Chapter Text
I’m standing in the living room on my own. Our living room. The house we paid for together, the place I told myself would be solid. A roof, four walls, the lot. It was supposed to be the place that kept the rest of it out. Now it just feels like a stage where everything I built might be pulled down around me.
My eyes flick to the sofa. That sofa. The one we collapsed into every night, the one we claimed the instant it turned up. The one we fell onto to celebrate our first night in our new house, the one we spent hours on making love before we were interrupted by a mortified Betsy and Ryan. They groaned, they laughed, and I can still see the way Betsy’s face twisted with that sort of affectionate horror. For a second it almost makes me smile. Almost.
I drift to the kitchen island and let my fingers trail along the cold surface. It’s where we had our engagement breakfast. Jam, toast, the small ridiculousness of it. Betsy called it “just toast” with that eye-roll she does, but I saw the way she softens when she looks at Lisa. She was delighted for us. She wanted her mum happy. She loved seeing Lisa finally whole, I suppose. And I loved being the one who put that back together. It felt right. Like someone had finally put the lens back into focus.
This house was supposed to be our forever. Lisa and I imagined an ordinary kind of forever. Grey hair, arguments about nothing, the radio on in the afternoons. We filled rooms with plans and names of things we’d do. Now I’m not even sure we’ll make it to our first anniversary. That thought punches me in the gut because this is everything I ever wanted. Lisa sees me. She makes me feel important in a way no one ever did. Safe. Like everything else slips away when she puts her hand on my back and says my name in the dark. For the first time in my life I thought I’d found my place. Then Becky turned up.
Becky. Lisa’s wife. The woman we all thought was gone. The woman whose ashes were supposed to have been scattered. The ghost I learned to live alongside. All that grief and loss we assumed was real. It was the foundation of what I was building with Lisa. I thought I was helping her heal. I thought I was stepping into a life that had already been broken and pieced back together. But Becky’s not dead. She’s back. She’s standing in the place that was meant to be mine.
I Say it out loud. Becky is alive. And it almost sounds obscene. I laugh because what else is there? It’s a laugh that’s brittle and sharp and a little bit hysterical. How does someone go from nobody’s memory to walking through your front door? How do you compete with being somebody’s first everything? She wasn’t just a name in the past. She was Lisa’s wife, her first forever.
I keep pinching myself like it might fix it. Like I will wake up from this bad dream. The house smells the same, the light falls the same way through the curtains, but it’s all a lie now. Nothing fits.
There’s a history in the room with us like a damp patch on the wall. Becky knows Lisa in ways I’m only beginning to learn. She knew the bits of Lisa that I haven’t seen yet, the corners I haven’t found. Were they married again, are they still married? What are the rules here when someone who was written out of your life walks back in and expects the script to change? I don’t have the bloody manual.
Lisa and I are engaged. We have a wedding to plan. I don’t know if that’s even possible now. We’ve been through things that would have broken most people. Betsy’s fury, the sepsis, kidney's, the nights when Lisa’s mind frayed and we held each other together. Each time we came out bruised but together. That’s why this cuts so clean. Because we built something on top of the wreckage and now it’s being dragged into the light again.
And Betsy. God, Betsy. She’s only a kid and she doesn’t deserve this. I’ve started to think of her as mine in every way that matters. The thought of losing that because Becky’s decided to step back in feels cruel in a way I can’t name. Sometimes I ask myself if the universe is a spiteful thing. I let myself be happy and the punchline is that the person I love had another life with someone else. Maybe I’m not supposed to be a mum. Maybe I’m only ever someone who loves too damn much and then gets left behind.
When I picture Betsy finding out I feel my chest close up. Panic comes first, hot and selfish and immediate, then a quiet, deeper grief. Betrayal, but not the normal kind. This is a betrayal of the future I’d already started to pack for. I can’t stand the thoughts spinning, so I reach for noise. The radio’s a small mercy. A song comes on, that Alex Warren one, “Everything,” and the chorus hits like a verdict. If I lose you, I lose everything.
It’s true. If I lose Lisa and Betsy I’ll have nothing left. I pinch my arm until it goes white under my fingers to prove I’m real. The pain is a fact. The house is a fact. The song on the radio is a fact. Everything else is fog.
I’m standing at the edge of something I can’t name, and the wind keeps whispering every way I could lose her. I play Lisa’s face over in my head, those quiet private looks that made me think we were unbreakable. Every replay is a small cut. I imagine her saying the one thing that would finish me off, and I can’t bear to hear it.
So I rehearse other endings. I fold a few tops in my head, tuck photographs into an imagined bag, write a note that asks for her happiness and takes none of the blame. I picture leaving in the dark so she never has to make the choice and never sees the mess of me. Part of me wants to fight, to scratch and scream and hang on until there’s nothing left, and another part thinks leaving might be mercy for both of us. I don’t know which of those people I am. The choice sits like a stone in my throat, heavy and impossible to swallow. It tastes of grief and something like cowardice, and I can’t tell which is worse.
