Chapter 4
Clayton
I found her waiting at the valet stand, her arms wrapped around herself like she was trying to hold her body together. The champagne silk of her dress caught the light from the hotel entrance, making her look like something out of a fever dream. Beautiful. Untouchable. Mine.
Except she wasn't, was she? Not anymore. Maybe not ever, if I was being honest with myself.
"Jennifer." I reached for her elbow, and she flinched away from me like my touch burned. The rejection hit me somewhere deep in my gut, a visceral twist that made me want to punch something. "Let me take you home."
"I called a cab."
"Cancel it." I stepped closer, using my height and my breadth to crowd her space the way I always did when I wanted something. It was a dick move, and I knew it, but I was desperate. "We need to talk."
"No." She finally looked at me, and the emptiness in her dark eyes made my chest seize. "We really don't."
"Jen, please." I hated the way my voice cracked on her name. Hated how pathetic I sounded, how small. This wasn't me. I didn't beg. I didn't grovel. I fixed problems and moved forward and kept my shit together no matter what.
But Jennifer wasn't a problem I could fix with money or strategy or sheer force of will. She was my wife. The woman I'd built a life with. And I was losing her right in front of my own eyes.
The Rolls-Royce pulled up before she could respond, sleek and black and absurdly extravagant for two people who could barely stand to be in the same room. I opened the door and gestured inside.
"Please," I said again. "Just let me drive you home. You don't have to talk to me. You don't have to look at me. Just let me make sure you get there safe."
Something flickered across her face. Exhaustion, maybe. Or resignation. She was too tired to fight me on this, and I hated myself for being grateful.
She slid into the Rolls-Royce without a word, pressing herself against the far door like she was trying to put as much distance between us as physically possible. I climbed in after her and closed the door, sealing us into the dim, leather-scented interior.
The silence was suffocating.
I watched her profile as we pulled away from the hotel, the city lights playing across her features in alternating shadows and gold.
Her jaw was tight. Her hands were clenched in her lap, knuckles pale against the dark fabric of her clutch.
She looked like a woman holding herself together through sheer force of will.
I'd done this to her. I'd taken this vibrant, passionate, incredible woman and turned her into someone who couldn't even look at me.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly.
Jennifer laughed, and the sound was so bitter it made my teeth ache. "For what, Clayton? For lying to me? For shutting me out? For letting another woman know more about your life than your own wife?"
"I didn't lie to you."
"No, you just didn't tell me the truth." She finally turned to face me, and the rage in her eyes was so hot it nearly singed my skin. "There's a difference, right? That's what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night?"
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the words died in my throat.
She was right. God help me, she was right.
I hadn't technically lied, but I'd withheld so much that the distinction was meaningless.
I'd built walls around the parts of myself I didn't want her to see, and then I'd handed the keys to someone else.
To Grace.
"It wasn't like that," I tried. "Grace and I are just friends. We've been friends for twenty years. She understands the business world, and I needed someone to talk to who wouldn't..."
"Wouldn't what?" Jennifer's voice was dangerously soft. "Wouldn't worry? Wouldn't care? Wouldn't look at you differently if they knew you were falling apart?"
"Yes." The admission ripped out of me before I could stop it. "I didn't want you to see me like that. Weak. Scared. Failing."
"So instead you let her see it." Jennifer shook her head slowly, and a single tear slipped down her cheek.
She wiped it away with an angry swipe of her hand, like she resented its existence.
"Do you have any idea how that feels, Clayton?
To find out your husband has been having panic attacks in the middle of the night, and instead of waking you up, instead of reaching for you, he calls another woman? "
The words landed like punches, each one driving deeper into my chest until I could barely breathe.
"I never touched her," I said desperately. "I never kissed her. I never even thought about her that way. She's just a friend, Jen. That's all she's ever been."
Jennifer was quiet for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was so cold it made my blood freeze.
"You gave her the parts of you that belong to me."
I flinched like she'd slapped me.
"I would have preferred a physical affair," she continued, and each word was a knife sliding between my ribs.
"At least that's just flesh. Just bodies.
I could have understood that, Clayton. I could have fought against that.
" Her voice cracked, and she pressed her hand to her mouth for a moment before dropping it again.
"But you gave her your soul. You gave her your fears and your secrets and your two a.m. breakdowns.
You gave her the real you while I got the fucking nothing. "
"Jennifer..."
"Don't." She held up her hand, and I stopped like I'd hit a wall. "Don't touch me. Don't comfort me. Don't try to fix this with your body because that's the only language you know."
