It Ends With Us (27 page)

He lowers his mouth to my ear. His voice cracks when he says, “You are my
wife
. I’m supposed to be the one who protects you from the monsters. I’m not supposed to
be
one.” He holds me with so much desperation, he begins to shake. I have never, in all my life, felt so much pain radiating from one human.

It breaks me. It rips me apart from the inside out. All my heart wants to do is wrap tightly around his.

But even with everything he just told me, I’m still fighting my own forgiveness. I swore I wouldn’t let it happen again. I swore to him and to myself that if he ever hurt me again, I
would leave.

I pull away from him, unable to look him in the eye. I walk toward my bedroom to try and take a moment to just catch my breath. I close my bathroom door behind me and grip the sink, but I
can’t even stand up. I end up sliding to the floor in a heap of tears.

This isn’t how this was supposed to be. My whole life, I knew exactly what I’d do if a man ever treated me the way my father treated my mother. It was simple. I would leave and it
would never happen again.

But I didn’t leave. And now, here I am with bruises and cuts on my body at the hands of the man who is supposed to love me. At the hands of my own husband.

And still, I’m trying to justify what happened.

It was an accident. He thought I was cheating on him. He was hurt and angry and I got in his way.

I bring my hands to my face and I sob, because I feel more pain for that man out there, knowing what he went through as a child, than I feel for myself. And that doesn’t make me feel
selfless or strong. It makes me feel pathetic and weak. I’m supposed to hate him. I’m supposed to be the woman my mother was never strong enough to be.

But if I’m emulating my mother’s behavior, then that would mean Ryle is emulating my father’s behavior. But he isn’t. I have to stop comparing us to them. We’re our
own individuals in an entirely different situation. My father never had an excuse for his anger, nor was he immediately apologetic. The way he treated my mother was much worse than what’s
happened between Ryle and me.

Ryle just opened up to me in a way that he’s probably never opened up to anyone. He’s struggling to be a better person for me.

Yes, he screwed up last night. But he’s here and he’s trying to make me understand his past and why he reacted the way he did. Humans aren’t perfect and I can’t let the
only example I’ve ever witnessed of marriage weigh in on my
own
marriage.

I wipe my eyes and pull myself up. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see my mother. I just see me. I see a girl who loves her husband and wants more than anything to be able to help him.
I know Ryle and I are strong enough to move past this. Our love is strong enough to get us through this.

I walk out of the bathroom and back into the living room. Ryle stands up and faces me, his face full of fear. He’s scared I’m not going to forgive him, and I’m not sure that I
do
forgive him. But an act doesn’t have to be forgiven in order to learn from it.

I walk over to him and I grab both of his hands in mine. I speak to him with nothing but naked truth.

“Remember what you said to me on the roof that night? You said, ‘
There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad
things.’ ”

He nods and squeezes my hands.

“You aren’t a bad person, Ryle. I know that. You can still protect me. When you’re upset, just walk away. And I’ll walk away. We’ll leave the situation until
you’re calm enough to talk about it, okay? You are
not
a monster, Ryle. You’re only human. And as humans, we can’t expect to shoulder all of our pain. Sometimes we have to
share it with the people who love us so we don’t come crashing down from the weight of it all. But I can’t help you unless I know you need it. Ask me for help. We’ll get through
this, I know we can.”

He exhales what feels like every breath he’s been holding in since last night. He wraps his arms tightly around me and buries his face in my hair. “Help me, Lily,” he whispers.
“I need you to help me.”

He holds me against him and I know deep in my heart that I’m doing the right thing. There is so much more good in him than bad, and I’ll do whatever I can to convince him of that
until he can see it, too.

“I’m heading out. You need me to do anything else?”

I look up from the paperwork and shake my head. “Thank you, Serena. See you tomorrow.”

She nods and walks away, leaving the door to my office open.

Allysa’s last day was two weeks ago. She’s due any day now. I have two other full-time employees, Serena and Lucy.

Yes
. That
Lucy.

She’s been married for a couple of months now and came in looking for a job two weeks ago. It’s actually worked out pretty well. She keeps herself busy, and if I’m here when
she is, I just keep my office door shut so I don’t have to listen to her sing.

It’s been almost a month since the incident on the stairs. Even with everything Ryle told me about his childhood, the forgiveness was still hard to come by.

I know Ryle has a temper. I saw it the first night we met, before we ever even spoke a word to each other. I saw it that awful night in my kitchen. I saw it when he found the phone number in my
phone case.

But I also see the difference between Ryle and my father. Ryle is compassionate. He does things my father never would have done. He donates to charity, he cares about other people, he puts me
before everything. Ryle would never in a million years make me park in the driveway while he took the garage.

I have to remind myself of those things. Sometimes the girl inside of me—the daughter of my father—is really opinionated. She tells me I shouldn’t have forgiven him. She tells
me I should have left the first time. And sometimes I believe that voice. But then the side of me that knows Ryle understands that marriages aren’t perfect. Sometimes there are moments that
both parties regret. And I wonder how I’d feel about myself had I just left him after that first incident. He never should have pushed me, but I also did things
I
wasn’t proud
of. And if I’d have just left, would that not be going against our marriage vows?
For better or for worse.
I refuse to give up on my marriage that easily.

I am a strong woman. I’ve been around abusive situations my whole life. I will never become my mother. I believe that a hundred percent. And Ryle will never become my father. I think we
needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together.

Last week we got into another fight.

I was scared. The other two fights we’d gotten into did not end well, and I knew this would be a testament to whether or not our agreement for me to help him through his anger would
work.

