Chapter 13 #2
We both turned. A security guard stood several feet away.
Wonderful.
The guard glanced between us. "I heard some yelling."
Christopher sighed. "We're fine."
The guard looked unconvinced. I opened my mouth. Christopher beat me to it.
"My wife is threatening to leave me."
I choked. "What?!"
The guard's eyebrows shot upward.
Christopher pointed at me like he was presenting evidence in court. "She's very upset.”
"Hey! I am standing right here."
"She says she's not gonna go home with me."
"You know what? Let's just GO HOME,” I sighed.
My voice came out fast, clipped, betrayed by pure embarrassment.
"See?" Christopher said to the guard, completely calm. "Very upset.”
The guard nodded with the solemn understanding of a man who had witnessed many relationship disasters.
"Tough break, brother."
Brother? Absolutely not.
"No," I said immediately, pointing between them. "Don't encourage him.”
"Ma'am," the guard said gently, almost apologetic, "sometimes communication is important.”
I stared at him and Christopher stared very hard at the pavement now, his shoulders shaking more visibly.
The jerk was trying not to laugh.
"Oh, that's it," I said. "Both of you are impossible."
The guard smiled. Christopher finally lost the battle and laughed. And somehow that was worse. Because it was the first genuine laugh I'd heard from him in a while.
I pointed toward the parking lot. "Car."
Christopher straightened immediately. "Car?"
"Take me home before I commit a crime."
"Yes, ma'am."
The guard nodded approvingly. "Smart man."
I groaned under my breath.
Christopher's grin widened, still lingering like he couldn’t quite shut it off. And somehow, despite everything, we both started walking toward the car.
Before I could reach for the handle, Christopher stepped ahead and opened the rear door for me. I shook my head and slid into the back seat.
He slid in beside me and closed the door. “Home,” he told the driver.
I whipped my head toward Carlos, who was gripping the steering wheel with both hands and staring straight ahead like he was trying very hard to be invisible.
“Carlos.” I leaned forward. “Carlos, you are a good man. A kind man. A man who eats my breakfast every morning and tells me my eggs are the best he’s ever had. You saw what happened? You're on my side, right?”
Carlos glanced at us in the rearview mirror. His face was a battlefield between loyalty and self-preservation and a deep, fundamental desire to be anywhere other than this car.
“Mrs. Vale,” he said carefully, “I am a driver. I drive where I am told. I can't have opinions about what happens within the family. Nor have I ever had opinions about what happens in the back seat. I would like to retire with my pension intact.”
“Carlos,” Christopher said. One word. One syllable of authority that settled the debate.
Carlos drove.
I sat as far from Christopher as the back seat allowed, arms crossed, staring out the window while silently resenting the fact that his vulnerability had complicated my perfectly reasonable anger. That was the most infuriating part.
I chose this. I signed the paper. I said yes on a stage in front of three hundred people. Nobody to blame but myself.
The silence lasted four blocks. Five. Six. Seven. The car moved through downtown traffic and neither of us spoke. Too much had been said, and somehow not enough.
Then Christopher broke the silence. His voice was different. Quieter.
“I’m sorry about the restaurant.”
I didn’t look at him.
“I’m sorry about the kiwi. The fallout. Everything. I messed everything up and I know saying this doesn’t suffice but I’m deeply sorry.”
I stared at him. The remorse was written all over his face. Part of me wanted to accept his apology. Part of me wanted to slap him again.
“I don’t wanna forgive you,” I said.
He nodded. Like he’d expected that. As though he’d already decided he didn’t deserve forgiveness and was just checking to confirm.
“By the way, what is your problem with Dominic? You need to tell me and can't just keep avoiding my questions. Why am I banned from being near your brother?” I asked.
His expression went rigid. He stared at the window for so long I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he said, “Everyone who gets close to Dominic ends up choosing him.”
He thought I would choose his brother? For what?
