He wasn’t ready for that. Not tonight.
There was silence for five minutes, then ten. Then Shaundra said, “He just came by to visit my mom. I was telling him I was moving away. That was all.”
Nathanael said nothing.
“You didn’t have to be like that. There was no call for you to be so rude.”
“I know,” he finally admitted.
“You were a jerk. You embarrassed me.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her response, “You’re sorry a lot these days,” was muffled, spoken into the panel of glass at her window.
He yanked on the wheel, skating off the road, causing a minivan behind him to swerve wildly to avoid hitting them. Once they were on the shoulder, he pulled up the parking brake and turned to her. “You’re my wife—”
“But not your property!”
“I never said you were.”
“Oh no? Then what’s with the whole caveman demonstration! You might as well have scribbledMine! Mine! Mine!on my forehead with a Sharpie!”
He felt tiny prickles of shame, like ants starting at his feet and crawling upwards. He was about to say he was sorry again, but stopped. That wasn’t enough.
He reached out and touched her, tilting her chin in his direction so he could see her dark eyes. “Sometimes, I stand outside myself and look on as I do things, say things that I can’t believe are coming from me. It’s just the way I’m made. All I can say is, I want you and I want us. And I’m asking you to forgive me.”
She looked as if she was pondering this for a long time, her gaze leaving his to focus outside in the darkness of the freshly fallen night. “Maybe it will be better when we get to France,” she murmured. “Fresh start and all that.”
“I know it will,” he promised fervently. Grateful that at least she was calm. Not angry, not crying. She lurched toward him suddenly, and he almost flinched, unsure of what her reaction was going to be.
But her lips were soft on his, nothing like the harshness of their earlier kiss. It was sweet, so much like her, like the wife he remembered before things went sour. He kissed her back, matching his gentleness to hers.
“It’s going to be better over there,” she murmured against his mouth, but he wasn’t sure if she was making that assertion to him or trying to reassure herself.
In the back seat, the baby cooed softly.