He didn’t want to find out what his life would feel like without him.

He was glad, in a way, that Jack didn’t know how to say the words. It kept him safer; he could pretend that he had the power to refuse him.

He wished he could push him away.

Chapter Nineteen

“Ugh.” Jack fumbled for his phone, tucked next to his pillow and vibrating, and hit a button, hoping it would shut the hell up.

He had given up waiting for a message from Theo. He never wanted to look at his phone again.

He rolled over on the lumpy couch. He had decided to wait, just a few more weeks, before moving into the new apartment, holding off on...what was coming. It was maybe seven in the morning, and he’d felt the fatigue of too many heavy days, so he’d tucked himself in as soon as Amy’s light had gone off last night.

Meg had gone away on assignment, somewhere—writing an article on the new experimental training routine of some college north of here—and she’d booked a hotel and taken the weekend to herself. It seemed totally fair; they both needed some space. He’d been a house dad for the weekend, which was fine by him, more time to spend with Ames before...

Fuck. He punched the cushion under him, not really awake yet but still worrying.

He couldn’t move out yet.

They hadn’t told their children.

It was stupid and wrong and truly poor planning, especially since he had actually bought the new apartment and everything would have to change. But to them, from the inside, it just felt like—

They hadn’t been close—the way a married couple was supposed to be—for a long time. They lived their lives in parallel, each going to work, caring for the kids, doing their assigned tasks, and it was almost as if their lives were totally unaltered by this massive shift between them. They had love for each other, lots of love, just—they were already separate. They were childhood friends; they felt like roommates, the shift happening almost entirely naturally, even as they both wondered, in the back of their minds, what was missing.

But it was going to change, of course it was, because he wouldn’t always be here to read Amy her favorite story and sing atrociously, and Meg wouldn’t be at the new apartment to make sure Will and Johnny combed their hair.

And he wouldn’t have anyone to kiss in the mornings, or laugh at the newspaper comics with before bed, or hug a little and pretend—

“Jack? Jack, come on...”

He twitched under the duvet, his mind half in sleep and half in all the things he’d been turning over like a stone, rubbing and rubbing ’til all the rough edges were worn smooth. The realities of what was to come. Would Amy want to live here full-time, closer to her school, or would she want to live with him, deeper into the city? And Johnny—her moods could be unpredictable, a surly teenager all the way, and Will always looked at him with an odd combination of fondness for his old dad and exasperation that he just wasn’t quite bright enough. Which Jack absolutely agreed with, these days.