Page 38 of Best Kept Vows (Savannah’s Best #6)

Sebastian

“ W hat smells so good?” Lia asked as she dropped her purse on the sofa.

I brought two glasses of Sancerre with me. I handed her one and then kissed her softly. She smiled, one of those big, broad ones—the way she used to when we were younger and I was less of an ass.

She gasped when her eyes landed on the dining table. “Candles?”

“Well, yes, we’re celebrating.”

She set her wine glass down by a plate setting. “Give me a minute to wash my hands and change?”

“Take your time.”

She hesitated for a moment and then came up to me, went on tiptoe—that had always been the signal that I had to lean down, what with the ten inches that separated us. She brushed her lips against mine. “I’ll be back.”

I watched her walk to the bedroom .

Once she was out of sight, I did a fist pump.

Oh, yeah, we were so on!

I got a text message from Ada on a group chat with her brother and me: How’s the risotto? Edible?

Me: I don’t know yet .

Ada: It’s going to be delicious, Dad.

Tristan: That’s because you used my recipe.

Ada: Your recipe came from Google!

Tristan: Jamie Oliver, if you please!

I sipped some wine and went back to stirring the arborio rice. I added some more stock, took a picture of the pot contents, and sent it to the kids.

Tristan: Looks good.

Ada: You got the good parmesan, right?

Me: Yeah, I did. Now, I gotta go impress my wife!

Tristan: Break a leg, Dad!

Ada: Yeah! Maybe your date will put out.

I grinned.

I was getting my life together, I thought as I tested the risotto. It was almost done.

My kids didn’t hate me.

My wife wanted to kiss me.

And I wasn’t working at a soul-sucking job.

I had thought that there would be a part of me that would hurt, that would be sad for walking away a failure from Boone Metals—but I was surprised to find that not even a teeny-tiny part of me was in any way upset.

I was fucking relieved .

“Should’ve done it years ago,” I muttered. “Hell, shouldn’t have taken it on in the first place.”

“You talking to yourself now?” Lia asked as she came into the room, wearing a pink summer dress, the one she knew I liked because it had bows on the shoulders that I liked to tug at so she’d be down to her bra and panties in ten seconds flat.

She’d done something to her hair and her eyes. She looked gorgeous, and my dick responded instantly.

Sorry, buddy, I don’t think tonight will be the night, so stay down.

“What are we having?”

“Risotto with shrimp. Tristan sent me the recipe.” I walked toward her and leaned down to press a quick kiss to her nose. “Thought I’d prove I was more than just a steak-on-the-grill kinda guy.”

She raised a brow. “Color me surprised.”

I pulled out a chair for her. “Sit. Talk to me while I finish cooking.”

We talked easily, starting with her colleagues. She told me a little about each one of them.

“What’s Nina like?” I asked as I plated our food.

“I don’t see her that much…well, during the weekly meeting, but not one-on-one. I start with Nova next week, and then when I finish working with her, I’ll have three months with Stella, and finally three months as Nina’s EA.”

I set her plate in front of her, and refilled her wine.

I sat across from her, feeling like a fool for not doing this every night with her .

I’d wasted so many years working all the time. Sure, the work I did as a consultant allowed us to have a safety net now, but I’d been a workaholic and had missed out on so much.

If I had to do it again, I’d find a better balance, reduce our expenses, and work less—rather than live the Savannah society life, not that Lia was anything like my mother.

She didn’t waste money, as she put it, on jewelry and clothes.

She was always careful, so bourgeois , as my mother and Coco would say.

Thanks to my wife being practical and sensible, we were not going to be scrambling to pay the bills, pay for the kids’ school, or change the way we lived.

“This is so good,” she exclaimed after a few bites.

“Well, I’ll be happy to cook every night when we don’t go out. How about that?”

“A role reversal?”

I shrugged. “Why the hell not?”

She studied me and then smiled. “You’re not sad at all, are you?”

