Page 129 of Monochrome Without You
“White,” I finish for her. “Empty. Cold. I know.”
She looks around, suddenly small and unsure. “I don’t want you to hang them just to make me feel—”
“Like you belong?” I cut in. I set the mountain painting down and step closer. “Stay with me, Jules. Live here. Make this home again.”
Her eyes flash with a thousand emotions—hope, pain, uncertainty, fear. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I need time. I need to think about it.”
“That’s okay,” I say, brushing her hair behind her ear. “Take all the time you need. But before you decide, you should know something.”
I take a breath, steady myself, then say it—what I should’ve said two years ago, what I should’ve screamed through the silence.
“I love you, Jules. I’ve always loved you. Even when I got it all wrong. Even when I didn’t say the right things, or do the right things, or show up the way you deserved. That love never left. And all I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is this. Us. Under one roof. Safe. Whole. Together.”
Her face crumples. The tears she’s been holding back fall freely as she presses her hands to her mouth. I step forward, and she lets me pull her into my arms.
“Really?” she chokes out. “You still love me?”
“More now than I ever did before.”
She nods against my chest, slowly, as if convincing herself. “Okay,” she whispers. “Then let’s hang up a few paintings.”
“Yeah?” I ask, hope blooming like spring in my chest.
She smiles through her tears. “But just a few,” she warns. “I’m not sure you’re ready for all this color.”
I laugh, wiping a tear off her cheek. “I’ve never been more ready.”
And maybe for the first time in a long time, I mean it.
We hang the paintings slowly, letting the past settle back into the walls one memory at a time. Then, I pour us each a glass of wine and dim the lights, the kind of cozy intimacy I used to take for granted now feeling like a quiet miracle. Jules curls into my lap as we sink into the couch, her legs tucked beside mine. I flip on a rerun of that old sitcom we watched religiously in the earlyyears of our marriage. The kind of background noise that makes a house feel like a home.
Her head rests against my shoulder, and my fingers trail gently through her curls as she talks about painting again. The way her voice lights up, the way her mind dances from one creative thought to another, I’m mesmerized. This woman, this soul. She's never been ordinary. And somewhere along the way, I forgot how much color she brought into my world. Without her, everything dimmed. Dull. Grayscale.
Yeah. My life has been monochrome without her.
“Do you remember when I went into labor with Tate?” she says, half-laughing, half-gasping at the memory. “You were a complete wreck.”
I chuckle. “I was.”
“You ran every red light between our house and the hospital,” she says, smiling wide. “You kept yelling, ‘I’m not missing this!’ like anyone was going to stop you.”
“We had somewhere important to be,” I say, softly.
She goes quiet for a beat, then: “Did you ever think about having more kids?”
The question lands in my chest with the weight of a future I hadn’t let myself fully picture. “Yeah,” I admit. “I do. I have.”
She swirls the wine in her glass, her gaze distant. “I haven’t really let myself think about it. I’ve been so focused on surviving, building something stable for Tate… for myself.”
“You’ve done more than that,” I tell her. “You built a beautiful life.”
She shakes her head gently. “I think I pushed away everything that felt uncertain, like dreaming was too dangerous. But lately I keep thinking… Tate deserves a sibling. He deserves a family that feels whole.”
“As an only child,” I say, reaching for her hand, “it’s lonely sometimes. I don’t want that for him either.”
She nods slowly. “I hate that I haven’t allowed myself to hope for things like that again.”
I stroke the back of her neck, watching the conflict play across her face. “Hope’s allowed, Jules. Especially now.”
