Page 11
“Okay,” I swallow. “With me, or…?”
She looks down at my hand over hers, her eyes zeroing in on the white-gold wedding band she picked out for me. She shifts her hand until she can trace it with her finger.
“Quinn?”
She stops, her eyes connecting with mine. Their coolness sets off alarm bells in my head—what she’s about to say next is the moment I knew was coming.
“With everything.”
I go cold, and I instantly spit out, “Tell me what I can do to fix it.”
I don’t even need to think to know I will do anything. Quinn is my wife, the person I see or at least speak to every single day. The woman who has been with me through everything good and bad since we were both eighteen years old. I love her, and I refuse to lose her.
Her lip quirks up in a forlorn smile, one that doesn’t ease the fear I’m feeling inside. “Do you really want to fix it? Or are you saying that because it’s what you think you have to do?”
Anger flows through my veins, and I do my best not to lash out. “What?”
“I love you, Noah, I do, but you always need to fix things. You need everything to work out the way it’s supposed to or the way you pictured.”
“Why is that bad?”
She takes my other hand so we’re facing each other and brings them up so they’re pressed against our chests. “Because I don’t know if that’s what you truly want or if you’re doing things out of obligation.”
“How can you say that? You’ve never been an obligation to me.”
“But sometimes that’s how I feel.” She pauses. “It’s how I’ve been feeling for a long time now. Like I’m someone to pencil into your schedule.”
I blink at her and try to process her words. This is a lot, especially when, before yesterday, I thought things were fine, or at least as fine as they can be during a hockey season and after the worst game of my life.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know I’ve been busy. And I know that, for the last week, I haven’t been a good husband to you.”
“But it’s not just this last week.”
“Quinn—”
She pulls her hands away and runs them through her hair in frustration. I want to take her in my arms, but her body language is screaming that it would be a bad idea.
“Have you really not noticed?” she asks, pain in her tone.
“Like I said, it’s been busy. We’ve both been busy.”
“But you didn’t notice. You didn’t notice that I’ve been unhappy, did you?”
I want to say that isn’t true, but she’s right, so I repeat the only thing I can say. “I’m sorry.”
She expels a long sigh that’s near silent, yet I feel it in my gut all the same.
“I’m sorry, too,” she mutters.
“Quinn.” My voice cracks uncharacteristically. “I love you.”
“I love you, too. But I need more than to be loved in words, Noah.”
My breath catches. “I wish you would have said something to me before.”
“I was hoping that you would notice. That you would open your eyes and see me.”
“I see you, Sunshine.”
