The Thinnest Air

by Minka Kent

Then Harris showed up—a cool drink of water to quell the raging inferno inside. What he saw in me I’ll never know, but meeting him changed everything. He showed me what it felt like to be loved by a man—a foreign concept to me up to that point.

“In your marriage. With Andrew. Are you happy?” His brows meet. “That’s beside the point. This is wrong. And we have to stop.” “You’re miserable,” he says. “If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been coming here.” “You were my escape,” I say. “I’m a bored, pathetic woman, and you were exciting.”

I’ve always wondered how he treats my half siblings. Whether he’s father of the year, there for them more than just financially. He didn’t have to take care of me in the monetary sense, but he did. He may not have wanted to meet me, to acknowledge my existence, but the fact that he set me up with a trust fund shows that on some level, he cares, and in a weird way, it sort of breaks my heart every time I think about it.

“I don’t understand. Why would you not tell me? Why would you act like you didn’t know? Weren’t you angry?” “Of course I was angry. Still am,” he says, taking a slow sip of Merlot. “But you came home to me, and when you stopped spending time with him, I figured you finally came to your senses and realized this is where you belong. Here. With me.”

He wants to see me in pain—the same pain I caused him.

Andrew leaves out the back door, marching toward the guesthouse, and I give him the distance he needs. Everything makes sense now. The hot and cold. The rough sex. The extremes our relationship has endured. He was hurt. He was in pain. And I did that to him. All this time, he knew. All this time, he still loved me. All this time, never once did he want to let me go. Harris was wrong. Andrew genuinely loves me. And if I’m lucky, our marriage can survive this. I can survive this.

“You’ll learn to love me again,” he says, wrongfully assuming I loved him once. “I promise, Meredith. It’s you and me forever now.”

Cracking the window, I let the cold air hit my face. I make a silent vow never to take fresh air for granted ever again.