“Not even an iota, baby.”

She let out a relieved breath. “So…what are you going to do? Not that you have to do anything.”

I nodded. “I think I’m going to take some time off.”

Her eyes widened. I knew she’d expected to jump back into consulting or find a job or do something .

“I want to rest a little. Have time to work out, eat healthy, go to a museum, cook for my wife…. ”

She eased back in her chair. Picked up her wine glass. “Your wife will appreciate that.”

“I have a question for you.”

She tensed. “Okay.”

“What if we sold the house?”

She looked shocked, and I wish I hadn’t just blurted it out. But it was a big damn house, and I was alone there, and I fucking hated it. Every night, I went to bed feeling the ache deep in my heart that I was alone and lonely .

“We don’t have to, look, it was just?—”

“Yes, let’s do it,” she cut me off. “I…just never thought you’d want to.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “And here I thought you wouldn’t want to sell it…we raised the kids there and?—”

“The memories are in our hearts and not a place.”

“That’ll give us more financial freedom as well. We can buy a smaller place,” I suggested.

She set her wine glass down and took a deep breath. “I want to stay here .”

“In downtown?”

“ Here , in this apartment.”

I looked around and then back at her. “Baby, we have a five-bedroom house, and this is two bedrooms…we have all this stuff.”

“Let’s get rid of it.”

I speared a shrimp and popped it into my mouth, giving myself time to think as I chewed.

“Maybe put things in storage that the kids would want, and sell the rest, give it away,” she suggested nervously. “It’s just the two of us, and we don’t need that much. We can stay here…see how it goes.”

She looked earnest, as if she were pleading, and I was doing fucking leaps of joy in my heart.

“So…you’re saying that I can live here with you?”

She looked at me shyly, a blush rising. “Ah…I mean…do you want to?”

I shot her a look of mock exasperation. “Seriously, baby? You’ve got to ask that?”

She giggled, and it was the best fucking sound in the world. “I…would you live here? It’s small and?—”

“I’ll live in a fucking cave without electricity or toilets if it means I live with you.”

“Well, let’s not do that,” she joked, her eyes bright with excitement. “You know how much I appreciate indoor plumbing.”

I grasped her hand in mine and squeezed. “Are you saying we can live together again?”

She licked her lips and swallowed. “I think so. I…don’t know. Am I?”

She looked nervous, and my heart went out to her.

Fuck! I’d made her like this, uncertain about us. She’d come a long way with getting her MBA and now working at Savannah Lace, but she was still insecure about me . I had to fix this, make her see that I was all in, that I had learned, grown, and was a better man and husband.

“You know, how about we bring this up during counseling and see what Dr. Ryan says?”

The relief on her face was palpable .

She wanted us to get back together, but she was afraid we’d go back to where we used to be.

I was as well, which was why I’d started to think that we needed to sell the house.

If she wanted to live here, I was good with that.

I liked the apartment. It had two bedrooms, so if Ada or Tristan wanted to stay the night, they could—and if they were both here, Tristan could sleep on the couch.

We’d be close to her office, restaurants, bars, and museums. I wouldn’t mind leaving the suburbs—it would be like when we lived in New York.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind living here ?” she asked, again.

She was worried that I wanted a big, showy house where we could entertain. Not that our place was that, but it was societally suitable. An apartment definitely wouldn’t be.

“I think it’ll be fun. Like we’re back in New York, you know? We can live the city life.”

She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. “Your mother is going to have a cow.”

“More reason to do it.”

She giggled again . Carefree. Happy.

I raised my wine glass and toasted. “To a lighter and brighter future.”

We moved to the balcony with our dessert—pecan pie—which I had bought. I wasn’t going to fuck around with baking.

“Tell me about this salon thing,” I prompted.

Lia tucked her feet under her in the wrought iron chair. “ According to Aurora, the women Betsy invites to the salon can take over the world.”

