She sat across from us, as steady as always, her expression open, warm, waiting, like someone gently coaxing a sealed door to unlock.
"I want to try something different today," Dr. Mireille said, folding her hands in her lap. "I'd like each of you to recall a moment when you felt most loved by your partner. A moment that stayed with you because of how it made you feel."
The air shifted. My thoughts flicked through years like cards in a deck—holidays, hospital rooms, the birth of our children, the blur of ordinary Tuesdays. Then something surfaced. Not dramatic. Not grand. Just... lasting.
"I think I have one," I said softly.
She gave me a small, encouraging nod. "Go ahead, October."
I glanced at Thomas, and the memory warmed me from the inside. "It wasn't anything huge. It was after Alice was born. I'd been up all night, rocking her until my arms felt like they belonged to someone else. The baby wouldn't settle, and I remember sitting on the edge of the bed, hair still damp from a shower I couldn't even recall taking. I felt... scraped thin. Almost hollow. Like every part of me had been poured into her, and there was nothing left."
I paused, swallowing the knot rising in my throat. "Then you came in. You didn't say much at first. You just looked at me and then you started talking. You told me how proud you were of me, how much you loved me. You kept saying it, over and over in different ways. That I was a good mother. That you could see how hard I was trying, how much I was giving. I remember thinking... it's rare for you to say things like that out loud. But somehow, you knew I needed to hear them right then, even though I didn't ask. I didn't even know how to ask."
My voice trembled, the memory making my chest ache and warm all at once. "When I nodded, because I couldn't speak, you sat behind me on the bed. You wrapped your arms around me, your chest against my back, and just stayed. You didn't tell me to get some sleep, or that it would all be okay tomorrow. You didn't rush me past it. You just held me, kissed the side of my neck, and kept telling me I was doing a great job, even if I couldn't see it."
I let out a shaky breath. "In that moment, I felt loved. Not just for being your wife, or for holding it all together, but loved as me. I felt heard. I felt seen. And I felt... appreciated, in a way that sank all the way in."
For a second, my eyes caught his and I could see the softness there, the faint surprise that I had carried this moment for so long. And maybe that was the truth of it: it hadn't been grand or loud, but it had stayed.
"Thomas? Do you have a specific memory in mind?"
"Yeah," he said eventually, the word catching in his throat. "I remember one."
He shifted in his seat, shoulders tight at first, like it cost him something to let the words come. "There was this train model I used to build as a kid. Beth and I did it together, she never really cared about trains, but she did it for me. It wasn't about the model itself, really. It was... a way to get away. To shut the door on what was happening inside the house. The noise, the silence, the feeling that anything could break at any second."
His gaze dropped to his hands, fingers twisting together. "And then there was this day. My father... he lost his temper. He threw the whole thing. Smashed the carriages, bent the brass rails, crushed the tiny wheels and couplers—pieces so small they'd disappear into the carpet. He forbid them from coming into the house again. Just like that, they were gone. It felt stupid, but I held onto those broken bits longer than I probably should've."
For a moment, he looked away, and his voice went quieter, almost boyish. "I never really talked about it. Not even to Beth, not really. I don't think I ever told you what those trains meant to me. It was just something that lived in the background of who I am."

YOU ARE READING
October, The Odd Ones
RomanceOctober I loved him with everything I had. From the moment I was a teenager scribbling his name in my notebooks, to the nights I waited up for him with cold dinners and colder silences. He was my first everything-my husband, the father of my childre...