She knew exactly what he was talking about, Ben was convinced. She probably just wanted to force him to say it. No coward's way out for him — nothing done easy. If he was going to decide to throw her to the wolves, she wanted him to own it. He supposed he did owe her at least that much, if they were going through with it. Which, of course, they couldn't. Wouldn't.

He knew that she must have been thinking about it just as often as he had, given the way they'd left the argument and the fact that nothing was even near resolved. A part of him had been hoping that she would have just answered the question straight away, no matter what her answer was. Maybe she would have considered the options and decided she really could be happier without him, and she would want this, and when he asked she'd just say yes, we are and it would remove the burden of committing to it from him. Or it could have gone the other way and she could have said no, please, I want to stay with you and he could have gone with that, too. This lack of resolution made him feel as though anything he said was at least half the wrong thing. How could he possibly divorce her with everything they'd already gone through? But how could they possibly stay married if they stood no chance of ever being happy — and how could they be happy if they both still felt the way they had before Christmas?

"The divorce," Ben said gingerly. "Do you want to go through with it?"