THE CAR RIDE home from the airport had been heavy with a blanket of dead silence. As Taylor drove, one hand draped over the steering wheel, Dave sat tensely in the passenger seat and hadn't turned his eyes away from the window since they'd left LAX.

He was partially grateful that Taylor wasn't saying anything or prodding to make conversation. There wasn't much to say. They had already beaten to death the only subject that Dave was able to focus on earlier that morning in Cabo.

So much for a relaxing trip.

Massaging his fingers across his jawline, Dave considered taking the cowardly route out of the situation that he'd tangled himself into. He wouldn't have minded hiding out at Taylor's place for the next several years of his life, too ashamed to even face the general population in fear that the word CHEATER was blaring like a neon sign across his forehead, but that wouldn't have solved anything.

He had fucked up. It was the worst that he'd ever fucked up, and he'd do done a fair share of that in his lifetime. Even though he knew that he'd fucked up, he still had no idea what he was coming home to.

Maybe the divorce papers would already be sitting on the counter, complete with neatly placed tabs indicating where he was meant to sign.

Dave had finally lost control of the situation despite having tried so hard to rein it in. There was nothing he could do or say to make it better and it was all because he had flown to Cabo and dug his own grave to fling himself into.

Even confiding in Taylor had been hard, which was a rarity in their friendship. After the first night that Dave had had sex with Louise, he'd gone straight to Taylor's room the next morning, his face blanched to a sickly white that wasn't just from his raging hangover.

They'd surmised that it would be fine. He'd been drunk and in pain over his and Reagan's confrontation from the day before, so he'd fucked up and done something stupid to impulsively try to make it better for himself. It had been one time.

After the second time though, Taylor hadn't known what to tell him that would result in a 'problem solved' kind of ending.

You fucked her AGAIN? he'd demanded in shock when Dave had practically crawled back to his room on that second morning, rambling lifelessly about making the same mistake twice.

There were no excuses for that second time. He'd been drunk again, already suffering from the spins early into the night, but that didn't excuse it. It had happened and it had sealed the envelope that held the outcome to his and Reagan's future together.

Do I tell her? Dave had asked in an empty voice, sitting  on Taylor's hotel room balcony and smoking his fourth cigarette that morning.

You said she's divorcing you, Taylor had replied uncertainly, tapping ashes off the end of his own cigarette. So maybe don't, unless you want this whole thing to end with your dick getting chopped off.

It was strange for Dave to confront that he couldn't find it in his heart to agree with Taylor. Pretending it had never happened appeared on a surface-level to be the best option, namely if Dave's theory had been correct and Reagan was indeed going to leave him.

But even then, he still felt the need to tell her. Not telling was just the same as lying, and even if his arrival home was met with Reagan's bags sitting packed in the doorway, he couldn't let her go without knowing that he'd made his bed, too. He had done more than his fair share of contributing to the break-up.

For the first time in eight years, he had slept with someone else.

Taylor pulled up to Dave's winding driveway, putting the car in park and turning halfway in his seat to look at him. He leaned an elbow over the steering wheel and sighed.

"I wish I had better advice for you, dude," he said. "I really do."

"I've got to tell her," Dave replied hollowly, unable to face the thought of lying to Reagan's face.

"You need to wait. Don't go busting down the door, announcing that you fucked someone else. And don't say right away that it was Louise. Figure out her plans first and go from there."

"You really don't think I should tell her even if she's already given up?"

Taylor offered him a small shrug. "If it were me? I probably wouldn't. I mean, I know you still love her and all, so think about it like this — do you wanna' cause her any more pain?"

Dave resented the question but knew it'd been fair to ask. "No."

"Then there you go."

That answer wasn't good enough. It solved nothing for him, nor did it even begin to bridge the gap towards trying to guess what awaited him. He looked out the passenger window again at his house.

She was in there. In what kind of state, he didn't know. Despite having wrecked things beyond belief, he still thought of her as the love his life. He'd tried so hard to unintentionally hurt her but had wound up doing it anyway.

Perhaps Taylor was right. It was pointless to tell Reagan what he'd done when she'd already made her mind up about him. It had killed Dave enough to bear witness to the slow change she'd made over the year, turning against him when they'd been meant to be on the same team as they'd always been. There was no need to make that worse for either of them.

He got out of the car and grabbed his things from the trunk, feeling Taylor's eyes on him through the rear window. His generous lack of judgement had been the only thing to keep Dave sane on the way back to Los Angeles.

As he slammed Taylor's trunk shut and turned around, the first thing he saw was Gracie running at him head-on down the driveway, screeching her cry of 'Daddy!' that he'd come to cherish.

Dave dropped his suitcase and bent down in time to sweep Gracie into his arms. For just one flicker of a moment, he was able to forget everything that had transpired over the past four days. Having Gracie's face nuzzled into his chest and her arms roped tightly around his neck was the closest thing to relief that Dave had felt in a long time.

