Chapter 164

Chapter 164
Mia

We stayed in New York an extra day.

Ethan suggested it at breakfast, casual as if proposing nothing more significant than a change in coffee orders. "The exhibition is handled. Claire can manage the follow-up interviews." He set down his cup, eyes fixed on the skyline beyond our hotel window. "Stay with me. Just one more day."

Something in his voice—a note I couldn't quite place—made refusal impossible.

"Like tourists?" I asked, half-teasing.

"Like a couple." He turned to look at me then, and the intensity in his gaze stole whatever lightness I had intended. "Like two people who have nowhere else to be."

So we played pretend.

Central Park spread before us in full autumn glory, the maples burning crimson and gold against a sky so blue it hurt to look at. We walked without destination, our shoulders brushing with each step, and Ethan held my hand like it was something precious he had only just discovered he possessed. He bought me a pretzel from a street vendor, laughed when I got mustard on my chin, wiped it away with his thumb in a gesture so tender it made my chest ache.

At the Metropolitan Museum, we wandered through galleries I had studied in college but never seen in person. Ethan proved surprisingly knowledgeable about the Impressionists, offering quiet observations about light and shadow that revealed depths I had never suspected. When I asked how he knew so much, he simply shrugged and said he had been reading.

"Reading what?" I pressed.

"Everything you ever mentioned loving." His gaze remained fixed on Monet's water lilies, but his voice carried a weight that transformed the words into something like confession. "I wanted to understand the things that matter to you."

I didn't know how to respond. The Ethan I had married two years ago would never have thought to research my interests, would never have admitted to such deliberate study of my inner world. This new version—attentive, present, almost reverent—felt like meeting a stranger who wore my husband's face.

A stranger I was beginning to love in ways the original had never earned.

We ate lunch at a tiny Italian restaurant in the Village, sharing a bottle of wine that made me warm and reckless. Ethan watched me more than he ate, his eyes tracing my features with an attention that should have felt intrusive but instead felt like worship. When I asked what he was thinking, he reached across the table to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

"I'm thinking," he said slowly, "that I wasted two years looking everywhere but where I should have been looking."

"And where was that?"

"Right in front of me."

The afternoon sun was slanting low when we reached the Brooklyn Bridge, the city spread beneath us like a promise. Tourists streamed past, but Ethan pulled me to the railing, positioning us to face the Manhattan skyline now gilded with approaching dusk.

"I want to remember this," he said quietly. "Exactly like this. The light on your face. The way the wind is catching your hair." He lifted his phone, then lowered it. "No. A photograph won't be enough."

I turned to study his profile, the sharp line of his jaw softened by the golden light. "You're being strange today."

"Am I?"

"You keep looking at me like—" I hesitated, searching for words. "Like you're trying to memorize me."

Something flickered across his expression, there and gone so quickly I might have imagined it. When he spoke, his voice was carefully light. "Maybe I am. Is that so terrible? Wanting to remember your wife at her most beautiful?"

"Ethan." I caught his arm, forcing him to face me. "What aren't you telling me?"

For a long moment he simply looked at me, and I watched emotions war behind his eyes—the urge to speak battling against something that looked almost like fear. His hand rose to cup my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone with impossible gentleness.

"I'm telling you," he said finally, "that I love you. That I should have said it years ago, should have shown it every day instead of hiding behind my own stupidity." His voice cracked slightly. "I'm telling you that whatever happens, I need you to know that."

"Whatever happens?" The words sent ice through my veins. "What does that mean? What's going to happen?"

He kissed me then—not with passion but with desperation, his lips pressing against mine as if trying to seal something permanent between us. When he pulled back, his eyes were suspiciously bright.

"Nothing," he said. "Nothing's going to happen. I just—I need you to know."

I wanted to push harder, to demand the truth I could feel hovering just beyond his careful words. But the setting sun was painting the sky in shades of fire and rose, and his arms around me felt like the safest place in the world, and I was tired—so tired—of always bracing for the next catastrophe.

So I let it go. I leaned into his embrace and watched the light fade over Manhattan, and I told myself that whatever shadows lurked in his silences could wait until tomorrow.

---

Later, in our hotel room, we made love with a tenderness that felt like both beginning and ending. Ethan moved above me like I was something sacred, his eyes never leaving mine, and when he whispered my name it sounded like a prayer.

Afterward, I fell asleep almost instantly, exhausted by the day's emotional intensity. But sometime in the deep hours of the night, I surfaced briefly from dreams to find myself alone in the bed. Ethan stood at the window, silhouetted against the city lights, his shoulders bowed as if bearing some invisible weight.

I watched him through half-closed eyes, too drowsy to call out. He didn't move, didn't turn, just stood there staring at the darkness beyond the glass. And though I couldn't see his face, something in his stillness—the defeated angle of his spine, the way his hand pressed flat against the window as if reaching for something forever beyond reach—made my heart clench with sudden, inexplicable fear.

But sleep pulled me under before I could hold the thought, and by morning, when I woke to his arm wrapped around me and his lips pressed to my shoulder, the fear had faded to a whisper I could almost convince myself I had imagined.

Almost.