12. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
The country club terrace gleams with Sunday morning light, crystal and silver winking on white tablecloths like the whole world is conspiring to look beautiful while I fall apart inside.
I sit beside Jarec, performing the role of devoted wife with a smile that feels like broken glass against my teeth. My champagne goes flat in its flute. The croissants on my plate remain untouched, arranged in a careful composition of normalcy I can’t bring myself to disturb.
I haven’t looked at him directly since the bathroom.
I can’t.
Every time I close my eyes, I feel his fingers inside me. Hear his voice rough in my ear, telling me to come, telling me he won’t be able to stop if he starts. I see him walking away still hard, still dripping, still choosing distance over me.
And now I know why.
The scarf is still in my cardigan pocket at home. I’ve taken it out a dozen times, held it to my face, breathed in Victoria’s perfume until I wanted to scream. Proof. Evidence. The truth of what this marriage has always been.
“More champagne, darling?” Esther’s voice cuts through my thoughts, honeyed and sharp. She’s seated across the table, resplendent in pale blue, watching me with eyes that miss nothing. “You look like you could use it.”
“I’m fine, thank you.”
“Of course you are.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “The Fairweather women always are.”
I’m not a Fairweather woman, I think, keeping my expression pleasant, my hands steady around my water glass. I’m just the debt your son is paying.
The meal drags on. Courses arrive and depart.
Conversation flows around me - business dealings and charity events and the endless social mechanics of people who have never wondered where their next meal will come from.
I nod at appropriate moments. Laugh when laughter seems expected.
Play the part I’ve been cast in while something inside me quietly dies.
After the final course, I escape to the terrace overlooking the golf course.
The sea breeze carries salt and the promise of rain, and I breathe it in like medicine, letting it scour away the residue of polite conversation and pointed silences.
The sky is heavy with clouds, the same gray-green that precedes a storm.
I recognize it now. This coast has taught me to read weather the way I once read faces - looking for warnings, for shifts, for the moment before everything changes.
Footsteps behind me. I don’t turn.
“You’ve barely said two words all morning.”
Jarec’s voice is low, meant only for me. He moves to stand beside me at the railing, close enough that I can feel the heat of his body, far enough that we don’t touch. The careful choreography of our marriage, maintained even now.
“I didn’t realize you noticed.”
“I notice everything about you.”
The words land somewhere beneath my ribs, and I hate how much I want them to be true. I turn to look at him, surprised by the raw edge in his voice. His jaw is tight, his eyes searching my face with an intensity that makes my breath catch.
“Elizabeth-”
He reaches out. Tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, fingertips brushing my cheek with devastating gentleness. His eyes are soft for the first time since I’ve known him, soft and almost tender, and something in my chest cracks open despite everything I know.
He leans in.
I can feel his breath on my lips. Can see the question in his eyes, the hesitation that wasn’t there in the bathroom, the storm, any of the moments when he took what he wanted and walked away. This is different. This is asking. This is almost-
“There you are!”
Victoria’s voice shatters the moment like a stone through glass.
I jerk back. Jarec’s hand falls to his side. The mask slides back into place, cold and impenetrable, as if the last thirty seconds never happened.
Victoria glides toward us, silver dress catching the light, smile perfectly calibrated to wound. She positions herself just slightly too close to Jarec, her shoulder brushing his arm with practiced intimacy.
“Everyone’s waiting for you inside,” she says, her eyes finding mine and holding them with barely concealed triumph. “Your mother wants to discuss the foundation gala.”
Jarec glances at me. Something flickers in his expression - something that might be apology or regret or just the ghost of whatever he was about to do before she appeared.
Then he nods once at Victoria and walks inside.
Leaving me alone on the terrace with the wind and the sea and the ghost of an almost-kiss that will haunt me for days.
Victoria lingers.
“He always did have trouble with distractions,” she says softly, watching me with a small, satisfied smile. “Don’t take it personally, dear. Some men just need to be reminded where they belong.”
Then she follows him inside, heels clicking against the stone like a countdown to something inevitable.
I stand alone, heart pounding, skin still tingling where he touched me.
He almost kissed me. I’m sure of it. The softness in his eyes, the way he leaned in-
And then he walked away. Again.
He always walks away.
***
Two days later, Victoria corners me at the café on Main Street.
