29 days

Pretending

Elowen’s POV

Neither of us said a word on the drive home.

I sat with my forehead against the cold window, watching the streetlights slide past in long yellow streaks, and Stellan kept both hands on the wheel. The radio stayed off. My leg throbbed from the parking lot concrete, a dull pulse that climbed all the way to my hip, but I didn't ask him to stop for the heating pad in the trunk.

When we pulled into the driveway, he cut the engine and just sat there for a second, keys still in his hand.

"You need help getting out?" he asked.

"No."

I got out anyway before he could come around and open my door, which used to be a thing he did without thinking, and I made it up the porch steps on my own even though my knee screamed at me the whole way. He followed a few paces behind, close enough to catch me if I fell, far enough that it looked like he wasn't trying to.

Inside, the house was dark and quiet. I went straight to the bedroom. He went to the kitchen first, I heard the tap running, a glass being filled and by the time he came in I was already sitting on the edge of the bed, peeling my skirt down over the scars I'd stopped bothering to hide from him years ago and started hiding again these past few months.

He put the glass of water on my nightstand without a word. Same spot he always put it, like a habit carved into the floor.

"Thank you," I said, because twenty years of manners don't die just because your marriage is.

"You're welcome."

He undressed on his side of the bed. Shirt over the chair. Watch on the dresser, face down, the way he always laid it. I watched him in the mirror across the room and he caught me watching, neither of us looked away fast enough to pretend we hadn't.

"Elowen."

"Don't."

"I just want to say…"

"I said don't." My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Not tonight. I can't do the part where you explain yourself tonight."

He nodded once and got into bed. I turned off the lamp on my side. For a long time we just lay there, backs to each other, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him, close enough that if either of us shifted an inch we'd be touching. 6 months ago I would have already been curled into his side and he would have already reached for me in the dark without asking.

Neither of us reached for anything.

I listened to his breathing change, slow and even, and I told myself he'd fallen asleep. I lay there a long time after that, staring at the ceiling, running the words *I want a divorce* over and over in my head like a stone I couldn't stop turning in my palm. He hadn't said yes. He hadn't said no, either, not really, he'd said *there will be no divorce* like it was a fact about the weather, not a conversation between two people.

At some point, I can't really remember I slept.

The smell of coffee woke me before my alarm did.

I came downstairs in my robe, hair still a mess, and found him already at the counter, dressed for work, a mug set out for me next to the pot like it was any other morning. My pills were lined up beside it; the anxiety one, the sleep aid I only took half of, the vitamin he'd started making me take after the accident because a doctor once mentioned my iron was low. Small, careful things. The kind of care that used to make me feel safe and now just made my chest ache in a way I didn't have a name for.

He had the newspaper open in front of him, folded down the middle the way his father used to do it, reading glasses pushed up his nose. His phone sat beside his plate.

"Morning," he said, not looking up from the page.

"Morning."

I poured my coffee and sat across from him at the dining. He turned a page, eyes moving slow across the print, and I watched his face for any trace of last night; the parking lot, the phone call to Isolde, the words *I will never let you go* and found nothing. He looked like a man reading about grain prices. He looked like nothing had happened at all.

"You sleep okay?" he asked.

"Fine."

"Your leg was bothering you last night. I heard you shifting around."

"It's fine, Stellan."

He glanced up at that, just for a second, like the flatness in my voice surprised him. Then his phone buzzed against the counter, screen lighting up beside the folded paper, and I saw the name before he flipped it face down again.

*Isolde.*

Seven-eleven in the morning and she was already texting him.

I kept my eyes on my coffee and didn't ask. Didn't let my face do anything at all, even though something ugly and hot climbed up the back of my throat, something that felt embarrassingly close to jealousy for a woman I'd been fighting for months to stop caring about.

He didn't check the message, not right away. He went back to his paper, and for a second I let myself believe that meant something, that maybe he was choosing to sit here with me instead of her, even in this small, stupid way.

"I was thinking," he said, folding the paper closed, "maybe we get through the day normal. Go to work, come home, have dinner. Talk properly tonight when we're both not exhausted."

"Talk about what."

"About last night." He set the paper aside. "About what you said."

"I meant it."

"I know you think you meant it."

"Don't do that." I looked up at him now, and something in my chest went tight and cold at the same time. "Don't tell me what I think I meant. I stood in a parking lot and asked you for a divorce. That's not a thing I say by accident."

"You were having a panic attack, Elowen. People say things in the middle of an attack that they don't…"

"I wasn't having the attack when I said it. The attack was over. I said it clear-headed, looking right at you." My hands were shaking a little around the mug, so I set it down before he could see. "I know exactly what I meant."

He was quiet for a second. Long enough that I thought, stupidly, hopefully, that he might actually hear me this time.

"We're not getting divorced," he said instead, gentler than the night before but just as final. "I'm not going to let something like this fall apart because of one bad night. We're going to fix this."

"Fix it how?"

"I don't know yet." He reached across the counter like he might take my hand, and I pulled it back before he could, setting it in my lap instead. His jaw tightened at that, just slightly, but he kept going. "But I'm not giving up on us. I never have and I'm not starting now. Whatever this is, whatever's broken, we'll figure it out, together… I promise you that."

I wanted to believe him. God, some stupid, tired, twenty-eight-year-old part of me that still remembered what it felt like to be chosen by this man actually wanted to believe him.

But I'd heard him make promises before. I'd heard him promise he'd always hold me through the panic. I'd heard him promise the safety bars and the breathing exercises were about making me stronger, not about making me easier to manage. Promises from Stellan had started to feel like something he handed out to make himself feel better in the moment, not something he actually carried through a door.

"Okay," I said, just to end it. Just so I could finish my coffee in peace. "We'll talk tonight."

He nodded, satisfied, like the conversation had actually gone somewhere.

His phone buzzed again on the counter.

This time he did pick it up. I watched his eyes move across the screen, watched something shift in his face; not guilt, exactly, more like relief, the kind you feel when someone tells you exactly what to do so you don't have to figure it out yourself.

"Isolde," he said, like I hadn't already guessed. "She wants to know how last night went. If I need to bring you in for an emergency session."

I stared at him.

Not even nine in the morning, and he'd already promised me *we*, already promised me *together*, and the very next thing out of his mouth was her name.