I learned that day how easily love can be shaken by ghosts you didn’t even know were still in the room. Those initials on the saddle were never about another man; they were about the parts of ourselves we keep quietly guarded, hoping time alone will soften them. When my husband finally admitted that the letters scared him—not because he doubted me, but because they reminded him of everything he’d missed in my “before”—I saw how fragile unspoken fears can be.

Instead of defending myself, I listened. I shared my own buried worries and the ways I’d tried to protect us by staying silent. That conversation didn’t erase our pasts, but it rewrote what they meant between us. Now, when I think of that ride, I don’t remember suspicion. I remember two people, knees touching on the couch, choosing to tell the whole truth and stay.