Page 39 of Wreckage and Rain
“I thought you were upstairs.”
“You didn’t go upstairs.”
Silence.
“You didn’t call. You didn’t text. You didn’t open the bedroom door. You came home, assumed I was somewhere out of your way, and went to sleep.”
“I didn’t know.”
“That’s the point.”
The words come out louder than I mean them to.
“You don’t know where I am. You don’t know what I’m doing. You don’t know when I stop coming home.”
I take a breath, but it doesn’t help. Everything I’ve been holding back is already here now, crowding the room with us.
“You’ve been coming home later every week for three months. You’ve canceled four dinners with my family. You canceled our anniversary in March.”
“That was Calloway. I couldn’t control—”
“There is always a name.”
He stops.
“Calloway. The deal. Your father. A client emergency. There is always something important enough to take you away from me, and somehow I’m the only thing you expect to still be here when you’re done.”
“That isn’t how I see you.”
“It’s how you treat me.”
His face folds slightly.
I almost stop.
That is the old instinct. See his pain, soften mine. Make the truth easier for him to hold.
Not tonight.
“At every event we’ve attended for the last six months, I’ve stood alone while Cheyenne stayed beside you.”
His expression shifts.
There it is.
The first brick in the wall.
“At your parents’ dinner two weeks ago, your mother seated her next to you and put me at the other end of the table.”
“My mother made the seating chart. I didn’t—”
“I was eight feet away from my own husband at a family dinner.”
“Summer—”
“She squeezed your hand.”
He goes quiet.
