Her voice dipped to such a low volume that Ben had to lean in to be sure he was able to hear her. Her words surprised him. The one consistency throughout is your unhappiness. Was that true? And more importantly, had it been that obvious? Ben hadn't been actively miserable for the entire year he and Melody had been married. There had been moments of levity, and even occasionally moments of tenderness between the two of them. Would it have been incorrect, though, to have said that he was generally unhappy? That was the whole crux of what he'd confessed to Melody before Christmas, which had lead to all of their fighting through the holiday season. He'd started off pretending to be in love with her, and in many vital ways he never felt like he'd been able to stop pretending. He was just putting it on every morning.

But not anymore. He'd stopped that in January, and now things were going to get better, for real. That had been his plan, anyway... In reality, he'd barely seen Melody. It was hard to build up a foundation for a real, genuine relationship when she couldn't drag herself out of bed half the time. He was still devoted to trying — he still felt he really did love her, or at least that he really could — but as the days wore on with no change in their relationship, nothing to build on, nothing solid for his feet to find purchase against in order to propel him forward down this path... he did worry that maybe the task was too big for him to accomplish. Certainly, he worried that he couldn't do it before the baby came, if this was going to be how things were for her entire pregnancy.

So, yes, he supposed she was right. He had been unhappy, and was still unhappy, despite his best intentions to patch things up. And she was far more perceptive than he had given her credit for. Ben supposed he had always known that about her, but it was one thing to know it in the abstract and another to hear her list out everything she had put together so starkly. Ben had never wanted to marry; he had never talked about Melody; there was no reason to suspect he would have agreed to elope with her. He didn't know what he was supposed to say to any of that, because she was right. He wouldn't have done that to Nova, and would almost certainly have challenged any man who had the gall to try. He had always maintained that marrying him would have ruined Melody's life, and it had. He'd known that, Nova knew that, and she knew that he knew — and apparently she knew him a little better than Aldous did, because she was unwilling to believe that he'd agreed to it.

She was right, but he was going to have to tell her she wasn't. He was going to have to lie to her, and the thought made his stomach sink.

"Oh, Nova, don't," he pleaded quietly. "Don't cry over me. I'm not worth it, honest." Maybe he could work up the courage to lie to her, and maybe he could try hard enough that he could sell it, but he couldn't do it while she was crying.