Chapter 10 Only the First Day #3
"You were hot. I loosened your shirt." She says it as if I've asked why she opened a window.
"And you couldn't step away when Sera asked?" I stand, leaving the desk between us. "You called her there. Why wouldn't you let her near me?"
"I was helping you." Her voice has gone cold. "The way I've been helping you for months, while your wife played with her perfumes and left you to manage the crisis alone."
There it is. The dismissal I should have noticed months ago, every time Marisol mentioned Sera's work with that faint note of condescension. Every time she implied that my wife's ambitions were trivial compared to the real business of the estate.
"Sera's perfume work isn't playing." I put her untouched folder on the corner of the desk nearest her. "It's skilled, it's serious, and I should have been supporting it instead of acting as though it could always wait."
"I never said it didn't matter." But her voice wavers slightly, and I know I've hit something true.
"You just called it playing." Her folder is between us now, the work that used to settle every argument. "Was that what you told her when she came here?"
"She wanted me out." Marisol's fingers close around the folder. "After I'd stayed with you all evening."
"She's my wife." I hear how late the words are. They should have settled this before Thursday. "Did you call her because I needed her, or because you wanted her to see you here?"
The question hangs in the air between us. Marisol's face goes through several expressions before settling on something hard and bitter.
"She needed to see who was here for you.
" The words come out sharp, cutting. "That you don't want her anymore.
That you'd rather be with someone who understands your work, your responsibilities.
I've been waiting for you to realize it, but you're too loyal, too stubborn, too determined to make your childhood romance work even when it's obviously over. "
"I never stopped loving her." I hear how badly I want that to be enough. "I let you mistake my absence for something else. That doesn't make it true."
"Love." Marisol laughs, a harsh sound that echoes off the walls.
"Love doesn't fix anything. I've watched you for months, Rafael.
You don't look at her the way you used to.
You don't think about her when she's not in front of you.
I've been right here, making myself indispensable, and you never even noticed. "
"I noticed." The admission costs me something, but I owe her that much honesty.
"I noticed you were always there, always willing to work late, always ready with solutions.
I told myself it was professional dedication.
Maybe I was lying to myself. But I never wanted a relationship with you.
I should have made that clear long before now. "
Marisol's face twists. "She's leaving you anyway. Whatever happened Thursday night, she was already halfway out the door. I just helped her see what she was too blind to notice."
"You helped yourself." I move toward the door and open it wide. "This conversation is finished. I need you to leave. We'll discuss work tomorrow, when I've decided what comes next."
"You can't do that." Her voice rises sharply. "We have contracts, obligations..."
"Those can wait until I've thought this through." I hold the door wider. "Right now, leave my office. Don't contact Sera. You've involved her enough."
Marisol stares at me for a long moment, her eyes glittering with anger and something that might be tears. Then she picks up her folder and walks to the door, stopping just before she passes through.
"She's not going to forgive you." Her voice is low, venomous. "Even if you explain everything, even if you prove I set up what she saw, she's not going to take you back. You gave her months of neglect before I ever touched you. That's not my fault. That's yours."
"I know." I meet her eyes without flinching. "But I'm going to try anyway."
She leaves. I listen to her car start and pull away, and then I close the office door and lean against it, my heart pounding.
Marisol set me up. She used my fever, my vulnerability, my own weakness to stage a scene that would drive my wife away.
But she was right about one thing: the setup only worked because I'd already failed Sera a hundred times before.
The months of absence, the broken promises, the slow erosion of trust. That was all me.
I can't undo it. I can't take back the dinners I missed or the conversations I didn't have or the work I prioritized over the woman I love. But I can start doing better. I can stop expecting her to arrange her life around whatever I decide to do next.
I pull out my phone and call my operations manager.
It takes five minutes to hand off the most urgent tasks, to explain that I need a few days away from the office to handle personal matters.
He doesn't ask questions. Maybe he already knows, the way everyone seems to know when a marriage is falling apart.
By late afternoon, I have finished the few things that need my attention. Before I leave, I almost send a request to have Sera's workshop packed for her, then delete it. She arranged that room herself. I can ask what she wants done with it.
With the work handed over, I get in my car and drive back to the Castille estate.
***
The gate is still closed when I arrive. This time I don't expect it to open.
I park on the road and get out, walking up to the iron bars that separate me from the house where Sera grew up. The courtyard is empty, the windows dark in the late afternoon light. Maybe no one is home. Maybe they're all inside, waiting for me to give up and leave.
I ring once. Amadeo comes out onto the path, stopping well inside the gate.
"She hasn't asked to see you." He keeps his voice low enough that I have to move closer to hear him. "You had your conversation yesterday."
"Could you ask if she'll read a message?" I hold up my phone, then lower it. He knows perfectly well I can call his daughter. "I found out something she should know."
"You can send it. She can decide whether to answer." He leaves the gate locked and goes back toward the house.
I send a single message asking whether she'll speak to me.
While I wait, I look up at the window that belongs to her childhood bedroom.
I used to stand below it calling her name until she appeared and told me I was going to wake everyone.
She'd come down with her shoes in her hand, trying not to laugh.
How did I become someone her father needs to keep outside?
I give myself a few minutes. If she doesn't answer, I have to leave.
Movement in the window. The curtain shifts, and then I see her, her face framed by the glass, looking down at me with an expression I can't read.
I raise my hand. She doesn't wave back, but she stays at the window. I send the one thing I came to tell her.
Marisol admitted she wanted you to see her with me. I asked her about your call. You were right about what she was doing.
I watch the window. After a moment, I see her look down at her phone. Her expression doesn't change.
I start a second message, trying to explain how much I didn't know. Halfway through, I stop. Sera already knows what she saw. She lived through it while I slept.
I delete the unfinished explanation and wait.
Then she reaches up and opens the window.
"You came back." Her voice carries across the distance, clear and tired. "I told you to leave."
"I won't stay if you want me to go." I keep my hands off the gate. "Did you read what I sent?"
"I read it." She stays behind the sill, making no move to come downstairs. "I didn't need her to confess to know she wanted me gone. And knowing you believe me doesn't undo the rest, Rafael."
"I know." I look up at her, at the face I've loved since before I knew what love meant, and feel my heart crack open. "I want to earn your trust back. However long that takes. I'm not asking you to decide tonight."
"And if it takes forever?" She leans against the window frame, her arms crossed over her chest. "If I never forgive you? If the divorce goes through and we end up strangers?"
"Then I'll have to live with that." I have to force the words out. Every part of me wants a promise she has no reason to give. "But I still want our marriage. I want you. That hasn't changed."
She's quiet for a long moment. The sunset light catches her hair, turns it copper and gold, and I remember all the times I watched her from this exact spot, back when waiting for her was the easiest thing in the world.
"This doesn't change anything." She draws the curtain aside so it no longer brushes her cheek. "One speech at a gate doesn't erase what you did."
"I know." I step back from the gate. There is no reason for her to believe a word of this yet. "This is only the first day."
"Then start by going home when I ask you to." She holds the window open, waiting to see what I'll do.
I want to stay until she softens. I want to call her name the way I did when we were children and know she'll come running.
Instead, I take my keys out. She watches me reach the car before she closes the window.
I came here hoping she would ask me to stay.
If I make her ask me to leave again, I deserve to lose her.