seem to keep from falling. “Lizzie, I loved you the most I ever had on the day I signed those papers. Don’t ever think that was me not loving you.”
He continues to stroke my cheeks. “And I settled some things in my head, too. You and me, we’re a team—no matter what our marital status is. I will understand if I have to wear your rings around my neck for the rest of my life. But I will still be in your corner. I promised you forever, and I’m not going to break that promise.”
Slowly, Knox brings his forehead to mine and rests it there for a moment. “Now,” he says. “There’s one thing we need to circle back to.” He pulls back and looks me in the eyes.
I pull my brows together, not able to put all my thoughts together. “A lot of things were just said, and I’m a little bit in shambles right now, so I’m gonna need you to recap,” I say, repeating words he once said to me.
Knox grins and caresses my cheek with his thumb. “You never signed the divorce papers, Lizzie. So, we aren’t legally divorced. We haven’t been all this time. Was that just an oversight, or …” His eyes dart back and forth between mine, searching, pleading, desperate.
I shake my head in his hands slightly. “I couldn’t,” I breathe out. I reach my hands up and wrap them around his wrists. “Knox,” I whisper. “I’m scared.”
“Baby, look at me.” He tips my face up to his, and his eyes glisten. “Give it all to me, OK. Let me carry it all for a while. Make me be the strong one. Make me earn it back. Everything you gave me before, make me work for it.”
“I won’t survive another blunder, Knox. I swear to God—”
“Neither will I, Lizzie.”
I pull back further from Knox, needing to take a breath of air that isn’t recycled with his. As I do I pull his hands from my face and cup them in mine. “Knox, do you believe in …” My thoughts are interrupted when I see, over Knox’s shoulder and out the front window, a car pull up in front of the house. I pull my brows together. “Knox, there’s a car out front.”