I’m alone, nursing a coffee I don’t want, staring out the window at the gray afternoon. The cottage apartments I searched are still bookmarked on my phone. I keep looking at them, imagining a life that’s entirely mine. Small. Quiet. Free of this constant, devastating hope.
I don’t see Victoria approach until she slides into the seat across from me, elegant as a blade.
“We need to talk.” She sets her designer bag on the table between us like a claim. “Woman to woman.”
“I don’t think we have anything to discuss.”
“Oh, but we do.” She pulls out her phone, swipes to something with manicured fingers, and turns the screen toward me.
The image hits me like a physical blow.
Jarec, shirtless, sprawled across rumpled sheets. His eyes are closed, his face slack with sleep or satisfaction or something in between. And beside him, partially visible, a woman’s bare shoulder, a fall of blonde hair against a pillow.
Victoria’s blonde hair.
“This was taken recently,” Victoria says, watching my face with hungry satisfaction, drinking in every micro-expression of devastation.
“He said you were just a convenient virgin. A placeholder.” She tucks the phone away, sliding it back into her bag with practiced ease.
“Someone to satisfy the debt while he finished what we started.”
She leans forward, savoring what comes next.
“You remember the night he canceled dinner on you? All those candles, all that effort?” Her smile widens.
“One phone call from me - my father, the hospital, a little family emergency - and he dropped everything. Left you sitting there and drove me to the hospital himself. Stayed with me half the night.” She sits back, satisfied.
“He’s never once had to choose between us, darling. Because there was never a choice.”
My hands are shaking. I fold them in my lap where she can’t see, grip them together until my knuckles ache.
“He still comes to me, you know.” Her voice is almost gentle, almost kind, dripping with false sympathy. “Still finishes with me. Whatever game you think you’re playing, you’ve already lost.”
The café noise fades around us. The clatter of dishes, the murmur of other conversations - all of it becomes distant, muffled, like I’m hearing it from underwater.
Convenient virgin. Placeholder.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m kind.” Victoria’s smile is poison wrapped in silk. “Because I think you deserve to know where you stand. And because watching you humiliate yourself trying to win a man who’s already chosen someone else is just…” She sighs, theatrical. “Too painful.”
She stands, smooths her skirt with the same gesture I’ve seen Esther make a hundred times.
“Do yourself a favor, Elizabeth. Walk away while you still have some dignity left.”
She leaves me sitting there, coffee growing cold, the image of that photograph burned into my brain.
***
I drive home in silence.
No music. No podcasts. No distraction from the thoughts circling like vultures in my skull.
Convenient virgin. Placeholder. He still finishes with me.
I think about the bathroom. His fingers inside me.
The way he said if I start, I won’t be able to stop - like restraint was costing him everything, like walking away was the hardest thing he’d ever done.
I believed that. I believed the roughness in his voice and the trembling in his hands and the way he tasted me on his fingers like I was something precious.
I think about the terrace. The almost-kiss. The softness in his eyes before Victoria appeared and everything shattered.
I think about the portrait hidden in my studio. The one that shows a man in shadow, unreachable, unknowable. The one I painted with love I shouldn’t feel for someone who treats me like a ghost.
Maybe that’s all he’ll ever be.
Maybe I’ve been fighting for something that was never mine to win.
The house rises before me, gray stone against gray sky. Fairweather estate, built to impress, designed to intimidate. I’ve lived here for months and I’ve never felt like I belonged.
Today, for the first time, I stop trying to.
The house feels less like a prison and more like a tomb as I park and walk toward the door. Every window is dark. Every stone accuses me of wanting too much, hoping too hard, believing in something that never existed.
Convenient virgin. Placeholder.
I go to my room without unpacking the groceries I meant to buy or changing out of my clothes. I sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall and think about what it would mean to leave.
Not to run. Not to flee in the middle of the night like a wounded animal.
But to walk out the front door with my head high and my dignity intact, choosing myself for the first time since I signed that contract.
The scarf is still in my cardigan pocket. I take it out. Smooth the silk between my fingers.
Victoria’s perfume. Victoria’s claim. Victoria’s victory.
I fold it carefully and set it on my nightstand.
Evidence. Proof. The truth.
Tomorrow, I’ll decide what to do with it.
Tonight, I let myself feel everything - the wanting, the rejection, the grief for something that never quite existed - and I don’t pretend any of it is fine.