It Ends With Us (37 page)

I let him. He takes that bag and another one down to the apartment while I gather my things. He and Marshall are walking back inside the apartment as I’m preparing to walk out.

Ryle grabs the last bag of stuff and begins to head toward the front door again. I’m following behind him when Marshall gives me a silent look, asking me if I’m okay with Ryle going
downstairs with me. I nod. I can’t keep avoiding Ryle forever, so now is as good a time as any to discuss where we go from here.

It’s only a few floors between their apartment and mine, but the elevator ride down with Ryle feels like the longest it’s ever taken. I catch him staring at my stomach a couple of
times and it makes me wonder how it must feel, going three months without seeing me pregnant.

My apartment door is unlocked, so I push it open and he follows me inside. He takes the last of the stuff to the nursery and I can hear him moving things around, opening boxes. I stay in the
kitchen and clean things that don’t even need cleaning. My heart is in my throat, knowing he’s in my apartment. I don’t feel scared of him in this moment. I just feel nervous. I
wanted to be more prepared for this conversation because I absolutely hate confrontation. But I know we need to discuss the baby and our future. I just don’t want to. Not yet, anyway.

He walks down the hallway and into the kitchen. I catch him looking at my stomach again. He glances away just as quickly. “Do you want me to assemble the crib while I’m
here?”

I should probably say no, but he’s half responsible for the child growing inside of me. If he’s going to offer physical labor I’m going to take it, no matter how angry I still
am at him. “Yeah. That would be a big help.”

He points toward the laundry room. “Is my toolbox still in there?”

I nod and he heads toward the laundry room. I open the refrigerator and face it so I don’t have to watch him walk back through the kitchen. When he’s finally in the nursery again, I
close the refrigerator and press my forehead against it as I grip the handle. I breathe in and out as I try to process everything that’s happening inside of me right now.

He looks really good. It’s been so long since I’ve seen him, I forgot how beautiful he is. I have an urge to run down the hallway and jump into his arms. I want to feel his mouth on
mine. I want to hear him tell me how much he loves me. I want him to lie down next to me and put his hand on my stomach like I’ve imagined him doing so many times.

It would be so easy. My life would be so much easier right now if I would just forgive him and take him back.

I close my eyes and repeat the words my mother said to me.
“If Ryle truly loves you, he wouldn’t allow you to take him back.”

That reminder is the only thing that prevents me from running down the hallway.

• • •

I keep myself busy in the kitchen for the next hour as he remains in the nursery. I eventually have to walk past it to grab my phone charger from my room. On my way back down
the hallway, I pause at the door of the nursery.

The crib is assembled. He even put the bedding on. He’s standing over it, gripping the railing, staring inside the empty crib. He’s so quiet and still, he looks like a statue.
He’s lost in thought and doesn’t even notice me standing outside the doorway. It makes me wonder where his mind has wandered.

Is he thinking about the baby? The child he won’t even be living with when it sleeps in that very crib?

Until this moment, I wasn’t sure if he even wanted to be a part of the baby’s life. But the look on his face proves to me that he does. I’ve never seen so much sadness in one
expression, and I’m not even facing him straight on. I feel like the sadness he’s feeling in this moment has absolutely nothing to do with me and everything to do with thoughts of his
child.

He glances up and sees me standing in the doorway. He pushes off the crib and shakes himself out of his trance. “Finished,” he says, waving a hand toward the crib. He begins putting
his tools back inside the tool case. “Is there anything else you need while I’m here?”

I shake my head as I walk over to the crib and admire it. Since I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, I decided to go with a nature theme. The bedding set is tan and green with
pictures of plants and trees all over it. It matches the curtains and will eventually match a mural I plan to paint on the wall at some point. I also plan to fill the nursery with a few live plants
from the shop. I can’t help but smile, finally seeing it all start to come together. He even put up the mobile. I reach up and turn it on and Brahms’s Lullaby begins to play. I stare at
it as it makes a full spin and then I glance back at Ryle. He’s standing a few feet away, just watching me.

As I stare back at him, I think about how easy it is for humans to make judgments when we’re standing on the outside of a situation. I spent years judging my mother’s situation.

It’s easy when we’re on the outside to believe that we would walk away without a second thought if a person mistreated us. It’s easy to say we couldn’t continue to love
someone who mistreats us when we aren’t the ones feeling the love of that person.

When you experience it firsthand, it isn’t so easy to hate the person who mistreats you when most of the time they’re your godsend.

Ryle’s eyes gain a little bit of hope, and I hate that he can see that my walls are temporarily lowered. He begins to take a slow step toward me. I know he’s about to pull me to him
and hug me, so I take a quick step away from him.

And just like that, the wall is back up between us.

Allowing him back inside this apartment was a huge step for me in itself. He needs to realize that.

He hides whatever rejection he’s feeling with a stoic expression. He tucks the toolbox under his arm and then grabs the box the crib came in. It’s filled with all the trash from
everything he opened and put together. “I’ll take this to the Dumpster,” he says, walking toward the door. “If you need help with anything else, just let me know,
okay?”

I nod and somehow mutter, “Thank you.”

When I hear the front door close, I turn back and face the crib. My eyes fill with tears, and not for myself this time. Not for the baby.

I cry for Ryle. Because even though he’s responsible for the situation he’s in, I know how sad he is about it. And when you love someone, seeing them sad also makes
you
sad.

Neither of us brought up our separation or even a chance at reconciliation. We didn’t even talk about what’s going to happen when this baby is born in ten weeks.

I’m just not ready for that conversation yet and the least he can do for me right now is show me patience.

