3. Skye
— ? —
Skye
The morning light cuts through the floor-to-ceiling windows like an accusation.
Sleep never came, not really - just fitful drifting on the couch, punctuated by the glow of my phone screen every time I checked to see if he’d called.
He hadn’t. The coffee I’m making now is more about having something to do with my hands than any genuine desire for caffeine.
The expensive single-origin Ethiopian blend he loves sits in the grinder.
My fingers hover over the button for a long moment before I press it, hating myself for the gesture even as I make it.
Some pathetic part of me still wants to smooth things over before they get hard.
Still wants to be the good wife, the understanding wife, the wife who makes his coffee and doesn’t ask where he was all night.
The Skye who’d written a 120-page screenplay in college - the one who’d dreamed of seeing her name in credits before she ever dreamed of seeing it hyphenated with his - that Skye would be disgusted with me. When did I become the kind of woman who rehearses conversations with her own husband?
The front door opens at seven-fifteen.
Jayden walks into the kitchen already dressed in a charcoal Tom Ford suit, his phone pressed to his ear. He looks perfect. Unrumpled. Like a man who slept eight hours in a luxury hotel rather than whatever story he’s about to tell me.
“-no, tell Morrison we’re not moving the release date.
I don’t care what the international numbers look like.
We committed to December, we’re holding December.
” He barely glances at me as he grabs the coffee I made.
Doesn’t say thank you. Doesn’t say good morning.
Doesn’t explain where he’s been for the past twelve hours.
Just keeps talking. “Yeah. Yeah. I’ll be there in forty. ”
The words pile up in my throat. Where were you?
Who were you with? Why didn’t you come home?
But he’s still on the phone, still treating me like furniture, and the familiar paralysis sets in.
Don’t make a scene. Don’t be difficult. Don’t be the hysterical wife who can’t handle her successful husband’s demanding schedule.
He ends the call and immediately starts scrolling through emails.
My patience snaps.
“Jayden.”
“Hmm?”
“Can you put the phone down? I need to talk to you.”
He doesn’t look up. “I’m listening.”
“No.” The word comes out harder than intended. “You’re not listening. You’re scrolling through emails while your wife stands three feet away from you trying to have a conversation.”
That gets his attention. He looks up, brow furrowed like I’m the inconvenience. Like I’m the problem that needs managing. “Skye, I have a seven-thirty call with the Tokyo office and then back-to-backs until six. Can this wait until-”
“No. It can’t wait.”
Something flickers in his expression. Irritation, maybe. Or maybe just impatience. These days, the difference has become impossible to distinguish.
“Fine.” He sets the phone face-down on the marble counter. A small concession. A bone thrown to the difficult wife. “What’s going on?”
What’s going on? The question almost makes me laugh.
“I went to the premiere last night. The one you didn’t tell me about. The one I found out about from Instagram.”
His jaw tightens, but he doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t even flinch. “It was a last-minute thing. I didn’t think-”
“You didn’t think your wife might want to know? Might want to be there with you?”
“It wasn’t like that. It was industry only, no plus-ones-”
“Then who was the woman taking pictures with you?”
Silence.
The kitchen suddenly feels smaller. The morning light sharper.
Jayden’s expression shifts - not guilty, exactly.
More like he’s recalculating, choosing his words carefully.
That’s new, too. The Jayden I married used to tell me everything without thinking.
Now he measures every sentence like a studio press release.
“That was Adriana.” He says it casually, like the name should mean something. Like it explains everything.
“Adriana.”
“Adriana Stuart. She’s our new VP of Creative Development. I told you about her-”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m sure I did. She came on board six months ago from Netflix. She’s been instrumental in the Midnight Dynasty franchise rollout. It made sense to have her there.”
The way he says her name. Adriana. Familiar. Comfortable. Like he’s said it a thousand times. Like it lives in his mouth now, taking up space where my name used to be.
“It made sense to have your coworker there. But not your wife.”
“That’s not-” He exhales, rubbing his temple like I’m giving him a headache. Like my reasonable questions about my own marriage are causing him physical pain. “Skye, you’re overreacting. It was a work event. She was there for work. There’s nothing going on.”
“I didn’t say there was anything going on.”
“Your tone says otherwise.”
“My tone?” The word comes out sharp enough to cut. “My tone is the problem? Not the fact that I had to see my husband posing with another woman on E! News? Not the fact that I sat in this house alone - again - while you were out living your life without me?”
Something dangerous is building in my chest. Eight years of swallowed complaints. Eight years of being understanding. Eight years of watching myself disappear into the role of CEO’s wife while the girl with the screenplay gathered dust.