“I don’t doubt it. I saw Betsy Rhodes shut my mother up with one look at a fundraiser once.”

Lia let out a soft laugh. “She does have that power.”

She took a sip of wine, closing her eyes for a moment before setting the glass down.

“I am nervous about speaking there.”

I regarded her with quiet consideration. “Why?”

She gave the slightest shake of her head. “I don’t know…what if I say the wrong thing?”

“Baby, you just have to talk about your experience and tell your story.”

“It feels like everyone’s making a big deal out of nothing.” Her breath faltered for a moment. “I just went back to school and then was lucky to find a job, thanks to Betsy. But that’s it. I didn’t do anything special.”

I set my wine glass on the table next to my half-eaten slice of pecan pie, and hunched forward. “Baby, you did do something very special. This isn’t easy, and you did it without any support.”

“You paid for the MBA,” she pointed out as she picked up her wine glass and brought it close to her lips.

“ We paid for it. There is no my and your money, baby.” I’d always asserted that because I’d seen my parents fight ugly over Mama’s allowance and what was her “right.”

Her eyes gentled. “I know.”

“So, tell me,” I pressed gently, cutting a small slice of pie with a fork. “What do you plan to say? ”

She thought about it for a moment, and I brought the fork closer to her lips. She opened her mouth and took a bite.

She tilted her head, chewing thoughtfully.

“I want to talk about how women who leave the workforce for their families don’t get grace when they try to return.

It doesn’t matter how capable you are, how much you’ve done, how skilled you are at managing a household—there’s always this sense that you’re…

less than. Like you fell behind and can’t ever catch up. ”

I set down my fork. I’d never thought about it like that before.

“Women are expected to sacrifice everything for their families,” she continued, her voice even.

“And we do. But when we try to carve out something for ourselves after all that, we’re expected to start from scratch .

It seems rather unfair. I got lucky that Nina gave me a chance, but it’s not easy for most women. ”

I looked at her, trying to see beyond her words. I’d been raised in a world where women held things together at home but were rarely given credit for it.

My mother ran our home with the efficiency of a Fortune 500 CEO, but no one ever praised her for it. My sister Coco spent years playing the perfect Savannah socialite, but I doubted anyone ever asked what she wanted out of life.

For twenty-two years, Lia managed our household, raised our children, supported me—and made our lives function with what seemed like effortless skill, and instead of recognizing that for what it was—a full-time job—I had taken it for granted.

“You’re right. It’s not fair.”

She smiled, gratitude flickering in her eyes.

I reached for her hand and ran my thumb over her knuckles. “I’m proud of you. For getting the job, for being so cool that you’re being invited to be a speaker at a Rhodes’ Salon—for everything .”

She squeezed my fingers. “That means more than you know.”

After dinner, we cleaned up together—again, I had not done this with her before. Back, in the before , she cooked, she cleaned, and then I either went for a run, worked out in the home gym, or went into the office to work.

After the last dish was put inside the dishwasher and the counter cleaned up, she looked at me. “Stay tonight,” she murmured.

I stroked her cheek. “You sure?”

She nodded. “Yeah.”

There was no uncertainty—just a quiet, steady invitation.

“Okay.”

She let out a slow breath, her shoulders relaxing. “Okay.”

I kissed her lips softly. “Thank you.”

We turned off the lights and got ready for bed in the quiet rhythm of familiarity—but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t like before because we weren’t pretending everything was okay anymore—we were looking at our marriage and ourselves with honest eyes .

I crawled into bed beside her, the mattress dipping under my weight. When I opened my arms, Lia moved into them without hesitation.

Her head rested against my chest, her breath soft and steady, her fingers curling into my T-shirt.

I pressed a slow, lingering kiss to her hair. “I’ve missed this.”

She sighed, settling against me. “Me, too.”

We lay in the dark, wrapped in each other, the chasm between us closing with each breath as we fell into sleep.