The patience he still owes me from all the times he had none.

I finish rinsing the paint out of the brushes and then walk back to the nursery to admire the mural. I spent most of yesterday and all of today painting it.

It’s been two weeks since Ryle came over and put the crib together. Now that the mural is finished and I brought in a few plants from the store, I feel like the nursery is finally
complete. I look around and feel a little sad that no one is here to admire the room with me. I grab my phone and text Allysa.

I frown and decide to text my mother. She has to work tomorrow, but I know she’ll be just as excited to see it as I was to finish it.

I sit down in the rocking chair and know that I shouldn’t do what I’m about to do, but I do it anyway.

Every nerve in my body springs to life as soon as I hit Send. I stare at my phone until his reply comes through.

I immediately stand up and begin making last minute touches. I fluff the pillows on the loveseat and straighten one of the wall hangings. I’m barely to the front door when I hear his
knock. I open it and
dammit. He’s wearing scrubs.

I step aside as he makes his way in.

“Allysa said you were painting a mural?”

I follow him down the hallway toward the nursery.

“It’s taken two days to finish,” I tell him. “My body feels like I ran a marathon and all I did was walk up and down a step ladder a few times.”

He glances over his shoulder and I can see the concern in his expression. He’s worried that I was here doing it all on my own. He shouldn’t worry. I’ve got this.

When we make it to the nursery, he stops in the doorway. On the opposite wall, I painted a garden. It’s complete with almost every fruit and vegetable I could think of that grows in a
garden. I’m not a painter, but it’s amazing what you can do with a projector and transparent paper.

“Wow,” Ryle says.

I grin, because I recognize the surprise in his voice and I know it’s genuine. He walks into the room and looks around, shaking his head the whole time. “Lily.
It’s . . . wow.”

If he were Allysa, I’d clap and jump up and down. But he’s Ryle and with the way things have been between us, that would be a little awkward.

He walks over to the window where I set up a swing. He gives it a little push and it begins moving from side to side.

“It also moves front to back,” I tell him. I don’t know if he even knows anything about baby swings, but I was pretty impressed by that feature.

He walks over to the changing table and pulls one of the diapers out of the holder. He unfolds it and holds it up in front of him. “It’s so tiny,” he says. “I don’t
remember Rylee being this tiny.”

Hearing him mention Rylee makes me a little sad. We’ve been living apart since the night she was born, so I’ve never been able to see him interact with her.

Ryle folds up the diaper and puts it back in the holder. When he turns to face me, he smiles, lifting his hands to motion around the room. “It’s really great, Lily,” he says.
“All of it. You’re really doing . . .” His hands drop to his hips and his smile falters. “You’re doing really well.”

A thickness seems to form in the air around me. It’s suddenly difficult to take in a full breath because for whatever reason, I feel like I need to cry. I just really like this moment and
it saddens me that we couldn’t spend the entire pregnancy full of moments like these. It feels good sharing this with him, but I’m also scared I might be giving him false hope.

Now that he’s here and he saw the nursery, I’m not sure what to do next. It’s glaringly obvious that we need to discuss a lot of things, but I have no idea where to start. Or
how.

I walk over to the rocking chair and take a seat. “Naked truth?” I say, looking up at him.

He exhales a huge breath and nods, then takes a seat on the sofa. “
Please.
Lily, please tell me you’re ready to talk about this.”

His reaction eases my nerves a little, knowing he’s ready to discuss everything. I wrap my arms around my stomach and lean forward in the rocking chair. “You go first.”

He clasps his hands together between his knees. He looks at me with so much sincerity, I have to glance away.

“I don’t know what you want from me, Lily. I don’t know what role you want me to have. I’m trying to give you all the space you need, but at the same time I want to help
more than you possibly know. I want to be in our baby’s life. I want to be your husband and I want to be good at it. But I have no idea what’s going through your head.”

His words fill me with guilt. Despite what has happened between us in the past, he’s still this baby’s father. He has the legal right to be a father, no matter how I feel about it.
And I
want
him to be a father. I want him to be a
good
father. But deep down, I’m still holding on to one of my biggest fears, and I know I
need to talk to him about it.

“I would never keep you from your child, Ryle. I’m happy you want to be involved. But . . .”

He leans forward and buries his face in his hands with that last word.

“What kind of mother would I be if a small part of me doesn’t have concern in regard to your temper? The way you lose control? How do I know something won’t set you off while
you’re alone with this baby?”

So much agony floods his eyes, I think they might burst like dams. He begins to shake his head adamantly. “Lily, I would never . . .”

“I know, Ryle. You would never intentionally hurt your own child. I don’t even believe it was intentional when you hurt me, but you did. And trust me, I want to believe that you
would never do something like that. My father was only abusive toward my mother. There are many men—
women
even—who abuse their significant others without ever
losing their temper with anyone else. I want to believe your words with all my heart, but you have to understand where my hesitation comes in. I’ll never deny you a relationship with your
child. But I’m going to need you to be really patient with me while you rebuild all the trust you’ve broken.”

He nods in agreement. He has to know that I’m giving him much more than he deserves. “Absolutely,” he says. “This is on your terms. Everything is on your terms,
okay?”

Ryle’s hands come together again and he begins to chew nervously on his bottom lip. I sense he has more to say, but he’s doubting whether or not he should say it.

“Go ahead and say whatever you’re thinking while I’m in the mood to talk about it.”

He tilts his head back and looks up at the ceiling. Whatever it is, it’s hard for him. I don’t know if it’s because the question is hard to ask or because he’s scared of
the answer I might give him.