Back To Mr & Mrs

Cade held up his hands and looked to Emmie for help. She gave him the duh look she’d perfected by her sixteenth birthday. Oh, yeah, he was the dad. He was supposed to have all the answers.

He did—all but this one.

Cade shifted on the stool. “Are you going to tease your hair and unearth that Kiss concert T-shirt for Friday night?”

She chuckled. “Oh gosh, that was a thousand years ago. I don’t think I saved the shirt.”

“You did. Bottom drawer, on the right.” He knew, because he’d been in their dresser after she’d left, looking for something, and come across the worn image of Gene Simmons. For a moment, Cade had been back there, in the thirtieth row, rocking along with Melanie as they held up a lighter during a ballad and sang along until their voices cracked.

“I remember that night,” she said softly, then shook her head and got busy with the cookies again. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to the reunion. I’ll have to save the Aqua Net for another night.”

She’d tried to pass it off as a joke, but Cade wasn’t laughing. “Didn’t you just tell Jeannie you would go?” He gestured toward the phone. “I couldn’t help but overhear. Jeannie’s voice is like a bullhorn.”

“I only said yes to—”

“Get her off your back?” He chuckled, reaching for that light, easy feeling again. It seemed to flit in and out, as ungraspable as a moth. “I know the feeling. It’s why I said yes, too.”

Emmie headed into the back of the shop, to get supplies or something, Cade supposed. As soon as their daughter was out of earshot, Melanie stopped working on the cookies, leaned an arm over the glass case and glared at him. “Why did you tell Jeannie we were still together?”

“I think there’s still a chance to work this out. You don’t throw nineteen years away on a whim.”

“You think this was a whim?” She shook her head, then lowered her voice. “It was the hardest decision I have ever made.”

Hurt stabbed at his chest, thinking of how quickly she’d been gone, how fast she’d escaped her half of their life. “I doubt that.”

She let out a gust of frustration. “Sign the papers, Cade. It’s over.”

“No.” He slipped off the stool and came around to the back of the glass case. “I’m done catwalking around the issue, biding my time. Thinking all you needed was a little space. I want answers, Mel, a solution.” He drew within inches of her. “Tell me what went wrong so I can change it.”

She threw up her hands. “Our marriage isn’t a clock, Cade. You can’t replace a couple gears and call it good as new.”

“And you can’t just throw it out because you wanted a better model.”

“That isn’t why I left.” Melanie circled the counter and began wiping down the case’s glass with an ammonia-scented cleaner and a white cotton cloth. An old man snored lightly on the sofa across the room, the paper on his torso fluttering as his chest rose up and down. “We made a mistake,” she said under her breath. “Why can’t you just let it go?”

“Because I still love you.” The words tore from his throat, contained in his chest for so long, fenced in by a hope that grew dimmer with every day Melanie refused his calls, ignored his e-mails, refused his requests to talk.

She shook her head and when she did, he saw the glimmer of tears in her eyes. “You don’t even know me.”

I would if you’d give me a chance, he wanted to scream. Let me try again. Don’t take away the one rock I’ve always stood on.

Before he could say anything, the bell rang and a woman in a business suit strode into the small shop and up to the register. Emmie came out of the back, headed to the register and greeted the woman, but her attention, Cade knew, was half on her parents.

Melanie took out some of her frustrations on the glass case, scrubbing it until it gleamed like silver. As her left hand rose up to swipe away a smear, a glint caught Cade’s eye.

Her wedding ring.

The same plain gold band he’d slipped on her finger in the county courthouse nearly twenty years ago.

A wave of hope rose within him, but he held it back. Cade was nothing if not a practical man. His wife may still be wearing her ring, but she’d gone back to using her maiden name and hadn’t slept in his bed for over a year. A piece of jewelry didn’t mean anything.

And yet, he hoped like hell it did.

“Mellie,” he said, slipping into the habit of her nickname. He grabbed her hand, stopping her from cleaning the glass into oblivion. He lowered his voice and turned so that the customer—and Emmie—couldn’t see or overhear them. “Go with me to the reunion. Wear that T-shirt and that bright pink lipstick you used to love. Go back in time with me, for one night. We could go out to dinner first, talk—”

“About what, Cade?” A glimmer washed over the deep thunderstorm of green in her eyes. Behind them, Emmie watched out of the corner of her eye, her movements quiet and small as she finished the customer’s latte and poured the steamed milk into a paper cup emblazoned with the bright crimson Cuppa Life logo.

Melanie noticed their daughter’s interest and led Cade into the small kitchen space, letting the door shut behind them. The close quarters only quadrupled Cade’s awareness of Melanie, of the way her chest rose and fell with each breath, the silky blond tendrils drifting about her shoulders, the jeans hugging her hips.

He wanted to kiss her, to close the gap between them. If only a simple meeting of their bodies would be enough to bridge the chasm. But even Cade knew it wasn’t that simple.

“Talk about what?” she repeated. “About how I failed you?” she said. “As a wife, a mother? About how you were at work—always at work—even when I needed you most?”

Regret slammed into his gut. He didn’t want to think about that day. Ever.

It was the one tape he couldn’t rewind. Couldn’t delete. Couldn’t do over. “Melanie, I’ve said I was sorry a hundred times.”

She sighed. “It’s not about being sorry, Cade, it’s about changing what got us there in the first place.”

“That doesn’t work if only one of us is trying,” he countered. “And I’m trying damn it. Go with me, Mel. For one night be my wife again.”

“I can’t put on that show anymore.” She held her ground, arms crossed over her chest. “Besides, did Jeannie tell you she wanted us to make a speech?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be the class president’s thing?”

“She thought it would be…” Her voice trailed off.

“Be what?” Cade asked, leaning closer, inhaling the scent of her skin, the sweetness of fresh-baked cookies, of the woman he’d lived with more than half his life. “Would be what, Melanie?” Cade whispered, his mouth so close to hers, all it would take was a few inches of movement to kiss her. To have her in his arms, against his heart.

“Romantic,” she said after a minute, expelling a disgusted sigh on the word. “The whole Prom King and Queen still together thing.”

He moved back a step. “But we aren’t, are we?”

She shook her head, resolute. “No, we’re not.”

The need for her smoldered inside him, a wildfire ready to erupt. He still loved her, damn it, and refused to let her quit so easily.

His gaze traveled down, to her lips, her jaw, the delicate arch of her throat. The old attraction that had simmered between them for more than twenty years ignited anew in his chest, the embers never really extinguished.

He wanted her, Lord, did he want her. He wanted to sweep her off her feet, carry her out of this shop and back to their bed. Every fiber in his being ached to feel her familiar, sweet body beneath his, to lose himself inside her, to find that connection he’d never found anywhere else.

A slight flush crept into Melanie’s cheeks, warming them to cotton-candy-pink. She opened her mouth, shut it again, then reached for a spoon, succeeding only in knocking it along the counter. It skittered under a display stand of teas. Was she thinking the same thing?

Then it was gone, and she was back to all business. “The idea of going together and pretending we’re still together is—”

“Insane,” he finished.

Melanie reached for a towel, folding, then unfolding and refolding it, a nervous habit he recognized—and also a sign of hope. Maybe not much, but he’d take whatever he could get.