We were discussing his career. He’s finished with his residency now and there’s a three-month specialized course in Cambridge, England, he applied for. He’ll find out soon if
he was approved, but that’s not why I was upset. It’s a great opportunity and I’d never ask him not to go. Three months is nothing with how busy we are, so that wasn’t even
what got me so upset. I became upset when he discussed what he wanted to do
after
the Cambridge trip was over.

He was offered a job in Minnesota at the Mayo Clinic and he wants us to move there. He said Mass General is rated the second best neurological hospital in the world. Mayo Clinic is number
one.

He said he never intended to stay in Boston forever. I told him that would have been a good subject to bring up when we discussed our futures on the flight to get married in Vegas. I can’t
leave Boston. My mother lives here. Allysa lives here. He told me it was only a five-hour flight and that we could visit as often as we wanted. I told him it was pretty hard to run a floral
business when you live several states away.

The fight continued to escalate and both of us were getting angrier by the second. At one point, he knocked a vase full of flowers off the table and onto the floor. We both just stared at them
for a moment. I was scared, wondering if I had made the right decision to stay. To trust that we could work on his anger issues together. He took a deep breath and he said, “I’m going
to leave for an hour or two. I think I need to walk away. When I get back, we’ll continue this discussion.”

He walked out the door and, true to his word, he came back an hour later when he was much calmer. He dropped his keys on the table and then walked straight to where I was standing. He took my
face in his hands and he said, “I told you I wanted to be the best in my field, Lily. I told you this the first night we ever met. It was one of my naked truths. But if I have to choose
between working at the best hospital in the world and making my wife happy . . . I choose you. You
are
my success. As long as you’re happy, I don’t care where I
work. We’ll stay in Boston.”

That’s when I knew that I had made the right choice. Everyone deserves another chance. Especially the people who mean the most to you.

It’s been a week since that fight and he hasn’t mentioned moving again. I feel bad, like I thwarted his plans in some way, but marriage is about compromise. It’s about doing
what’s best for the couple as a whole, not individually. And staying in Boston is better for everyone in both of our families.

Speaking of families, I look over at my phone right as a text from Allysa comes through.

I don’t know if it’s the impending delivery or the fact that she’s not currently working, but I’m pretty sure I’ve spent more time at her house this week than I
have at my own. I close up the shop and head toward her apartment.

• • •

When I step off the elevator, there’s a note taped to her apartment door. I see my name written across it, so I pull it off the door.

Lily,

On the seventh floor. Apartment 749.

—A

She has an apartment here just for extra furniture?
I know they’re rich, but even that seems a little excessive for them. I get on the elevator and press the button for the seventh
floor. When the doors open, I head down the hall toward apartment 749. When I reach it, I have no idea if I should knock or just go inside. For all I know, someone could live here. Probably one of
her
people.

I knock on the door and hear footsteps from the other side.

I’m shocked when the door swings open and Ryle is standing in front of me.

“Hey,” I say, confused. “What are you doing here?”

He grins and leans against the doorframe. “I live here. What are
you
doing here?”

I glance at the pewter number plate next to the door and then back at him. “What do you mean you live here? I thought you lived with me. You’ve had your own apartment this whole
time?” I would think an entire apartment would be something a husband would bring up to his wife at some point. It’s a little unnerving.

Actually, it’s ludicrous and deceptive. I think I might be really angry at him right now.

Ryle laughs and pushes off the doorframe. Now he’s filling up the entire doorway as he lifts his hands to the frame over his head and grips it. “I haven’t really had a chance
to tell you about this apartment, considering I just signed the paperwork on it this morning.”

I take a step back. “Wait. What?”

He reaches for my hand and pulls me inside the apartment. “Welcome home, Lily.”

I pause in the foyer.

Yes. I said
foyer
. There is a
foyer.

“You bought an apartment?”

He nods slowly, gauging my reaction.

“You bought an apartment,” I repeat.

He’s still nodding. “I did. Is that okay? I figured since we live together now we could use the extra room.”

I spin in a slow circle. When my eyes land on the kitchen, I pause. It’s not as big as Allysa’s kitchen, but it’s just as white and almost as beautiful. There’s a wine
cooler and a dishwasher, two things my own apartment doesn’t have. I walk into the kitchen and look around, scared to touch anything.
Is this really my kitchen? This can’t be my
kitchen.

I look in the living room at the cathedral ceilings and the huge windows overlooking Boston Harbor.

“Lily?” he says from behind me. “You aren’t mad, are you?”

I spin and face him, realizing that he’s been waiting on me to react for the past several minutes. But I’m completely speechless.

I shake my head and bring my hand up to cover my mouth. “I don’t think so,” I whisper.

He walks up to me and takes my hands in his, pulling them up between us. “You don’t
think
so?” He looks worried and confused. “Please give me a naked truth,
because I’m starting to think maybe I shouldn’t have done this as a surprise.”

I look down at the hardwood floor. It’s real hardwood. It’s not laminate. “Okay,” I say, looking back up at him. “I think it’s crazy that you just went and
bought an apartment without me. I feel like that’s something we should have done together.”

He’s nodding and it looks like he’s about to spit out an apology, but I’m not finished.

“But my naked truth is that . . . it’s perfect. I don’t even know what to say, Ryle. Everything is so clean. I’m scared to move. I might get something
dirty.”

He blows out a rush of air and pulls me to him. “You can get it dirty, babe. It’s yours. You can get it as dirty as you want.” He kisses the side of my head and I don’t
even say thank you yet. It seems like such a small response to such a huge gesture.

“When do we move in?”

He shrugs. “Tomorrow? I have the day off. It’s not like we have a whole lot of stuff. We can spend the next few weeks buying new furniture.”