Autumn didn’t glance up from the script she was reading and continued to highlight the sections she needed to read. It had been two weeks since Jack had returned home, and things had gone from loving to awkward to tense between the two of them. When he hadn’t budged on the date of his return to Ethiopia, she shoved his things into the guest room down the hall, which caused another heated argument. They’d been having many of those, but, thankfully, she hadn’t had to go out in public anywhere and had thus avoided getting asked questions about why she looked so tired all the time.
The late nights of worrying and crying herself to sleep were wearing on her, and it showed—big time.
“Autumn?” Jack asked again. “Who’s coming over for your delicious Thanksgiving dinner?”
She shrugged, still reading her script. “Are you planning on staying past Thanksgiving weekend?”
Jack let out a long-suffering sigh. “Babe, we’ve gone around with this before. I have to go back because no one else was willing to spend Christmas at the site. We’re making so much progress, and no one wants the work to stop. I volunteered to take December and half of January because everyone else is going to be home with their families.”
Now she did look up. “And what are Lily and I? Chopped liver? Apparently, we don’t count as family to you because you wouldn’t leave us during the holidays if we were. Right?"
“Autumn.”
“Jack.”
“Who’s coming over for dinner next Thursday?”
“I’m trying to work.”
Jack let out a frustrated sigh. “Damn it, Autumn. Stop acting like a child!”
“I’m acting like a child? I am acting like a child?” Autumn set the script down slowly and turned to look over at him. “I’m not the one who tramps off halfway around the world and leaves his family to wonder and worry about when the hell he’s going to come home. If he’s going to come home. I have been here doing my work, taking care of my child, while you’re off doing God knows what. Do you even think about us while you’re over there? Or do you have a thing going with a fellow colleague?”
“Don’t.” Jack’s face was dead-white, making his eyes dark, oh so dark. “How can you believe that of me? Is this the point we’re at, Autumn? I can’t touch you, can’t tell you I love you, can’t do anything right because you’re upset at my work? Have I once begrudged you yours?” He stood now. “Do I know you? Because you sure as hell aren’t acting like the woman I fell in love with.”
“That’s fine, then.” She studied the man she’d fallen in love with, wondering where he’d gone. “You’re nowhere close to the man I thought I’d fallen in love with, either. I need someone who’s going to be there for me when I need him, who’ll be there to celebrate all of my accomplishments. I needed someone who loved me to be there to cheer Lily on when she took her first steps. But where were you? In Africa,” she answered herself. “What the hell is so much more fascinating about a person who’s been dead for thousands of years than one who’s alive? One you can talk to, share your life with? Tell me, Jack, so I can finally stop wondering what’s lacking in me that makes it so easy for you to leave so often.”
He watched her for a moment before shaking his head. “You want to know? You really want to know why it’s so much easier to study a person’s bones rather than their live counterparts? It’s because they don’t talk back, they don’t bitch at you, they don’t criticize you for living your life the way you fucking need to. I didn’t spend two years of my life with you because I wanted to hear you bitch and moan about how I’m always leaving you alone when I go to do my work.” Jack ran a frustrated hand through his hair before looking over his shoulder at her again. “If that’s what I’d wanted, needed, and looked for before I met you, then it’s definitely not something I’d ever make the mistake of looking for again.”
The pressure in her head, her chest, her heart was horrible, crushing. She took a careful breath and pushed past it. “Before you go looking again,” she said quietly, “you might want to consider the fact that, when another person cares for you or loves you, you have certain responsibilities to them. And you can’t just ignore those responsibilities because you don’t have the time nor the inclination to deal with them.”
“You can take those responsibilities and stuff them.” Jack stalked to the door. “Love isn’t supposed to be a burden, either. Do your responsibilities keep you warm at night, Autumn? Because, the way things are going, they’re the only things that’ll keep you company in bed.”
And he was gone, leaving Autumn to hug herself, pressing her fingers into her arms to keep the tears at bay. He would not make her cry, she thought. It didn’t matter that it all felt like an ending, but she wouldn’t cry. She hadn’t cried the night of Lily’s conception nor the days following her parents’ deaths. What good would tears do, anyway? she asked herself. The answer was nothing.
Knowing that the only way she would deal with the terrible pain the argument had caused was to bury it and busy herself with other things, she lifted her highlighter and pen and tried to push herself into reading the script Liz had sent her.
The wall clock ticked to two in the morning, and still she sat. She sat where she’d been sitting for the last three hours, since she’d set the script, the pens, and highlighters down. She sat where she’d been sitting when she and Jack had had the single most hideous argument in their time together.
And she bled. She bled from a thousand wounds that leeched her heart dry. But her mind and her dried up heart were set.
When his fingers brushed over the nape of her neck, she didn’t move. She barely glanced at him when he sat in the armchair across from hers.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, baby.”
His words didn’t inspire the movement in her. The shock that he’d dare to speak to her now did. Her head lifted slowly. “I know.” For he was. He was sorry in the way he knew sorrow to be. It was full of shame, guilt, and embarrassment at the lack of control, consideration, and care. “I know you are.”
“I love you, Autumn. I really love you, and I can’t stand the thought of hurting you.” He sighed. “And yet we keep going around and around without figuring out how to solve our problems without hurting each other. Even when I don’t want to hurt you, I do. I want to change that.” His voice was firm. “I need to fix this.”
Now, she sighed, too. “I don’t know how we can solve this, Jack. The only way I see is if we compromise, but neither of us is willing to do so. I’ve watched you leave me too many times and wondered—wished—that the next time you’d ask the administrators of the dig for just a little more time off to spend with your family. But you didn’t. And I don’t mean to blame you,” she added quickly, seeing his mouth open to protest. “I’m blaming no one but circumstance. I’m tired, dead tired, of fighting you as I know you’ve got to be tired of the constant arguing, too.” She smiled a little. “You came home to relax, and all I’ve given you is tension.”
He reached out and took her hand, lacing his fingers with hers. “Being near you, despite the tension, is a vacation for me. You and Lily make coming home the best part of my year.”
“It’s not working.”
He shook his head. “No, it doesn’t seem to be.” His grip on her fingers tightened. “I don’t want to let this go easily. Hell, I don’t want to let us go at all.” His eyes were steady on hers. “I think we should call a truce, just until Thanksgiving. Let’s table the talk of my departure for one week.”
“One week?” She thought about it for a moment. What was one week in the presence of so many weeks of shouting matches? “Okay.”
“Just a week, where we can be together, relax, and be a family. Be thankful for what we’ve got. Because we’ve got a hell of a lot more than other families have got.”
His words made her think, for just an instant, about Nick and his family. Then the thought slipped her mind as Jack stood and pulled her off the couch. “What are you doing?”
His smile was one she’d barely seen since the day of his return. “I’m taking you up to bed. You’ve got a busy day tomorrow, Miss Hotshot Hollywood Actress, and you need your beauty sleep.” He brushed a kiss over her cheeks.
“You don’t have to escort me up,” she began to protest but he cut her off.
“Truce, remember?”
She nodded. “Yeah, okay. Truce.”
Whatever else she may have said fell away when he swept her off her feet and carried her towards the stairs. It did feel good, she mused, to have his arms around her and to press her face against his throat and pretend, just for a little while, that they were like any normal, happy couple. And, like any normal, happy couple, her thought continued as the first frissons of desire curled in her belly, they were certainly entitled to their fair share of…fun.
A half hour later, wearing nothing but a grin and sweat, she ran her fingers through Jack’s hair and laughed, truly laughed for the first time in weeks.