The accusation stung because it was true.
I'd been doing exactly that for months, maybe years.
Every time Jennifer tried to get close, every time she asked questions I didn't want to answer, I'd distract her with sex.
With my hands and my mouth and my cock, burying myself inside her until she forgot what she'd been asking.
It had worked for a while. But now she saw through it, and the shame of being caught made my face burn.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked, and I hated how helpless I sounded. "Tell me what to do and I'll do it."
"That's the problem, Clayton." Jennifer's laugh was hollow and broken.
"You want me to give you a task. A checklist. Something you can complete and check off so you can feel like you've fixed it.
" She shook her head. "This isn't a project you can manage.
This is our marriage. And I'm starting to think you don't know the difference. "
I reached for her hand, unable to stop myself. My fingers closed around hers, and for a moment she let me hold her. Her skin was cold, trembling slightly, and I wanted to pull her into my lap and wrap my arms around her until she stopped shaking.
But then she yanked her hand back, and the loss of contact felt like a physical wound.
"Tell me about the offshore accounts," she said flatly. "The ones Grace mentioned. The ones I apparently know nothing about."
Fuck.
I ran my hand through my hair, buying time I didn't have. "It's not what you think."
"Then explain it to me. Use your words, Clayton. I know that's hard for you, but try."
The sarcasm in her voice made me want to snap back, but I swallowed the defensive anger and forced myself to answer.
"My father set them up years ago. Tax shelters, mostly.
Some investments that he didn't want on the company books.
" I paused, hating how this sounded. "I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry.
The money is legitimate, Jen. It's just... complicated."
"Everything with you is complicated." She stared out the window, her reflection ghostlike against the glass.
"Everything is too complex for me to understand, too stressful for me to handle, too important for me to be involved in.
I'm your wife, Clayton. Not your child. Not some delicate flower you need to protect from the big scary world. "
"I know that."
"Do you?" She turned to face me again, and the pain in her eyes nearly broke me. "Because from where I'm sitting, it feels like you've spent our entire marriage keeping me in a gilded cage. Giving me beautiful things and incredible sex and absolutely none of your actual self."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her she was wrong, that I'd given her everything, that I loved her more than I'd ever loved anything in my entire life. But the words felt hollow even in my own head, because I knew what she was saying was true.
I'd kept her at arm's length for years. Told myself I was protecting her when really I was protecting myself. From vulnerability. From rejection. From the terrifying possibility that if Jennifer saw the real me, the scared and broken and failing me, she'd leave.
And now she was leaving anyway.
The Rolls-Royce pulled into our driveway, the mansion looming before us like a monument to everything we'd built together. Everything I was about to lose.
"Jennifer." I grabbed her hand again as she reached for the door handle, my grip tighter than it should have been. "Don't do this. Don't walk away from us."
She looked down at my fingers wrapped around her wrist, then back up at my face. The expression in her eyes was something I'd never seen before. Something that looked terrifyingly like goodbye.
"There is no us, Clayton." Her voice was barely a whisper. "There's you. And there's me. And there's the ghost of a marriage that died while I was too busy trying to save it to notice."
She pulled free of my grip and opened the door, stepping out into the cool night air. I scrambled after her, my heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.
"Jen, wait. Please."
She paused at the front door, her key already in the lock. When she turned to look at me, her face was streaked with tears she'd finally stopped trying to hide.
"I need you to sleep in the guest room tonight," she said quietly. "I can't be near you right now."
"Don't shut me out." The irony of the words hit me even as I said them, and I saw it register on her face too. A bitter smile curved her lips.
"Doesn't feel good, does it?"
She disappeared inside, and the door closed behind her with a soft click that sounded like the end of the world.
I stood on the porch for a long time, staring at the door like I could will her to come back and tell me this was all a nightmare. That we'd wake up tomorrow and everything would be fine, and I'd hold her in our bed and promise to do better.
But the door stayed closed.
And when I finally let myself inside, the house felt empty in a way it never had before. Like Jennifer had already left, even though I could hear her footsteps upstairs, moving through the bedroom we'd shared for eight years.
I poured myself a scotch and sat in the living room, watching the city lights through the floor-to-ceiling windows. My phone buzzed with a text from Grace, asking if everything was okay, if I needed to talk.
I stared at the message for a long moment.
Then I turned off my phone and drained my glass in one long swallow, the burn of the alcohol nothing compared to the fire already consuming my chest.
My wife was slipping away.
And I had no idea how to stop it.