"Hey, Gracie girl," he said, swaying her around in his arms as he heard Taylor pull away from the curb behind them. "I missed you."

"Me and Mommy missed you too, Daddy."

Her and Mommy?

Dave looked back at the house and went rigid. He saw Reagan standing by the front door, pulling at the hand holes of what looked to be one of his sweatshirts. When their eyes met, she was suddenly running.

He set Gracie down to her feet quickly, bracing himself as Reagan sprinted down the driveway at him. In a maddening blur of seconds, he deduced that only one of two scenarios was about to play out. She was either getting a running head start so that she could wind her fist back and sock him in the face like he deserved, or she was going to —

When she reached him, she nearly tripped forward as she pushed herself up on the balls of her feet and threw her arms around him. Dave staggered back from the force of her hug, his hands landing lightly on her waist though he was unsure of whether or not she wanted him to hold her. He was too stunned to make up his mind.

She twisted her fingers into his hair as she buried her face into the warmth of his neck, kissing him once on his throat in a way that made him shiver.

Dave blinked rapidly, trying to regain his balance as she clung to him.

"I'm so glad you're home," she whispered.

One word reverberated throughout his head, bouncing off the walls of his brain so powerfully that he may as well have screamed it from the top of his lungs.

NO.

This wasn't happening. Not to him. His luck couldn't have possibly gotten any worse than it had already persistently been that year.

Reagan drew back and took his face between her hands, kissing him firmly. It was like the way she'd used to kiss him, hungrily and desperately and with the force of someone who was very much in love. She'd always been able to convey every glimmer of her feelings with one kiss and she was doing it then, communicating with him through the perfect shape of her lips.

It was too damn hard to resist. His first reaction was to kiss her back, squeezing his hands around her waist as somewhere in the distance, he swore he heard a hallelujah chorus being played.

He'd waited so long for this. He'd never counted on kissing her like that again unless he was dreaming of it, and yet she'd been the one to initiate it, throwing herself into his arms without needing him to convince her that she belonged there.

Reagan had made up her mind. She hadn't fallen out of love with him. She still wanted him. His worst nightmare had subsided and he had her back, ringing in another one of his homecomings the way she'd used to, with overflowing love and excitement.

I love you so fucking much, he thought.

And then he remembered.

The weekend. Cabo. The headache of having been drunk for two days straight. Louise. A four poster bed with him and her in it, rolling around frantically as they interchanged who was on top of who.

Dave released Reagan from his grip and he stiffened, jerking abruptly away from her. She stumbled when he let her go, raising her eyes to his with a look of confusion that contorted quickly into hurt.

Even though he'd been waiting for this moment to happen since January, he all at once wished that it was nothing but a sick joke. Either a sick joke or an acid trip gone horribly wrong. If it wasn't going to be either of those things and if she had really and truly forgiven him in his absence . . .

The consequence of the mistake he'd made suddenly loomed so much larger, making him ill.

"Daddy, me and Mommy made you dinner," Gracie chirped. She tugged on Dave's listless hand and stared up at him with her clear blue eyes.

He registered that Gracie was speaking to him and knew that he had to pull it together for her sake. In the realm that was his daughter's candy-colored world, parents didn't get divorced and fathers didn't cheat on mothers.

I fucking cheated on Reagan.

He suddenly felt close to passing out on the sidewalk. Maybe even dropping dead.

"What did you guys make?" he asked, hearing for himself how frail he sounded.

"Pulled pork sandwiches," Reagan said. Her voice tentatively soft, even a little worried, as she looked at Dave. "They're probably not as good as yours, though."

She reached out to grab his hand and Dave moved it away before she could link their fingers, clenching it behind his back in an accidentally standoffish manner.

He couldn't let her touch him. He didn't want to, now understanding the impact of what he'd done and everything that it was going to cost him.

Pain seared it's away across her face, distorting every beautiful feature that she possessed and Dave knew.

He knew he was going to have to tell her.

___________________

Reagan couldn't stop her hands from shaking all throughout dinner. Each time that she raised her sandwich to her mouth, she nearly dropped it into her lap with the intensity of how hard her fingers were trembling.

She could see that Dave was watching her, though she only glanced at him from the corners of her eyes. Gracie sat between them, chattering away happily and she was thankful that Dave had taken the lead in being responsive towards her. He answered all of her typical random questions and sprinkled an appropriate amount of 'oohs' and 'aahs' around Gracie's anecdote about what she'd done at school that day.

Reagan knew she wouldn't have been able to show that kind of enthusiasm herself. She was busy waiting, locked in the steel cage that Dave had shunted her into the moment that he'd gotten back home.