The front door clicks, and my stomach lurches before I even look up. Lisa. Home. She’s there, carrying that same calm that makes it impossible to stay mad at her. She doesn’t see me at first, or maybe she does and doesn’t know what to make of the silence. I’m sitting on the sofa, the bag at my feet, straps twisted between my fingers like a lifeline.
She pauses in the doorway, her eyes flicking over me, sharp and soft all at once. “Carla?” Her voice is quiet. Careful. I don’t answer. I just sit there, shoulders stiff, gripping the bag. The weight of it presses against the carpet and me alike.
She steps closer. The smell of her, coffee, laundry, something that’s always just Lisa, hits me, and I want to throw my arms around her and beg her to choose me, or else leave, or whatever it is I think might save me. But I don’t move. I can’t.
“Carla…” she says again, slower this time. She kneels slightly, putting herself on the same level as the bag. “What’s… what’s that?”
I lift a shoulder, finally letting a flicker of motion betray me. “Just… stuff,” I mutter. Too much in that one word, all the ‘what ifs,’ all the grief and panic, packed into a single syllable.
Her eyes narrow, not in anger, but worry. “Carla… are you leaving?”
I swallow hard. My throat feels like sandpaper. Part of me wants to tell her the truth. Part of me wants to crawl into that bag and disappear. “Maybe,” I say finally. And the word tastes like ash in my mouth.
Lisa kneels fully now, resting a hand on the edge of the bag, then slowly letting it brush against my knee. “Hey,” she says gently. “Talk to me. Please.”
I look up, catch her gaze, and all the steel I’ve wrapped around myself starts to crack. I don’t trust myself to speak without crying, without screaming, without dragging everything into a mess I can’t take back.
But the bag at my feet? It’s not just clothes. It’s my heart, packed up and ready to run. And yet, here she is. Lisa. Right in front of me, soft and patient, and the way she looks at me makes leaving impossible.
I inhale, trying to steady the storm inside me. “I… I don’t know if I can do this,” I whisper. “I don’t know if I can share you… after everything, after Becky.”
She tilts her head, sadness threading her eyes. “Carla… you’re not sharing me. You’re… you’re here. With me. And I chose you. I want you. Don’t leave because it’s hard.”
My fingers tighten around the bag strap. My mind screams that the safe thing is to go, but my heart, bloody, battered, stubborn, won’t let me. Not yet.
I swallow the lump in my throat and take a shaky breath. “I… I want to stay,” I admit finally, voice breaking, low and rough like gravel. “But I don’t know how to stop feeling like… like I’m losing you already.”
Lisa slides closer, letting her hand fall over mine, resting there like an anchor. “You’re not losing me,” she says softly, but firmly. “We’ll figure this. Together.”
I glance down at the bag, the bag that’s both a shield and a threat, and slowly, almost reluctantly, I let it slide to the side. Not gone. Just waiting.
And for the first time in what feels like forever, I let myself sit back into the sofa, letting her in. Letting the possibility of us, messy, complicated, but ours, breathe back into the room.
Then I look her in the eye, letting the words fall before I can stop them. “Lisa, I need to know. Is it really me you choose? Because I can’t have you spending time with Becky and realising it’s not me you love. I need to know, now, that it’s me. Not her.”
Lisa blinks, swallowing hard, and then she leans closer. Her hand tightens over mine, grounding me. “Carla… it’s you. Always you,” she says, voice low but steady. “I don’t love Becky anymore. What we had is gone. What I have with you, what we’ve built… that’s real. That’s here. That’s now.”
I want to believe her, I need to believe her, but the fear claws at the edges of my mind. “It just feels like… she’s still there. Like she could step back in and suddenly… I’m the one left standing in a shadow.”
Lisa shakes her head, leaning her forehead against mine. “Not gonna happen. You’re not a shadow, Carla. You’re my life. You’re my family. And yes, Becky’s back. Yes, it’s messy and complicated. But we face it together. We protect what’s ours. Betsy, this house, us… you’re not going anywhere.”
I take a shaky breath, the first in what feels like hours, letting some of the tension drain. Her words are a lifeline, even if the knot in my stomach isn’t completely gone. “Together,” I whisper, echoing her.
“Yes,” she says firmly. “We figure it out together. We tell Becky where she stands. We make boundaries. We decide how this works. And we do it as a team. No secrets, no half-truths, no running away from it. Just… us.”
I nod slowly, letting the bag fall fully to the floor. I don’t want it anymore. Not yet. Lisa slides closer, resting an arm across my shoulders, and I let myself lean into her. It’s still scary, still uncertain, but at least I’m not facing it alone.
“I can handle this,” I murmur, more to myself than her. “As long as it’s you and me. No matter what she does, no matter what she says, it’s us that matters.”
Lisa kisses the top of my head, and for a moment the room doesn’t feel so heavy. “It is us, Carla. Always us. And I promise… whatever comes, we face it together. No one’s taking that from us.”
I squeeze her hand, feeling the rough warmth of reality settle between us. Becky may be back, and the past may have claws, but for now, we’re together, and that’s enough to fight for.