Chapter 7 #2
As the company grew, as the early prototypes became patents, and the patents became a multi-billion-dollar empire, the inventor had been entirely consumed by the executive.
The passion for the science had been replaced by a ruthless hunger for market dominance.
The warm, focused gaze had turned cold and calculating, always scanning the horizon for the next acquisition, the next threat, the next victory.
He had stopped looking at me, and started looking past me.
My right hand moved instinctively, my thumb dropping to stroke the base of my left ring finger.
The skin there felt entirely wrong. It felt naked, exposed, and frighteningly vulnerable. For so long, the wedding band had been a constant, reassuring anchor tethering me to him. Now, there was just a smooth, pale indentation where the metal used to sit.
I rubbed my thumb relentlessly across the bare skin, mourning the loss with a sharp, physical ache.
It felt exactly like a phantom limb. I had severed the marriage, I had walked away from the obligation, but the nerve endings were still firing, sending agonizing signals of pain for a part of myself that had been abruptly amputated.
I cried until my throat was entirely raw, until there was no moisture left in my body, until my head pounded with a dull, rhythmic ache.
The hours dragged on, an agonizing crawl through the darkest part of the night. The wind howled against the lighthouse windows, rattling the old glass panes in their frames, the only sound accompanying my jagged breathing.
I rolled onto my back, staring blindly up at the shadowed ceiling.
I was exhausted. I was so tired I felt physically sick, my stomach hollow and twisting with nausea. The damp cold of the room had settled deep into my joints, and the vast, echoing emptiness of the house was becoming unbearable.
I reached into the pocket of my coat and pulled out my phone.
The screen flared to life, the harsh, artificial light blinding in the dark room. I squinted, navigating past the lock screen, opening my contacts.
My thumb hovered over Reid’s name.
A desperate, pathetic urge clawed at my chest, begging me to just tap the screen.
Begging me to call him. If I called him, I knew exactly what would happen.
He would answer on the first ring. He would use his deep, authoritative voice to soothe me.
He would promise me that everything was going to be okay.
He would promise to make the time, to prioritize me, to fix the damage.
I could just drive back to Seattle in the morning.
I could pull up to the penthouse, walk back into the kitchen, slide the platinum ring back onto my finger, and pretend none of this had ever happened.
I could surrender to the warmth of his chest, bury my face in his neck, and let the powerful, wealthy CEO protect me from the terrifying reality of being entirely alone.
My thumb trembled, hovering a fraction of an inch above the glass. I was so close. It would be so incredibly easy to just yield.
But as the screen cast its pale glow across the dark room, a memory flashed violently behind my eyes.
I saw Victoria Albright standing in my kitchen. I saw the flawless cut of her designer blazer. I saw the precise, calculated angle of her head as she looked at me. And I saw the slow, warm, profoundly helpful smile spread across her painted lips as she casually destroyed the foundation of my life.
“He didn't have a spare second to breathe, let alone shop... I’m just glad I could take the burden off his plate today.”
The words echoed in the quiet bedroom, sharp and lethal, cutting through the haze of my grief.
If I called Reid right now, if I drove back to that penthouse and put that ring back on my finger, I knew exactly what I was agreeing to. I was agreeing to the terms and conditions of his empire.
I was agreeing to be managed.
I was accepting my position as a burden, an emotional liability that required periodic outsourcing to keep the CEO operating at peak efficiency.
I was agreeing to let a social-climbing consultant dictate the boundaries of my marriage.
I would never be the center of his universe again; I would just be a box on a schedule that he occasionally remembered to check.
The desperate urge to call him vanished, replaced by a cold, hollow resolve.
With quiet, absolute finality, I pressed the button on the side of the device. The screen went black, cutting off the artificial light and plunging the room back into shadows. I held the power button down until the phone vibrated in my palm, entirely shutting down the operating system.
I opened the top drawer of the nightstand and dropped the useless piece of metal inside. I shut the drawer with a definitive click.
I pulled the thick quilt up to my chin, wrapped my arms tightly around Reid’s faded gray t-shirt, and closed my eyes.
I didn't sleep. I lay entirely motionless for hours, listening to the relentless assault of the ocean against the rocks, trapped in a waking nightmare of my own creation.
Eventually, the absolute blackness outside the windows began to soften.
When dawn finally arrived, I threw the quilt back and sat up. My entire body ached, my muscles stiff and protesting as I swung my legs over the edge of the mattress. My eyes were swollen and gritty, my throat burning with a dry thirst.
I stood up, peeling off the wrinkled trench coat and tossing it onto a chair. I walked downstairs, the silence of the house pressing against my eardrums, and walked straight out the back door into the overgrown yard.
The blackberry brambles had grown up in recent weeks, becoming an untenable tangle of spiked vines.
They were an invasive species that needed to be removed.
The sharp, jagged thorns immediately bit into the soft skin of my palms, drawing tiny beads of bright red blood, but I didn't stop.
I welcomed the sharp, stinging pain. The physical agony in my hands was infinitely easier to process than the massive, suffocating void in my chest.
I tore at the weeds, ripping the rot out of the ground, my arms shaking with exertion. I pulled until the dirt was packed deep under my fingernails, until the skin on my palms was scraped and bleeding, until my muscles burned with a fiery, exhausting lactic acid.
I stayed on my knees in the gray morning light, tearing the overgrown yard apart with my bare hands, beginning the grueling, agonizing work of learning how to survive without my husband.