Page 89 of Cursing My Cheating Husband

“The one change from the original is whose forgiveness would break the curse.” Astrea grinned. “Now I’m the one who would have to forgive him for how terribly he treated you.”

“You!” I yelled. “You’re still carrying grudges against people who have been dead for 200 years!”

“That’s exactly what I told him! His situation is really and truly permanent now.” Astrea stretched her arms with a satisfied sigh. “I must tell you, Calliope, among all your other magical gifts, you design curses that are just fun to cast. It was so nice to work from your design.”

I was completely speechless. I looked back and forth between the two of them, trying to process what had happened.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to talk.” Astrea clasped my hand briefly as she walked past. “Let me know if you need me.”

We waited for the glass conservatory doors to close behind her. I channeled my magic at the vines growing around the doorframe, accelerating their growth so that they covered the glass in seconds. Maddox and I needed privacy, and the familiar pull of magic steadied me slightly.

I moved to one of the wrought-iron benches and dropped onto it.

Maddox followed and sat at the other end. There was room for three, so space stretched between us.

“Maddox, what were you thinking?”

“I kept coming back to what you said the last time I saw you.” His voice was quiet but solid. “You said you wanted what we had that day at the beach house, but with a man you knew for sure would never cheat on you. You wanted to be one hundred percent sure I wouldn’t get the wandering eye again.”

He’d remembered it perfectly. He really had become a better listener.

“When I realized there was a way to make myself that man, I knew I had to take it.”

The scale of what he’d done hit me all over again. “Why didn’t you ask me before you did it?”

“Because I knew you would think it was too much to ask, and too much pressure to put on you, and tell me not to do it.”

He was right. I absolutely would have.

“And you weren’t worried it put pressure on me to do it anyway?”

“So worried. That’s why I was only going to tell you by letter, so you could ignore it if you wanted.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But the more I thought about it… the more it didn’t seem to really make any difference.”

I couldn’t follow. “No difference?”

“I know you could have any man you want. But you’re the only one for me. There’s no one else after you, Callie.” He shifted slightly on the bench, turning more toward me. “I realized that if you didn’t take me back, I still wasn’t ever going to be with another woman. I would just spend the rest of my life missing you and wishing I hadn’t fucked it up.”

I felt something building within me. My pulse quickened. “Wow” was all I could manage to get out.

“So from that angle, it doesn’t make much difference to me if I’m cursed or not. Either way, I won’t be sleeping with any other women.”

I tried to process what he was saying. He’d cursed himself permanently. Not to manipulate me into saying yes, but because he meant it. He was mine, whether I wanted him or not. His certainty was dizzying.

“But I thought, even if it didn’t make a difference to me, maybe it would make a difference to you,” he said. “Once that thought entered my head, I had to try.”

My skin was tingling. He understood. He actually understood what I needed. Not just the surface of it, but the deep fear underneath.

And he’d found a way to take that fear away.

“And I understood why nothing short of this would ever convince you that your heart could be safe with me.”

When had we gotten so close? I’d been sitting at one end of the bench and he’d been at the other, but somehow the space between us had disappeared. Our knees were touching.

“How are you feeling about what I’ve said?” he asked. His voice was soft and careful.

I looked at him. This was the man I’d married. The man I’d loved so desperately it hurt. The man who’d broken my heart so thoroughly it felt like I might never recover.

But he was so different now. The old Maddox never would have done something this selfless, or this permanent. That Maddox had been too focused on himself, too caught up in his own needs and wants to see mine clearly. He had never committed to me so completely before.