Chapter Eighty: The Diary Between Us
● The Jealous Wife
The silence in our bedroom was the loudest thing I'd ever heard.
I sat cross-legged on the bed, arms folded, watching him move through the room with that infuriating calm. He'd just come from the shower, towel slung low on his hips, hair still damp and curling at the nape of his neck. Water droplets traced paths down the lines of his shoulders, his back, the fading bruise beneath his ribs.
And in his hand—again—was that diary.
He tossed the towel onto the chair and slid into bed beside me, the mattress dipping under his weight. The diary landed on his nightstand with a soft thud, and he reached for me automatically, his arm curving around my waist, pulling me against the warm, solid wall of his chest.
"You're stiff," he murmured against my hair. "Still thinking about the garden?"
"I'm thinking about how you'd rather read her words than talk to your actual wife."
He went still behind me. Not the stillness of relaxation—the stillness of a man who'd just been caught with his hand in a cookie jar he didn't know was booby-trapped.
I pulled away, turning to face him. My arms crossed tighter over my chest, a fortress of wounded pride and barely-suppressed fury.
"That diary," I said flatly. "You take it everywhere. You read it when you think I'm asleep. You smile at its pages like it's whispering secrets I'm not allowed to hear."
He leaned back against the headboard, his expression unreadable. "It's just a book."
"It's not just a book." My voice rose. "You treat it like it's alive. Like she's alive. Whoever she is."
He didn't deny it. Didn't laugh it off with that infuriating smirk. He just watched me, his dark eyes steady and unblinking, and the silence stretched between us like a wound.
"I'm your wife," I said, the words scraping out of my throat. "Not that diary."
"I know."
"Do you?" I shifted, swinging my leg over his lap, straddling him before I could think better of it. His hands came to my hips instinctively, steadying me, but I grabbed his wrists and pinned them to the bed on either side of his head. "Do you know what it feels like? Waking up next to a man who reaches for paper before he reaches for me?"
His jaw tightened. "Angel—"
"She even wants you in her next life." I leaned closer, my voice dropping to a venomous whisper. "Another life. How dramatic. How pathetic." I shoved at his chest, feeling the hard muscle beneath my palms, the steady beat of his heart against my fingers. "She's so romantic. But she's pathetic. And you—" I pinched the skin over his ribs, not hard enough to bruise but enough to make him hiss. "—you're worse for keeping her words like a shrine."
He didn't pull away. Didn't try to escape my grip. He just lay there, letting me rage, letting me climb all over him like a furious cat.
"Is she your ex?" I demanded. "Your lover? Your secret wife? Tell me, or I swear—"
"She was no one."
I stopped. Blinked. "What?"
His hands came up, slowly, deliberately, and settled on my waist. Not pulling me closer, not pushing me away. Just holding.
"She was no one," he repeated, softer this time. "A ghost. A shadow. Someone who loved a man she never saw clearly."
The anger in my chest flickered, replaced by something colder. "Then why do you keep her words like a treasure?"
He was quiet for a long moment. The lamp on his nightstand cast half his face in shadow, half in gold, and in the dim light, he looked like a statue of a man carved from grief.
"Because she wrote about waiting," he said finally. "About standing in the same places, hoping a stranger would look back. She wrote about falling in love with someone who never knew she existed. And I—" His voice cracked, just a fraction. "I read it because I know what it's like to love someone who doesn't remember you."
I went very still.
"She wrote about wanting another life," he continued, his voice low and rough. "About hoping the next version of herself would be braver. Would reach out. Would say the words she never got to say."
His hands tightened on my waist, his eyes never leaving mine.
"And I read it," he whispered, "because I wish I'd been the man she was waiting for. I wish I'd turned around. I wish I'd seen her. Before it was too late."
My throat was thick with something I couldn't name. "You're talking about her like—"
"Like I failed her?" His laugh was hollow. "Because I did. Every day, for years. She was there, and I never looked back. Not once."
The diary sat on the nightstand, innocent and damning. I stared at it, then at him, then back at the worn leather cover.
"Who was she?" I asked, quieter now.
He pulled me down against his chest, his arms wrapping around me, his face burying in my hair. I felt the shudder that ran through him, the way his fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt like he was afraid I'd disappear.
"Someone who deserved better," he said. "Someone who loved without expecting anything in return. Someone who wrote poetry about a stranger's back and called it faith."
I pressed my forehead into the curve of his neck, my anger draining away into something more complicated. Something that felt like jealousy and pity and a strange, aching recognition all tangled together.
"You loved her," I said.
"I loved the idea of her," he corrected. "The girl who waited. Who hoped. Who kept showing up even when no one was watching."
I pulled back just enough to look at him. His eyes were dark, vulnerable, stripped of every wall he'd ever built.
"But she's gone now," he said. "Whoever she was, whatever she hoped for—she's gone."
The words settled in my chest like stones. I thought of the dreams I couldn't quite remember. The feeling of being watched, protected, loved from a distance. The way his hands always found my hair, my waist, my face—like he was memorizing me all over again.
I looked at the diary. At the worn cover, the frayed edges, the pages I'd seen him trace with his fingers when he thought I was asleep.
"Read it to me," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"The diary. Read it to me." I settled against his chest, my ear over his heart, my fingers finding his. "I want to know what she wrote. I want to know who she was."
He hesitated. His hand trembled against mine, just slightly, before he reached for the book.
He opened it to a page near the middle, his thumb smoothing the creased paper. His voice, when he began, was low and careful, like he was handling something sacred.
"He came again today. I didn't see his face—I never see his face. But I saw the way he held a book, the way he tilted his head when he read, the way his shoulders curved like he carried something heavy. I wonder if he knows I'm watching. I wonder if he'd turn around, just once, if I could be brave enough to call out."
I closed my eyes, letting the words wash over me. The ache in his voice was a mirror of something in my chest, something I couldn't name but recognized all the same.
"I don't need him to love me. I just need him to see me. Just once. So I can prove I was real."
He stopped reading. His hand found mine, his fingers interlacing with my own.
"She was real," I whispered.
"She was," he agreed.
I turned in his arms, pressing my cheek to his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart. The diary lay open beside us, its secrets spilling into the dark, and for the first time, I didn't feel like I was competing with a ghost.
I felt like I was holding one. And letting her go.
---
● The Question That Remains
Later—much later, when the lamp was off and the room was nothing but shadows and shared breath—I spoke into the dark.
"What was her name?"
He was quiet so long I thought he wouldn't answer. His arms tightened around me, his lips pressing to my forehead in a kiss that felt like a secret.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I never asked."
I should have been satisfied. Should have let the matter rest, let the ghost of the diary girl fade back into the pages where she belonged.
But something about his answer wouldn't settle. Something about the way he said I never asked—like it was the greatest regret of his life—stayed with me, burrowing under my skin.
I thought about the dreams. The faceless man. The girl who wrote poetry about a stranger's back.
I thought about the way my heart recognized him before my mind did. The way his touch felt like coming home.
I thought about the accident that stole my memory. The parents who weren't my parents. The life that was never mine.
And I wondered, in the quiet hours of the night, if some part of me had been waiting for him too. Even before I knew his face. Even before I knew my own name.
I didn't ask him that. Not yet.
But I held the question close, like a seed waiting for spring.
And when I closed my eyes, I dreamed of a library. Of a girl who watched a stranger read, her heart full of words she never said.
And when I woke, his arms were still around me. And for the first time, I didn't feel like I was competing with her.
I felt like I was becoming her.