Chapter 8 - THE MAN HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN
Teresa Moretti was charged with custodial interference, forgery, conspiracy to commit fraud, and unlawful access to protected medical information.
Malcolm Price accepted a cooperation agreement.
Dr. Leonard Vale lost his medical license before the criminal proceedings were even complete.
The headlines lasted for months.
Then, as headlines always do, they moved on.
Our lives did not.
Luca rented a townhouse twelve minutes from my apartment.
Not a penthouse.
Not an estate.
A townhouse with a small backyard and a kitchen he did not know how to use.
The first Saturday the twins stayed overnight, he called me at seven twelve in the morning.
I answered in a panic.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you calling?”
“Pancakes.”
I sat up.
“What about them?”
“They’re stuck.”
“To what?”
“The pan.”
I stared into darkness.
“You called me because you can’t make pancakes?”
“Noah said yours don’t stick.”
“Use butter.”
“I used butter.”
“How much?”
Silence.
“Luca?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you put butter in before the pan got hot?”
Another silence.
I started laughing.
“This isn’t funny.”
“It absolutely is.”
Ava grabbed his phone.
“Mom, Dad broke breakfast.”
From somewhere behind her, Noah yelled, “He burned bacon too!”
Luca protested.
“I did not burn it. It’s crisp.”
“It’s black!”
I laughed until tears came.
That became our life.
Not quickly.
Not perfectly.
But gradually.
Luca attended parent-teacher conferences.
He learned soccer rules.
He helped with homework badly enough that Ava asked me to check his math.
He read books about child development.
He went to therapy.
That surprised me most.
He told me about it one afternoon while we waited outside Noah’s dentist.
“My therapist says I confuse providing with loving.”
I looked at him.
“You paid someone to tell you that?”
He almost smiled.
“She used more words.”
“Good investment.”
He nodded.
Then his expression became serious.
“I’m trying to understand why I left.”
I folded my hands.
“You told me why.”
“No. I told you what I did.”
He looked toward the floor.
“The reason was uglier.”
I waited.
“My father spent his entire life telling me weakness was contagious.”
His voice remained quiet.
“If a business failed, cut it loose. If an employee disappointed you, replace them. If a relationship became painful, control the damage.”
“And infertility felt like failure.”
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
“So you cut me loose.”
“Yes.”
There was no excuse hidden inside the answer.
That mattered.
“I thought if I could make myself stop needing you, I wouldn’t feel helpless anymore.”
I looked at him.
“Did it work?”
He laughed without humor.
“No.”
We sat silently.
Then he added, “I loved you the entire time.”
I closed my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I’m not asking you for anything.”
“Then why tell me?”
“Because lying about it feels like another form of cowardice.”
I looked at him.
He met my eyes but did not move closer.
“I love you now,” he said. “I expect I’ll love you tomorrow. If you never want me back, I’ll learn to live with that.”
My throat tightened.
“But I won’t pretend anymore.”
Noah came running from the dental office holding a plastic bag containing his lost tooth.
“Dad!”
Luca stood immediately.
“Did you survive?”
“Barely.”
The moment ended.
But the words stayed.
Three months later, Moretti Global’s board offered Luca his CEO position back.
He refused.
I learned about it from Evelyn.
She and I had become unlikely friends.
Her divorce from Luca had been finalized quietly.
She moved to New York and started her own investment firm.
She was happier.
So was he.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked Luca that evening.
We were cleaning up after the twins’ birthday party.
“Tell you what?”
“The board.”
He stacked plates.
“It wasn’t relevant.”
“They offered you your company back.”
“My company never left.”
“You know what I mean.”
He sighed.
“The CEO job required ninety-hour weeks and constant travel.”
“So?”
“So I have soccer on Tuesdays.”
I stared at him.
He kept stacking plates.
“And Ava’s music lessons Thursday.”
“You stepped away permanently because of music lessons?”
He looked at me.
“No.”
The humor left his face.
“I stepped away because for years I thought being indispensable to a company made me important.”
He glanced toward the backyard where the twins were chasing bubbles.
“Turns out I’d rather be important to them.”
Something inside me cracked open.
Dangerously.
“Luca.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
He put down the plates.
I looked at him.
“I’m angry that you’re becoming the man I needed when I was married to you.”
Pain moved through his eyes.
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
My voice broke.
“Because part of me wants to punish you forever.”
“You can.”
“And another part…”
I stopped.
He didn’t move.
“Another part remembers you before all of it.”
His breathing changed.
“The stupid apartment we lived in.”
“The radiator that screamed all night.”
“The grocery store downstairs.”
“You hated that grocery store.”
“You proposed to me in that grocery store.”
“You were holding frozen peas.”
I laughed despite myself.
“So romantic.”
“I panicked.”
“You dropped the ring.”
“A woman stepped on it.”
“She thought it was glass.”
We were both smiling now.
Then we stopped.
Because the past was suddenly standing between us.
Not as a wound.
As something that had once been good.
Luca spoke quietly.
“Nia, I don’t want our old marriage back.”
That surprised me.
“I don’t either.”
“I want something we build knowing exactly how badly we can hurt each other if we stop being honest.”
I looked toward our children.
“What are you asking?”
“Dinner.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“We have dinner twice a week with the twins.”
“No children.”
“A date?”
He looked terrified.
Luca Moretti.
Terrified.
I enjoyed that more than I should have.
“One date.”
His eyes widened slightly.
“One?”
“Don’t negotiate.”
“Right.”
“And if you send a private car—”
“I won’t.”
“Or rent out a restaurant—”
“I won’t.”
“Or buy me jewelry—”
“I understand.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Where are you taking me?”
He hesitated.
“There’s a taco place on Milwaukee Avenue.”
I stared at him.
“You eat tacos?”
“Apparently I’m about to.”
I smiled.
“One date.”
Behind us, Noah shouted through the open door.
“Dad! Ava put frosting on the dog!”
Luca closed his eyes.
“We don’t have a dog.”
I turned.
The neighbor’s golden retriever ran across the backyard covered in blue icing.
Ava followed.
“It was an accident!”
Luca looked at me.
I started laughing.
May you like
He did too.
And for the first time, when our shoulders touched, I didn’t move away.
