Page 8 of Wreckage and Rain

That’s what makes the ground drop out from under me.

Not the wine. Not the candle. Not even Cheyenne reaching across the table to squeeze his hand before drawing hers back again, quick and soft and practiced.

It’s him.

He looks loose. Open. Lit from the inside.

For months, I’ve gotten the other version. The man who scrolls through dinner with his eyes fixed somewhere behind my head. The man whose shoulders never come down. The man who enters every room already halfway gone.

He saves that man for me.

This one is for her.

My husband is sitting across a candle in our restaurant, giving another woman the best version of himself. The version I married. The version I’ve missed so much I lit candles on a weeknight, as though I could call him back with garlic and wine and a table set for two.

And he is spending that version of himself on her.

I could go home.

The thought comes easily. Walk away. Say nothing. Add tonight to the pile with everything else. Reheat the sauce. Pretend I never saw them.

But some part of me, the part Vivienne has spent years trying to teach me to fold up and hide, finally says no.

Not tonight.

I am not going to stand in the dark and watch my husband through a window, then go home and eat alone like a woman who agreed to disappear.

So I walk inside.

The hostess looks up.

“I’m joining someone. My husband is already seated.”

I don’t wait for her to lead me.

Cheyenne sees me first.

I watch the change happen, and it might be the most educational two seconds of my marriage.

Her smile vanishes. Her chin lifts from her hand. Her arm retreats to her side of the table, where it should have been all night. Her spine straightens. Her face settles into something smooth and professional.

She does all of it before Colt notices me.

Fast. Complete.

Like a woman pulling a fire door shut.

By the time he follows her gaze, there is nothing in front of him but a colleague sitting politely in a chair.

She is so good at hiding it that the hiding becomes its own confession.

And I am the only person at the table who understands what I just saw.

Colt turns.

His face changes in stages, and I know I will remember the order for the rest of my life.

Surprise.