Page 1 of Everlasting Vows

NIX

There was a time when I thought nothing could break my marriage. I figured our bond, our love, was indestructible. As I witnessed other marriages disintegrate and collapse, I always felt secure that mine would last the distance. That it would withstand the test of time.

I was wrong.

I took our bond and our love for granted.

I forgot to tend to my relationship with my wife, to nurture her.

I forgot to show up and be present. It wasn’t enough to be a good provider and father; I needed to be a good husband, too.

I should have kept cultivating our friendship instead of expecting it to flourish in a desert of neglect. And I should have kept dating Abbi. Wooing her. Showing up consistently and giving her my time and attention.

Instead, I thought it was more important to focus on building my business and our financial security to the point where she drowned in loneliness and felt abandoned.

I forgot to actively love my wife. I figured she knew how I felt. That was my biggest mistake and the downfall of our marriage.

She wants to walk away from me. From our marriage.

My vows are everlasting, and there’s no way on this earth I’ll ever let her go.

1

NIX

Abbi’s heels click on the hardwood floor as she makes her way down the hallway, and my heartbeat recalibrates to sync with her steps. I drop her coffee pod into the machine and let it do its thing as I check work emails on my phone.

As the sound of her footsteps grows closer, I monitor the kitchen door from my periphery, waiting to lay eyes on my wife. My breath hitches when she comes into view, wearing a pale pink skirt that hugs her hips like a second skin, a white silk blouse that drapes over her breasts like a caress, and a pair of nude pumps that make her legs look like they go on forever. She’s more beautiful today than when I first laid eyes on her over 30 years ago—I’m a lucky son of a bitch.

She pauses in the doorway, and the soft sound of her heavy sigh fills the kitchen. The subject line of the next email captures my attention, and I click on the email to open it.

“Morning,” Abbi says softly as she grabs her cup from the coffee machine and adds sugar. I’m acutely aware of her every movement as her delicate floral scent wafts around me, grounding me in a way that settles my nervous system. She’s always been my calm.

“Morning,” I grunt distractedly while I scan the proposal for a job which would be highly lucrative for Steele Security. This could be the job that finally puts us on the map, giving the company a level of certainty I need for peace of mind.

She sighs again. The energy surrounding her shifts from quiet complacency to something I can’t name but has an intensity that settles in my gut like a warning I don’t quite understand. I sip my coffee and continue reading, calculating in my head if I have enough men to cover this job. The silence in the kitchen stretches like a rubber band, building a level of tension between me and Abbi that makes the warning in my gut expand until there’s no room. Tightness rolls through my body, each muscle tensing as if preparing to fight an invisible enemy.

“I want a divorce.”

Snap!

The sharp sting of her words makes an acute localized hit to the center of my chest, and an animalistic grunt bursts over my lips. Everything freezes, as if someone’s hit the pause button on a movie. My breath stalls, and every sound mutes, except for the thumping of my heart against my sternum and the blood rushing through my ears like the white-water rapids of an out-of-control river. I clench my jaw and my knuckles turn white as I grip my phone tighter, the words in front of me blurring. The edge of the phone cuts into my palm, and as I narrow my focus to the screen, I wait for the cracks to form, just like they have on every part of me.

She opens a drawer and slides an envelope across the counter. I ignore it and press my ass harder against the counter to hold myself up while everything in the room swirls around me like the turbulent water I’m drowning beneath. My jaw clenches so tight I expect my teeth to crumble at any moment.

“Did you hear me?” my wife murmurs.

I’m usually gone by the time she comes out for breakfast. I’m not sure why I lingered this morning, and now I wish I hadn’t. I swallow the bile creeping up my throat and lift my eyes to hers. A single tear tracks down her porcelain cheek, leaving a path of silvery destruction in its wake. Instinctively, I reach up, cup her face, and wipe it away with my thumb. Our eyes connect, and the stark desolation I see in hers shakes me to my core until she presses into my hand; closing her eyes and blocking me from her heartbreak as if my touch pains her.

“I heard you,” I grumble around the tightness in my throat.

She promised me forever. When did she decide it was okay to break that promise? Why?

“Why?” she huffs, pulling her face away from my hold and pushing her shoulders back to steel her spine. Shit, I must have said that out loud. “Because I’m tired of being invisible in our marriage, Nix.” Another tear tracks down her cheek, and it may as well be a knife slicing through my chest for the pain it causes. “I’m exhausted from carrying the emotional load of our relationship.” She pauses, sucking in a shuddering breath. “I’m tired of being alone,” she murmurs, finishing the job.

I drop my eyes to the hardwood beneath my boots, expecting to see blood and gore covering the floor from where she’s slashed me to the bone. But it’s free of debris. How can that be? She just obliterated me. Heart and soul.

Alone? What the hell does she mean? If I’m not at work, I’m here.