He'd said it before he'd really thought it through. He should have let her go. Melody turned to look at him from her position at the bottom of the stairs, and Ben hesitated. He felt weightless, all of the sudden. His stomach could have been outside of his body, with the way his nerves were feeling. What did he want to tell her?

Aldous knows.

He wished he had a drink. No, better still, wished he was already drunk — then he wouldn't have to think about this before he said it. He'd made so many mistakes over the past few days and he couldn't tell if this was about to be added to the list or not. She deserved to know, didn't she? It was the biggest betrayal of the past forty-eight hours, and of their entire marriage — no, their entire relationship, all the way from meeting her at the High Street shop up through today. He'd promised her he'd never tell anyone about that, that he would protect her from the consequences of her panicked actions on that night, and he'd failed. This wasn't the time to tell her, when she was already feeling betrayed and broken and hopeless, but if he didn't tell her now he wasn't sure he ever would, and she deserved to know what he'd done. He recognized that this was hard for her — harder for her, maybe, than it had ever been for him — and she was still trying to do the best she could for him, in the end. Keeping their marriage intact so that he could have access to their child, keeping herself in a loveless and miserable situation — she was doing that because she thought it was what he wanted. She deserved to know that he'd gone and broken his most fundamental promise to her. They might not have had traditional wedding vows, but this might as well have been his: I'll keep you safe, I'll keep your secrets.

Ben put one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other on the cushion next to him. He focused on the physical sensation of the fabric on his fingertips for a moment, trying to replicate the grounding sensation of Art's hands on his wrists earlier. He still felt adrift, but he could do this. "I —" he started, but his voice was shaking and he stopped, not trusting himself to be able to finish the sentence. I told Aldous. He knows everything. I'm sorry.

He tried to imagine what she would do, after he said it. Would she still be willing to stay? Or would she break in the face of it? Having to routinely see Aldous, knowing that he knew such a deeply personal thing about her, might have been too much to bear. If she wanted to leave, to divorce or separate, Ben didn't think he could have blamed her. It might be even worse if she stayed — the two of them living in this house, refusing to touch each other, and her so obviously in pain. This betrayal would stay with them. It would be in the air between them for every conversation, the subtext of every shared glance. It would poison their relationship as parents before their child was even born. Ben didn't think he could cope with that.

How were they going to claw their way out of this? Ben wanted better for his child than what Melody had just offered for them. Maybe she thought that could work, based on the example her own parents had set for her, but Ben wanted more than that. He wanted to teach his child things. He wanted family outings. He wanted laughter and love and life in their home. He didn't know if his own parents had really been in love — he'd thought so at the time, but had learned since that such things were rare in married life — but there had definitely been love, between them, and trust and respect. It had been obvious to him, growing up, and he was sure it would be equally obvious to his child if he and Melody lacked it.

"I love you," he said suddenly, rising from the sofa. "I want to make this work. I know you have no reason to think it can. I haven't given you any reason to think I could — that I could be a good husband," he admitted, cheeks flushing deeply. "But I want to. I love you."