I didn’t respond. I turned back to the window. The car pulled through the gate and up the stone driveway. We walked into the house separately, me three steps ahead, him behind me, and the distance between us felt like an ocean.
That evening, I was in the kitchen making tea when Christopher’s study door opened and I heard his voice, clipped and irritated, on the phone.
Ten minutes later, he appeared in the kitchen doorway. His tie was gone. His sleeves were rolled. He looked like a man delivering bad news because he was.
“We have a problem.”
“Another one?”
“Someone at the hospital parking garage filmed us.”
My stomach twisted. “Filmed us doing what?”
“Arguing. The part where the security guard thought we were having a marital dispute. Where you threatened to commit a crime.” He held my gaze.
“It’s online. The comments are divided between people who think it’s a passionate lovers’ quarrel and people who think you’re being held against your will. ”
I set my mug down. “And whose fault is that?”
“Miley—”
“Whose fault, Christopher?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.
Trisha arrived within the hour. She came through the front door wearing pajama pants, a blazer thrown over a sleep shirt, and the expression of a woman who had been pulled from her couch by a man who could not stop creating crises.
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” she announced to the room at large.
“I truly don’t. I left entertainment. I specifically left entertainment because I thought corporate work would be calmer.
I thought, Trisha, you’ve earned some peace.
No more scandals. No more midnight damage control.
No more explaining why a grown man did something unhinged in public.
” She dropped her bag on the counter. “I was a fool. A naive, optimistic fool.”
She looked at us, the three feet of hostile space between us.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He dragged me through the hospital and then embarrassed me in front of a security guard,” I said.
“She was leaving,” Christopher said.
“I was hailing a cab!”
“You were breaking the contract.”
“You broke my trust first!”
“You went to see Dominic—”
“Eleanor invited me!”
“I didn’t approve—”
“You don’t APPROVE my movements, Christopher, I am a human being, not a—”
Trisha held up both hands. “STOP. Both of you. Stop.”
We stopped. But the three feet of space between us was vibrating with everything we hadn’t finished saying.
Trisha looked at me. “He dragged you?”
“Death grip on my wrist. Like a caveman. In a public parking garage. He probably knew there were cameras.”
Trisha turned to Christopher. She looked at him the way a teacher looks at a student who just ate glue despite being told repeatedly not to do that.
“Christopher.” She said his name like she had used it too many times in crisis contexts. “Is this true? You caused a scene in a public place like that? Were you not aware there could be paparazzi?”
She delivered each question separately, building her case with the precision of a prosecutor.
“Which part of ‘public image management’ is unclear to you? Which specific syllable of ‘don't make headlines’ failed to sink in?”
“She was leaving,” he repeated, like that explained everything.
“So you went full caveman? In front of witnesses? In front of security cameras? In front of God and the internet?”
I pointed at Trisha. “Thank you. That’s exactly what I said.”
Trisha rubbed her temples with both hands and closed her eyes and stood there for a long moment, looking like a woman who was reconsidering every professional decision she’d ever made.
“I went to business school for this,” she murmured.
“I got an MBA. I could be in accounting. Accounting is peaceful. Nobody in accounting gets filmed arguing with their wife in a hospital parking garage. Nobody in accounting goes viral because a security guard accidentally became a marriage counselor. Accountants go home at five and watch television and nobody calls them at nine pm to fix anything.”
“Trisha,” Christopher said.
“Don’t ‘Trisha’ me. I’m mourning the career I could’ve had.
” She opened her eyes. Straightened. Put on a professional face.
“We need damage control. The video is spreading. The public needs to see a couple, not two people who are one argument away from filing for divorce. They need to see you together. Happy. Affectionate. Convincing.”
She looked between us. Christopher’s rigid posture, my crossed arms. Two people who looked less like newlyweds and more like opposing counsel.
“So!” she said, bright and cheerful. “Who’s ready to pretend to be in love?”
Christopher and I looked at each other across the kitchen.
Neither of us answered.
Trisha’s smile held. Barely.
“Great,” she said. “This is going to be so much fun.”