Page 117 of Never After Us
“Mila told you that you can be part of our family,” I say, my gaze fixed on the corner of a cardboard box because looking at him directly feels too intimate.“I heard her.”
He watches me carefully, quietly, like someone who knows not to make sudden movements around a wounded animal.“Yeah,” he murmurs.“She did.Do you want to talk about it?”
Talk about it?I’m the person who has literally dodged therapy sessions by faking dental appointments.My emotional skillset includes: repressing, compartmentalizing, and occasionally crying in grocery store parking lots.I don’t talk about anything unless I’m legally required to.
I open my mouth—but he speaks first.
“I’m afraid too,” he says, voice low.“I never knew my parents, and every foster home I lived in was temporary.I don’t know how to love or how to stay.I’m guessing it’s something similar for you ...?”
Similar.
My laugh almost snaps on the way out.Not because he’s wrong, but because he has no idea how tangled it is.
Alec doesn’t know how it felt to be married to a man who was already gone before his heart stopped beating.He doesn’t know how it feels to still be mourning someone who never really saw you.To carry a grief that no one else seems to understand because it wasn’t clean, or fair, or poetic—it was layered and cracked and hard to hold.
He doesn’t know how little I think of myself some days.How easy it is to believe I’m too much, or not enough, or just ...inconvenient.
“As you know, my husband died,” I say softly.
But it feels like I’m offering him the title page of a book without showing him the chapters that would make anyone weep.I keep going, because something in me is tired of being the only witness.
“But that’s not all of it,” I whisper.“We fought that evening.I thought he was cheating.I—” I shake my head because maybe I need to stop blaming myself.“We said awful things to each other.He walked out.And then ...he never came home.”
Taking a deep breath, I wait for his reaction, but he’s just looking at me.As if he’s just waiting for me to let this out.
“I want to miss him without tripping over every contradiction,” I continue, “in a way that makes sense.But I can never do it.The doubt is always first.Then the questions I never asked.The answers I’ll never get.The anger I’m not supposed to feel.The relief I hate admitting.The love I’m supposed to hold on to, even though it feels faded and curled at the corners.”
My voice thins.“I don’t know how to separate the different versions of him.The man I loved.The man who hurt me.The man I hurt back.The father who never lived long enough for her to remember him as more than fragments.
“I don’t know how to grieve him properly,” I admit.“I don’t know how to explain that to anyone.”
I close my eyes—and the memory rises before I can stop it.
Sam is pacing in front of the counter, running a hand through his hair the way he always does when he’s two seconds from shutting down.The overhead light hums, casting the kitchen in that late-evening dullness that makes everything feel unfinished—like the day, like us.
“I’m trying,” he said, voice tugged thin.“You think I don’t know things are off?”
I leaned back against the sink, arms crossed tight around myself.“Off is not the same as absent, Sam.We haven’t touched in months.We don’t even try anymore.”
“We” was the wrong pronoun.I should have said “you.”
“You don’t.Because I try.I try so hard to be present, be there for you.To kiss you and be passionate, but you ...you reject me every time I try.”
He stiffened, shoulders tight.His jaw clenched, and when he finally spoke, the words came out rawer than I expected.
“God, Mara, I can’t do this tonight,” he snapped.“You don’t stop.Ever.It’s nagging or pushing or questioning, and I’m drowning in all of it.”
I blinked, stunned, but he wasn’t finished.
“I have a life outside this house.Outside these conversations.I’m exhausted—work is a mess, everything is falling apart, and then I walk in and you’re waiting with another interrogation.I can’t handle it anymore.”
The room seemed to tilt.
“This isn’t just about me, but us as a family,” I shot back, voice shaking.“You come home late, you turn away from me in bed, you cancel plans, and when I ask what’s wrong you shut down.I’m your wife.Not a roommate.Not a chore you can ignore.”
He dragged a hand through his hair, pacing like he wanted to run straight out of his own skin.
“You make everything into a crisis,” he bit out.“Everything I don’t do the way you want is a crime.I’m tired, Mara.I’m fucking tired of you and this fucking life.”
