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Fear grips me. How could I have overlooked this?
But of course—I was blinded by my own desperation for her.
I hold up the photo. “Why?” I manage to croak only that one word.
Nora’s eyes dart to the photo then back to my face. “Why what?” she whispers.
“Why did you say no?” The words rip from me, leaving my soul bared for her to do with as she will. Because to my utter shame, even if Nora doesn’t want to stay married to me, if she just wants us to date or whatever—I’ll stay with her. I won’t be able to walk away this time. I’ll take whatever part of her she’s willing to give me.
“Because I didn’t want to be like my mom,” she whispers so softly I almost don’t hear her. I frown in confusion, but she’s not finished. “Growing up I watched my mom treat marriage the way most people treat shopping for jeans. If they look good in the store, take them home—if you change your mind you can always return them and get new ones. She’s been married eight times. Eight. It wasn’t until I was in college that I discovered that she wasn’t the one returning the jeans. The jeans were returning her.” She grimaces. “Wait, that metaphor doesn’t actually translate. The point is, my mom wasn’t the one ending the marriages. She was the one being left.” Nora’s voice breaks, but she presses on. “And in turn she always left me.” Her eyes are shining with tears, and now I’m no longer thinking about my own pain—I’m too focused on hers.
“Nora,” I begin, but she shakes her head.
“Jack, please,” she pleads, “let me finish. I-I need to say this. Need you to know how I feel about you.”
This last sentence stills my whole body.
“I started to think,” she goes on, “that maybe I was just like my mom, that perhaps that’s why she always left me—because the two of us weren’t worth anyone staying around for. But then I met you, and you,” she swipes at her glimmering tears as they slip from her eyes, “you made me feel so cherished. So loved. And I loved you so much in return. But when you asked me to marry you, all of those old fears shot to the surface. It sounds so ridiculous, but my first thought was that marrying you would just be the beginning of the end of us. And the last thing I wanted was for us to end. Only of course, then you left anyway.”
There’s no accusation in her voice, it’s simply a statement of what took place three years ago. Even so, regret and guilt meld together inside me like a knife forged and pounded into a deathly point: I left her.
“Nora,” my voice sounds about as weak and pathetic as I feel, but for once I embrace the weakness, because doing so is the only way forward with her, “I didn’t leave because I didn’t want you anymore. I left because you wounded my pride, and I stupidly thought that without my pride I had nothing. But the truth that I’ve learned these last three years, is that it was never losing my pride that was going to leave me with nothing—it was losing you.” Raw emotion sticks in my chest, each word costing me more and more of my pride, but freeing me to live without it.
“And, Nora,” I press on, “I don’t want to rush you, but I do want you to know that I want to be with you. I would love for us to stay married, but if you need time to just date again, I will wait for as long as it takes.” I hold her gaze, desperate for my words to permeate the lies she’s been believing about herself. “I won’t walk away from us ever again. And I know that my words might not be enough, so all I can do is sit here and beg you to let me show you starting now and until forever that I love you and I will never leave you.”
“You love me again already?” she whispers, vulnerability in her features.
“No,” I say, then take her face in my hands before she can shy away from me. “I never stopped loving you,” I say fervently. I drop my hands, swallow, then lay my pride down in front of her to ask, “Is there any way you might love me too?”
“Oh, Jack,” she breathes, then gestures to the room around us. “Look around,” she tells me. “Do you think I would have kept all of this if I didn’t love you?” She reaches over and lifts the police academy sweatshirt off the pile, turning it over to display the name on the back. “Do you think that I would have spent the last three years coming home after hard days and wrapping myself in this sweatshirt with your name on the back, if I didn’t still love you?” She doesn’t give me time to answer. “I love you, Jack Reynolds, and I want to share a life with you: a home, a family, the good things and the bad things, your burdens and mine. I want to have your babies and ride horses with you and sit next to you in a church pew every Sunday playing footsie, and,” she clutches the sweatshirt to her chest, “I want to share your last name.”
And with that said, my forever wife kisses me. I forget about everything else as love for her consumes me. I get lost in the feel of her, the scent of her, the taste of her—until something sharp claws my leg.
“Youch!” I exclaim, looking down to see Briggs at my feet. Wait, not Briggs. Just a cat that looks a heckuva lot like him.
“Oh! Jack!” Nora cries, bending down to scoop the cat up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I tell her, very much used to cat claws. “I didn’t know you had a cat. Is that what you had to come and get?”
She nods. “How did you get out of your travel carrier, mister?” she asks the cat who simply yawns, then starts grooming his feet.
Or possibly sharpening his claws. I swear I just saw him extend and retract them a few times—then look right at me.
“But why were you embarrassed about needing to get your cat?” I ask in confusion.
“Oh, well, it wasn’t really the cat,” she explains. “It was more that I didn’t want you to come in and see all of this.” She gestures to all of the stuff still on the bed.
“But see it all I did.” I can’t help but smirk as I pick up the Dove shampoo. “Sniffing this late at night to remind yourself of me?” I tease.
“W-what?” she sputters, cheeks turning apple red. “Of c-course not.”
I study her, suspicion dawning. “You did do that, didn’t you?”
She doesn’t answer, but her blush intensifies.
“Nora, my love,” I drawl, “that is perhaps the cutest creepy thing I have ever heard.”
“Jack!” She shoves me lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me.”
