“It’s alright,” I murmured again, stroking his skull from temple to brain stem, as if I could soothe the thoughts within. “I know you wanted to be strong for us, and you were. You’re the strongest person I know. But you don’t have to be right now.”
Julian drew a heavy breath, followed by a whisper so raw it pierced my heart. “I’m not strong, Avery. I can’t — I can’t live without you. It’s as cliched as that. I don’t want to live without you.”
I pulled his head tighter to mine, wishing with all my heart I could wash away the ordeal I’d put him through. “You don’t have to. I’m here.”
“But you weren’t.” There was still only the faintest hint of sound. “When the surgeon told me your condition –” He had to pause for another breath. “I was sure you hadn’t made it. And when I saw you…when they had to take you for surgery again, too soon…” He cut off again, fighting the macabre scenes in his mind. “You couldn’t know, how bad it looked. Your brain was shutting down; you weren’t even aware. I spent — very real hours, believing you were gone.”
I held him the best I could without moving, but suddenly a chilling possibility occurred to me. There’d been a comma earlier that I hadn’t noticed. I don’t want to live, without you.
“You would have, though, right? Lived without me. I mean you weren’t planning to…” This time I was the one who couldn’t finish a sentence, too horrified by the idea of Julian ending his own life.
His answer wasn’t all that reassuring. “I hope it wouldn’t have come to that. But I certainly wasn’t going to stay here. I wouldn’t have been able to stand being anywhere you’d been, or around anyone who’d known you, or me. If I were going to survive that loss, I would need a clean break.” He hesitated before confessing the rest. “I was going to make a journey up north, to New England, and start over. Maybe with Maurice, if he was willing.”
I tried to process what he was saying. Of course he would be devastated if I died, just like I would be if he died. But I’d never imagined he’d have such an extreme response. Especially given our relationship with Graham. Except he hadn’t said anything about our other partner.
“Wouldn’t you have waited until Graham could go with you?” His current service contract wasn’t up for another five months.
The answer was simple and definitive and left me stunned. “No.”
It felt like the bed had been yanked out from under me. “You were going to leave him?”
“It’s not really a matter of leaving him. If you were gone, I would have nothing left. For anyone,” my husband said, as if that made sense.
“But he loves you, Julian,” I argued, increasingly alarmed by the discovery that one corner of our triangular partnership had been on the brink of collapse without my knowledge. “And you love him.”
“Not like I love you.”
I scrambled to find my footing in this new world where the man beside me was willing to throw away his bond with Graham. It threatened everything the three of us had built together over the past year.
“I don’t believe that,” I managed eventually. “I know you would have been hurt and grieving. But that’s when you would have needed him the most. And he would have been there for you. He never would have left you.”
Julian’s head shook against my shoulder, but I wasn’t sure what he was disagreeing with, because he didn’t speak.
“He loves you,” I said again, feeling the truth resonate in every fiber of my being. “He would do anything for you. I think you know that, and you’re afraid to let him. You’re afraid of having two people you can’t live without.”
There was a long pause, filled only by the faint sound of crickets making their warm-weather music outside. “If that were the reason,” I heard at last, “I think it would be entirely valid.”
I went back to stroking his hair, my empathy the only balm I could offer for the violence done to his heart while I was being sliced by bullets and scalpels. He needed surgical repair as much as I had, but I didn’t know how to perform it when the wounds weren’t physical.
“I’m…so sorry for what you had to go through, babe,” I told him softly. “I can only imagine how awful it was.”
“You’re the one who was shot,” Julian said, an obvious attempt at deflection.
“Yeah but I would have just ceased to exist. I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. You’re the one who would have lost your spouse and had to be without me every day, and every night.”
He didn’t respond that time, except that his breathing grew more labored.
“But I need you to know that you could live without me. And without Graham, if it came to that. I know it would be…absolutely the worst. I hate even thinking about it happening to me. But it wouldn’t have to be the end.” I hesitated for a second, trying to figure out how to translate the insistent conviction into words. “I love you so, so much. And that’s because of who you are — who you still would be, regardless of whether I was here. It would make me so sad, to think that you’d…closed yourself off from everything. I want your life to be full of the best things: love, and joy, and friendship. Even if I couldn’t share them with you anymore.”
I felt his hand move to cover his face, and his chest jerked with a sob he couldn’t quite stifle but refused to release.
“Just let it go, Julian,” I encouraged gently. “You’re very strong, but I’m strong too. Whatever you feel, I can handle it. You’ve taken such good care of me. Let me take a turn caring for you.”
For the first time ever in our history, he did. I hadn’t even known what he’d sound like crying. He’d coaxed stormy emotions from me often enough over the years, containing them safely and neutralizing the poison with loving acceptance. But the few occasions I’d seen him in tears, he’d always kept them in check, burying the grief and shame and pain in some secret fortress. Maybe he hadn’t thought I was capable of holding his darkness, when I possessed so much of my own. And maybe, when I was younger, I hadn’t been capable.
But I wasn’t going to spend my bonus life watching my husband suffer from repressed fear and sorrow. He needed me to prove that his weakness was as valuable as his strength. I was going to make sure Graham proved it too.
I rubbed Julian’s back and whispered reassurances while he wept quietly against my neck. It broke my heart, seeing how heavy was the burden he’d been carrying alone. It dissolved gradually, each tear he let fall draining some of the weight, until the sobs faded. Not, for once, because he’d halted them, but because peace now filled some of the space his terrifying tragedy had occupied.
“You and me will always be you and me,” I told him when he’d wiped his eyes for the last time. “Nothing will ever change that. But you understand that Graham is my partner too now, right? I’m still going to be with him, even if you aren’t.”
“Of course,” he agreed, unexpectedly docile in the wake of the storm’s passage. “And I…am going to be with him.”
“Good. I hope you’re going to apologize to him then.” I ran a palm over the swell of Julian’s bicep, so grateful he was alive and present beside me. “I understand why, but what you did was really unfair. He’s had a pretty horrible time too. He didn’t deserve that from you.”