Chapter 22
Audrey
Cowardice is a quiet, heavy thing.
Audrey sat on the floor of her darkened home office, her back pressed flush against the cool plaster of the wall. The house was asleep, settled into the deep, velvet hush of a Tuesday night. Outside her window, the streetlights cast long, distorted shadows across the manicured lawns.
She stared at her phone, the screen glowing with a pale, unforgiving light. The device felt as heavy as a lead weight in her palm.
She could have driven to his guesthouse.
She could have knocked on his door, stood in his narrow hallway, and delivered the news to his face.
It was what he deserved. But her analytical mind had run the terrifying simulation, and the data was irrefutable: if she looked into Nathaniel’s hazel eyes, if she smelled the dark, intoxicating scent of bergamot and rain, or if he reached out to touch her, her resolve would entirely dissolve into ash.
She would choose the fire over the grueling, agonizing work she had just committed to.
So, she chose the coward’s path. She chose the phone.
Audrey took a slow, shuddering breath, filling her lungs with the sterile, air-conditioned oxygen of her house, and pressed his name.
He answered on the second ring, his voice a low, warm rumble that instantly tightened the agonizing knot in her chest.
"I was wondering if I was going to hear from you today," Nate murmured. The ambient sound of a page turning whispered through the speaker. He sounded entirely relaxed, completely unaware that the ground beneath them was about to give way. "How was the meeting with Jerome?"
Audrey closed her eyes, resting the back of her head against the wall. The tears she had withheld all day suddenly burned violently at the corners of her eyes.
"He offered a complete surrender, Nate," Audrey whispered, her voice trembling over the cellular line. "Uncontested dissolution. Primary residence for Lily. He walks away from the equity in his agency. No trial, no fighting."
The rustling on the other end of the line instantly stopped. A heavy, charged silence filled the space between them.
"That’s..." Nate started, his tone shifting into immediate, protective caution. "Audrey, that’s everything you wanted. What’s the catch?"
"Ninety days," she choked out, the words tasting like poison.
"He bought ninety days. I had to sign a stipulation agreeing to three months of intensive, joint marriage counseling.
If I give him that, and I still want out on day ninety-one, he signs the papers immediately.
If I refused... he was going to drag me and Lily into a year-long, bloody litigation. "
The silence that followed was not the comfortable, tethering quiet they had shared over the past two weeks. It was a suffocating, tectonic silence.
When Nate finally spoke, the warmth had been completely stripped from his voice, replaced by a raw, vibrating frustration.
"Three months," Nate repeated, the syllables sharp and clipped. "He leveraged his money to force you back into a room with him."
"I know," Audrey pleaded, her fingers curling tightly into the fabric of her jeans.
"I know exactly what he did. But Nate...
I had to say yes. For Lily, to spare her the crossfire of a trial.
And for my own absolute certainty. I have to know that I exhausted every single avenue before I bury a ten-year marriage.
If I don't look this in the eye, I will carry the ghost of it for the rest of my life. "
Nate exhaled, a long, ragged sound that scraped directly against her bleeding heart. He understood the logic. He possessed a brilliant mind, and he could see the undeniable, pragmatic math of her decision. But the emotional reality was devastating.
"Why are you telling me this over the phone, Audie?" he asked softly, the frustration giving way to a profound, wounded ache. "I'm ten minutes away."
A single tear spilled over, tracking hot and fast down her cheek.
"Because if I saw you... if I looked at you, I wouldn't have the strength to say the words.
You have been my oxygen, Nate. You pulled me out of the dark.
And looking you in the eye to tell you that I'm walking back into a room with the man who broke me. .. it would destroy me."
"It's destroying me to hear it," Nate admitted, the brutal, unvarnished honesty tearing through the line. "I want to protect you from him. I want to pull you out of the wreckage, Audrey, not watch you voluntarily walk back into the fire."
"I am so sorry," she wept quietly into the receiver, entirely consumed by the guilt of hurting the one person who had offered her a sanctuary. "I don't expect you to wait for me in limbo. It’s too much to ask. It’s unfair to you."
"Don't do that," Nate commanded, his voice suddenly fierce, entirely rejecting her attempt to push him away. "Don't write the end of the equation for me. I am a grown man. I knew exactly what I was walking into when I pulled you into my house."
Audrey’s breath hitched. She swiped fiercely at her damp cheek. "But what about you, Nate? We never even talk about your divorce. We have been so entirely consumed by my crisis, by my ruins, that I haven't even asked what your timeline looks like. You're bleeding, too."
"My divorce is just a war of attrition, Audrey," he dismissed smoothly, though a subtle, weary tension edged his tone. "It’s lawyers arguing over property lines and bank accounts. It’s math. It’s nothing like the emotional hell you are navigating. Do not worry about me."
"How can I not worry about you?" she whispered.
"Because I am not going anywhere," Nate stated, his voice a steady, uncompromising anchor in the dark.
The sheer magnitude of his devotion was staggering.
"You have to do this. You have to go sit in that room and burn away every last doubt so you can finally be free.
I hate it. I hate that he gets ninety more days of your time.
But I am not going to abandon you because the logistics are messy.
You can always count on me, Audie. I will always be here. "
Audrey squeezed her eyes shut, her heart physically aching under the weight of his grace. It was a devastatingly beautiful promise, but as she hung up the phone a few minutes later, the silence of the house returned to swallow her whole.
She was tethered to a man who promised to wait in the wings, but tomorrow, she had to face the man who still owned the center stage.