Page 199 of ClickBack

I look at Giselle. She has stopped pressing her hand against her leg.

“There were times I did that,” she says.

Byron looks up.

“I could make a plan without asking whether anyone else wanted it. I could get scared and stop talking. You told me you felt shut out, and sometimes I heard that as one more thing I’d failed at. I know I wasn’t easy to reach.”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“But you didn’t come here to discuss that. You came to tell me why it means I’ll lose somebody else.”

“I’m telling you what I know.”

“Then tell me why you let me think your affair was something I could have prevented.”

He goes still.

I watch the side of her face. She has said affair without looking at me, without softening it for either man in the room.

“I apologized,” Byron says.

“You did.”

“We went to counseling. I tried.”

“I was there, too.”

“You want me to pretend everything was fine before Sutton?”

“No. I want you to stop putting her at the end of a sentence about what I did wrong.”

He looks at the floor between them.

“I was lonely.”

“I believe you.” Her voice breaks slightly. She waits until she can continue. “I was lonely with you, too.”

He looks at her then.

“I kept thinking we could get back to what we’d been. I wondered whether I was tired too often. Whether I’d made being wanted feel like another job. You saw me looking for the thing I could fix so you wouldn’t do it again.”

“Giselle.”

“You could have left me. You could have said you didn’t want to be married anymore. You chose something else, and then you came home and let me keep trying.”

He works his tongue inside his cheek. He has no quick answer for that.

She sits back. Her eyes are wet, but she stays looking at him.

“I can own what I did in our marriage. I’m not taking your affair with it.”

Byron looks toward me.

“Maybe he needs to hear that part, too. What it’s like once everything isn’t new.”

“I’m hearing you,” I say.

Giselle doesn’t look away from him. “Go ahead.”