Chapter Seventeen: Gentle Things Grow Again
Ava
The fight still echoed in her bones.
She'd barely slept. Not from regret, but from the emotional exhaustion of years unspoken finally boiling over in a single night. But strangely… she felt lighter.
Damien had shown up the next morning anyway.
No drama. No apologies. Just breakfast in hand and Liam's favorite dinosaur socks in his back pocket.
He hadn't said a word about the argument.
And neither had she.
Now, she stood at the park gate, watching as Damien lifted Liam onto the monkey bars with a kind of tenderness that didn't match the cold man she'd once married.
Liam shrieked with joy. "I did it!"
"You're the strongest astronaut in New York," Damien grinned, holding his little legs steady.
Ava smiled despite herself.
He was learning.
Not just how to be a father. But how to be present. Patient. Human.
And it was working.
Later, they sat on a bench, the sun warm but the silence cooler.
Damien turned toward her. "I won't do anything behind your back again. Not with Liam. I promise."
She nodded slowly. "Thank you."
Another silence.
But this one felt different. No edge. Just space.
"I thought I had to do everything myself," she admitted. "I didn't believe you'd come through if I let you in."
"And I thought you left because you stopped loving me," he said.
She looked at him. "I never stopped."
He inhaled sharply.
But she continued. "I just didn't know how to survive being invisible in a marriage."
Damien looked like he'd aged five years in one breath.
"I see you now," he said.
Her heart thudded.
"I don't want to fix us," she whispered. "I want to start over."
His eyes met hers. "Then let's begin again."
They sat there quietly, not holding hands, not promising the world.
But for the first time in years—
They were finally on the same page.