She was too late. She could tell as soon as he'd pulled away from her when she'd kissed him and how he hadn't let her hold his hand. It'd only gotten worse as they'd sat down for dinner. So far that night, he'd been doing everything in his power not to be alone with her. It was a good arrangement for Gracie since she got all of his attention, but Reagan was panicking.

This outcome had been the one she'd dreaded. All the months she had spent drawing lines in the sand between them was finally coming back to haunt her. It was ripping to her pieces, but she didn't feel like it'd be right to blame him. She acknowledged that she'd put him through hell with her stagnantly cold behavior and it should have been predictable that he'd realize all of that in Cabo.

Since they had sat down to eat, she'd come up with at least ten different scenarios of what might have happened that weekend. They centered mostly around the idea that Dave had opened up to his bandmates and they'd in turn encouraged him to forget Reagan, to put the drastic downfall of their relationship aside.

It would have hurt her to find out that they'd done that. Reagan had always loved everyone in the Foo Fighters and not just because they were an extension of their frontman whom she was married to. She couldn't speak for Franz, but she'd always presumed that Nate had loved her like a sister and that Taylor had counted her as a close friend.

One of the many other alternatives that didn't involve his friends was that Dave had done some thinking of his own in Mexico. Reagan imagined him alone in his hotel room, sipping thoughtfully on a beer while he'd pondered over how much he didn't deserve to be cast aside so cruelly.

He'd always been a smart guy. It wouldn't have been that much of a shock if he'd figured out for himself that it wasn't necessary for him to put up with her actions.

In every scenario, Reagan came to the same conclusion that she was to blame. Regardless of what had transpired, the terrible crowning jewel of her problem now was that Dave was home and acting like it was nauseating to be in her presence.

So, his anger when he'd left hadn't been exaggerated. He'd truly reached his breaking point.

As they all finished dinner and Reagan began collecting their plates, she wondered how he would do it. Would he wait and tell her the next morning that he was leaving? Or would he tell her that night, only to go upstairs, pack his bag and crash at a friend's — likely Taylor's — place?

She listened from the kitchen while Dave took it upon himself to help Gracie with her homework, straining to hear his voice as he talked softly. The addition and subtraction that they were going over made her somehow more anxious, probably because she was questioning if it was a moment that would forever become a memory.

If they were really over . . . she would never listen to Dave go over Gracie's homework with her again. Their unit of three would be split with Gracie straggling in the middle and she would never get to watch from her perfect vantage point as he helped raise her, shining in his role as a father.

Reagan wiped down the last of the counters and eyed the dishes disdainfully. They weren't going to get cleaned if she kept funneling all of her energy into a fast-brewing panic attack.

She checked the time — Gracie needed to get ready for bed.

Her stomach constricted when she realized that that meant being alone with Dave and testing the waters of their solitude to see if he was going to do it that night.

If he was going to leave her.

"Gracie," she said, walking nervously up to them both, "it's time to get ready for bed."

"I want Daddy to help me get ready for bed."

"I'll take her," Dave said without looking at Reagan. He slid his chair out from the dining room table and took Gracie's hand.

When they were both out of sight upstairs, Reagan turned on the spot and raked both hands back through her hair.

What the fuck is happening?

Too anxious to remain still, she paced near the staircase at first, listening to the sounds of footsteps creaking overhead in an attempt to estimate when Dave was coming back down. When the footsteps ceased but he still didn't reappear, she assumed that he was laying with Gracie in bed, singing her sleep as he'd done since she was a baby.

She couldn't take it anymore.

Reagan redirected herself to the kitchen and started on the dishes that she'd left to the wayside, flipping the faucet on extra hot and scrubbing each plate furiously. She'd made it through three of them, as well as all of the cooking utensils, when she sensed that she wasn't alone in the kitchen anymore. Someone was standing behind her.

She turned around, her hands dripping with soapy water, and saw Dave lingering in the entryway to the kitchen. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring at her, his eyes filled with a mix of pity and heartache.

Reagan stopped breathing and had to command herself to inhale so as not to faint.

This is it, she thought in terror.

"Hi," he said quietly.

Shaking from head to toe, Reagan swallowed back the lump in her throat.

"Hi."

"Can I . . . can I talk to you?"

A fierce, overwhelming need to make one last ditch effort to save them both from resorting to a stupid choice shot coursed through Reagan. Wiping her wet hands on her jeans, she rushed to Dave and placed them on his chest, resisting the urge to slump defeatedly into him.

"I'm sorry," she said, gasping out the words, "for everything. I was stupid to shut you out when I should have been opening up to you about everything I was feeling."

Dave's mouth quivered. "Reagan-,"

"Don't hate me," she pleaded, furling the front of his t-shirt into her fists. "Don't leave. I want to work this out so badly. I-I-I'll be honest with you, I won't h-hide anything."