“You’re overreacting,” he says again.
And something in me snaps.
“I’m overreacting? I’m overreacting?”
My feet carry me closer to him before my brain can intervene. Too close. A mistake I feel immediately, because the kitchen shrinks around the space I just erased. And he does something to my stupid, traitorous body even when I want to strangle him.
He doesn’t step back.
Of course he doesn’t. Jayden has never yielded ground in a fight.
He just goes still, like a door that’s decided not to open, and lets you exhaust yourself against it.
The pulse in his throat is visible. The way his shirt pulls across his chest when he inhales.
My eyes track these details against my will, cataloging him like they’ve been doing for a decade.
I hate that I notice. I hate that noticing has a temperature.
“You don’t get to tell me how to react. You don’t get to dismiss my feelings because they’re inconvenient for your schedule.”
He’s looking at me now. Finally. Actually looking - not through me, not past me at the clock or the phone facedown on the island, but at me. His jaw is tight. His eyes are dark. For one furious second something flickers there that isn’t dismissal or impatience.
Something that looks almost like want.
It hits low. Immediate. Humiliating.
My body responds before my brain can stop it.
Heat pooling, breath catching, every nerve lighting up like it still thinks this is that kind of fight.
The muscle memory of a thousand nights that started exactly like this: too close, too loud, his mouth a weapon and then a mercy.
His hands tearing at my clothes because anger was just another way of reaching for me.
The counter at my back. My nails in his shoulders.
The way he used to kiss me like he was trying to win.
We used to fight like this.
And then we used to fuck like this.
The air between us goes thin. The shape of it is already half-written - the old script, waiting to be performed.
If he moved even an inch, if he said my name in that low register I used to live in, I don’t know that I would stop him.
The fury is still there, burning under my skin, but it’s tangled up now with something else.
Something that remembers exactly how this kitchen tile feels against bare feet, and exactly how his hands feel when they’re not being careful.
But that was before. When fighting meant we still cared enough to burn.
Now the want is still there, stupid and alive in my blood, and he is already looking away.
His phone lights up on the island. He glances at it like it has a better argument than I do.
The moment - whatever it was - dies.
Left standing too close to a man who is no longer in the fight, with my body still waiting for a version of him that used to finish what he started. The rejection stings worse than any words could.
“You could’ve come. You could’ve called.”
“I did come. I got dressed up, I did my makeup, I drove forty-five minutes to surprise you-” My voice cracks despite my best efforts to keep it steady. “And then I saw you with her. Smiling. Looking at her like…”
“Like what?”
Like you used to look at me.
But I can’t say that. Can’t admit that out loud. Can’t let him know how thoroughly he’s broken me.
“Forget it.”
“Skye-”
“I said forget it.” My hands grip the edge of the counter, knuckles white. “Just go to work, Jayden. That’s clearly what matters.”
The words hang between us. A challenge. A test. Say something. Fight for me. Tell me I’m wrong.
He doesn’t.
“We’ll talk tonight,” he says instead. “When I’m not under a deadline and you’re not…”
He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t have to. When you’re not being emotional. When you’re not being difficult. When you’re not being inconvenient.
His phone buzzes. He picks it up immediately.
“I have to take this.”
And then he’s gone. The front door closes behind him with a quiet click that somehow feels louder than a slam.
The kitchen is silent except for the hum of the refrigerator and the sound of my own breathing. The coffee I made him sits on the counter, untouched. The conversation I rehearsed all night ended before it really began.
This is what my marriage has become. Questions without answers. Fights without resolution. A husband who walks away while his wife stands in a $47 million kitchen, wondering when she became so easy to leave.
My phone sits on the counter where I left it last night. My fingers find the Notes app almost automatically, scrolling to the half-finished screenplay I started years ago and never touched since. The last line I wrote stares back at me: “She realized the cage was gilded, but it was still a cage.”
Subtle, Skye. Real subtle.
The phone buzzes with a notification. Another one. And another.
My calendar. The shared family calendar that Miranda maintains with military precision.
ROWLAND STUDIOS QUARTERLY GALASaturday, 7:00 PMAttendance: Required (Spouses)
So I was expected somewhere. When it was convenient. When it served his image.
Another notification pops up beneath it.
Guest List Update: Adriana Stuart - Confirmed (Table 1)
Table 1. His table.
The screen glows in my hands, and my reflection ghosts across the glass - a woman I barely recognize anymore. But beneath the exhaustion and the hurt, something else is stirring. Something that feels less like defeat and more like determination.
That gala. Whatever game is being played here, the next round happens there.
And this time, I’m going to find out exactly who Adriana Stuart is.