Page 111 of Seven Minutes
That one punctured me. I stepped closer but stopped when I saw the tension sharpen in his spine.
“Eli, come on,” I murmured. “Talk to me.”
He finally turned his head, eyes bright and too wide.
“I watched the clock tick past the time you were supposed to come through the door,” he said. “I knew it would happen eventually. I told myself it was fine. I made dinner. I played music. I kept busy. Everything was coping manual perfect.” His breath stuttered. “But seven came and went, and you weren’t here. And it all—” He swallowed. “It all felt exactly the same as before.”
My heart cracked at the edges.
“This isn’t before.”
He made a sound, hurt disguised as disbelief. “It felt like it.”
I dragged a hand through my hair, frustration and love tangling in the same fist.
“Eli, I’m trying,” I said, voice rougher than I meant. “Fuck—I am trying so hard. Between therapy, work, andus, there are only so many hours in a day. Some days, something has to give, and today it was you.” I exhaled sharply, forcing the next words out softer. “That doesn’t mean I’ll make a habit of it. I just… I need you to trust me.”
The silence wasn’t cold or sharp, just tired. Familiar.
Eli looked at me for a long, excruciating moment, and I held his gaze even though part of me wanted to look away, wanted to hide the desperation in my own.
Then he nodded. One small, slow dip of his chin.
“Okay,” he whispered. “I’m trying, too.”
Relief hit me so hard I had to brace a hand on the counter beside him.
I didn’t touch him. Not until he turned fully toward me, closing the space between us an inch at a time, telegraphing every movement in slow motion.
Then he stepped into my chest and exhaled against my shirt, and I wrapped my arms around him, careful and firm.
“I’m home,” I murmured into his hair.
“You are.” His fingers curled into my back. “That’s what matters.”
I nodded against him. “No, what matters most is that no matter where I am, this, right here,” I squeezed him tighter, “is where I want to be more than anywhere in the world.” I pulled back and tilted his chin up to face me. “With you, my husband, my love.”
And I kept that promise—for three solid weeks. No late nights. No emergencies I didn’t bolt away from the second I could.
He relaxed by degrees, and I learned to live by them. One night of slipping didn’t break us.
It tested the seam. And for the first time in years, the seam held.
We weren’t planningto be out long—just a Saturday drive, coffee in hand, windows cracked, the kind of easy quiet that had started to feel real again. Stable. Like we were practicing being an actual couple instead of people trying to glue a broken thing back together.
Then the street sign appeared.
Decatur.
I felt him notice before I slowed—just a subtle shift in his breathing, a glance toward me, checking an old scar for tenderness.
Eli turned anyway. His throat bobbed. My stomach dipped.
We rolled down the quiet block past the house we started out in, the house we built dreams in.
The house he’d idealized as a postcard for our future stood at the corner, sporting fresh paint, a new porch swing, and a flowerbed that hadn’t existed the last time we drove by.
I slowed without being asked. Maybe because I knew he needed a second. Maybe because I did. At first, I didn’t say anything, just let the hush settle, let Eli look. The cheerful blue door. The fresh hydrangeas. The new owner’s touch that made the whole place look… well, better than when we’d resided there.