He laid his hands over hers as if he was about to pry her off of him and Reagan gripped tighter, taking a deep breath to correct the sudden nervous stutter she'd developed. Her eyesight was blurred by tears, making it difficult to see his face.

"I've never begged for anyone in my life and I swore that I never would. I'll beg for you, though. I know it'll be worth it because I know that you're worth it."

"Reagan," he whispered roughly. Her name sounded thick when he said it, like he was fighting tears of his own, and he timidly laid his hands at her neck.

"Tell me you love me," she said in a single breath, closing her eyes and standing on the tips of her toes so that their noses skimmed. She stayed there without even flinching, her eyes still closed. "Tell me you love me and that it's okay."

"I . . . I love you."

He'd neglected to fulfill the second part of her request, but Reagan didn't care. She went to kiss him and felt a small thrill of relief when he kissed her back.

It didn't last long before he was pushing her away again, lowering his head.

"I can't. We can't," he mumbled.

No, no, no, no, she chanted to herself. She walked backwards until she bumped into the sink, gripping  her hands around it to keep herself upright as her knees threatened to give out.

"We can't?" she whispered in disbelief.

Dave covered his mouth with one hand, holding it there until he dragged it down slowly and revealed the entirety of his ghostly pale face.

"I slept with someone else."

Every muscle in Reagan's body tightened.

"What?"

"In Mexico. I . . . I slept with someone else. It was Louise. Louise Post."

She recognized the name from a conversation shared between them years ago, but everything that Dave was saying sounded like it was being broadcasted to her from miles away. It was dreamlike to hear him confess to the last conceivable thing that he'd ever do.

"You had sex with her?" Reagan asked. Surprisingly to even her, there was no anger in her voice. She wasn't exactly caught in a state of calm, but she wasn't able to reach inside of herself to touch into the rage that she should have been feeling.

There wasn't an identifiable emotion to accurately describe how she felt.

"Twice," Dave said. He closed his eyes and clasped both hands behind his head, ducking his face down.

"Oh."

Reagan was aware that everything was crumbling around her. Every hope that she'd had for his return going smoothly didn't even seem real to her anymore, not in light of his confession. Her hope now seemed like a wilted flower left to die in a vase on someone's windowsill. It was pathetic.

She was still struggling to believe that it was even real. Of all the things he could have ever done to her, she'd never stopped to consider that he was capable of cheating. She waited for him to break into a smile, laughing and clutching his stomach as he'd say, 'I can't believe you fucking fell for that, Reags.'

He didn't laugh. He didn't smile. He stared at her in horror, looking unrecognizable.

"Reagan, I didn't fucking mean for it to happen," he began, raising the pitch of his voice with an urgency. "Don't you believe for a fucking second that I planned for this to happen. I would never do that to you. I don't even know why the fuck I did it."

Reagan stared at the tiled kitchen floor wordlessly, concentrating on the specks of dust as a means to make herself believe that she was actually conscious. If it hadn't been for the sound of her own heartbeat thudding audibly in her ears, she would have assumed that she'd died and been cast straight into hell, a specific ring of it that had been designed out of her nightmares.

"I thought you were divorcing me," Dave said. He closed the gap between them and tried to cradle Reagan's face in his hands, but her head was too limp and her neck rolled lifelessly as he tried to get her to look at him.

"You have no idea what I imagined was happening. I thought you didn't love me anymore. I was fucking lost and depressed and I thought that I'd lost you. Nothing made any sense."

He grabbed her shoulders, shaking her gently, but she refused to look at him. She couldn't.

"I was drunk," he begged. "I drank too much and I got in my head and I made a stupid decision, the worst decision of my life, and I'm so sorry. I don't want anyone else but you. Do you know that? There's no one but you."

Reagan twisted away from him and faced the sink. Feeling close to catatonic, she started washing the dishes again, unsure of what else to do.

Scream? Cry? Hurl the pan she had in her hand at his head?

Dave hugged her tightly from behind, pressing his face into the back of her neck and into her hair. She could feel a wetness on the nape of her neck that felt like tears, transferred from his face to her skin.

"Please talk to me, baby. Say something."

"There's nothing to say."

"You know that's not true. I need you to listen to me. I need you to know that I love you more than anything. I didn't set out to hurt you and I never would have done that shit if I hadn't been so fucked in the head. I just thought that . . . you were already gone."

Reagan finished scrubbing the pan and wedged it into the drying rack. She pulled once away from him and he didn't let go — when she tried again, the next time with more force, his arms dropped to his sides like he'd been electrocuted.

"Don't do this, Reagan," he said shakily. "I need you. I can't lose you."

She started out of the kitchen and paused to look at him before she walked away, folding her arms over her chest.

"I'm going to bed," she said. "Goodnight."