4. Skye
— ? —
Skye
The Pilates reformer is a medieval torture device disguised as fitness equipment, and I’m fairly certain my instructor takes sadistic pleasure in watching me suffer.
“Breathe through the pain, Skye.”
Lady, I’ve been breathing through the pain for eight years. This reformer has nothing on being the invisible half of a power couple.
“Engage your core!”
My core is engaged. My core is doing great. My core is the only part of me that still shows up every day with enthusiasm.
“Remember, we want to maintain that figure!”
Ah yes. The Figure. Capital F. The Figure that photographs well next to my husband at premieres. The Figure that fits into sample sizes so designers will dress me for free. The Figure that exists not for my health or my pleasure but for the aesthetic coherence of the Rowland Brand.
A hundred more crunches. Thoughts of pizza.
This studio has been part of my routine for years now, ever since Miranda had casually mentioned that “Mrs. Rowland might consider toning up.” The implication had been clear: you don’t want him looking at all those actresses and models and then coming home to someone who doesn’t meet the standard.
The weight I lost. And then more, just to be safe. The pizza and pasta and anything that tasted like joy - all sacrificed on the altar of being good enough. The version of myself I molded into the perfect Hollywood wife, sculpted and starved and still not enough.
It was never enough.
“Perfect form,” the instructor says. “You’re doing great.”
I’m dying, I think. But sure. Great.
The parking lot is a relief after the air-conditioned torture chamber of the studio. My legs tremble from exertion, my hair plastered to my forehead with sweat. All I want is to go home, take a shower, and spend the rest of the day watching reality television in my sweatpants like a normal person.
My phone buzzes in my bag.
The instinct is to ignore it. Probably another calendar notification. Another event where I’m expected to smile and shake hands and pretend my marriage isn’t falling apart.
It buzzes again.
And again.
Three times in rapid succession.
My hands shake as I dig out the phone.
Two texts from an unknown number.
The first is a screenshot. A hotel reservation confirmation.
Chateau Marmont - Bungalow 3Guest: J. RowlandDuration: 8 weeks recurringStatus: ACTIVE
The screen blurs. My heart pounds so hard the pulse is visible in my throat.
Weeks. Weeks of hotel reservations I didn’t know about.
The second text:
“Ask your husband where he really goes on Tuesday nights. Every Tuesday night for the past couple months.”
The phone nearly slips from my fingers.
Tuesday nights.
The past couple months unspools in my memory. All those late nights. All those “emergency meetings” and “investor dinners” and “I’ll be home by midnight, don’t wait up.” All those Tuesdays when he came home smelling like hotel soap and expensive wine.
My fingers move automatically, trying to call the number back.
This number is not accepting calls.
A text.
Message not delivered.
The Beverly Hills sun beats down on the parking lot. Luxury cars gleam in their designated spaces. Women in designer athleisure chat by the entrance, complaining about their trainers, their husbands, their impossible schedules. Normal problems. Normal lives.
And here I stand, holding a phone that contains what might be proof that my marriage is a lie.
Someone is sending me evidence that my husband is cheating. Anonymous evidence. Untraceable evidence.
Why?
The question cuts through the initial shock, through the nausea and the vertigo and the urge to sink to the ground and scream. If they wanted to help me, why hide? If they wanted to hurt me, why warn me at all?
Something doesn’t feel right about this. Something about the timing, the phrasing, the clinical precision of the information. It feels less like an exposé and more like… a setup. Like someone wants me off-balance. Paranoid. Ready to explode.
My fingers screenshot everything. Note the timestamps. File the thought away.
If this is real, I need proof. If this is fake, I need to know who’s playing me.
But even as I think it, the doubt is already spreading. The poison is already working.
What if it’s true?
What if every late night, every missed dinner, every empty bed has been a lie?
What if the woman in the red dress isn’t just a colleague?
The drive home disappears into a blur of traffic lights and freeway exits. The mansion looms in my memory before I actually arrive, and then I’m inside, and then I’m in the bathroom, and I don’t remember any of the steps in between.
The cold marble floor seeps through my workout clothes. My phone glows in my hands, the screenshot of that hotel reservation burning into my retinas.
Chateau Marmont. Bungalow 3. J. Rowland.
Every Tuesday night.
The shower is running. Has been running. The water streams uselessly into the drain while I sit here, paralyzed, trying to make sense of a life that suddenly doesn’t fit together anymore.
The reservation is so specific. The room number. The recurring booking. The way it aligns perfectly with every “late meeting” Jayden claimed to have. Either someone has gone to extraordinary lengths to fabricate this, or…
Or my husband has been lying to me for weeks. Months. Maybe longer.
What’s real anymore? The question echoes in the steam-filled bathroom. What’s ever been real?
My phone lights up with a calendar reminder.
GALA - 2 DAYS
And underneath it, a new text from the unknown number:
“She’ll be wearing red. She always wears red when she’s with him.”
Red. Like the dress at the premiere. Like a warning sign I was too blind to see.
The water runs and runs and runs, and I don’t feel it. Don’t feel anything except the cold certainty settling into my bones that something is very, very wrong. Either with my marriage, or with whoever is sending these messages, or both.
The gala is in two days. Adriana will be there. Jayden will be there. And whoever is feeding me this information will be watching to see what I do with it.
My hands are shaking, but my mind is starting to clear. The initial panic is giving way to something sharper. Something that wants answers more than it wants comfort.
Two days.
Two days to figure out if I’m being played, or if I’ve been a fool all along.
***
The kitchen is too bright for nine o’clock at night.
I stand at the island with my hands pressed flat against the marble, staring at my phone like it might detonate. The screenshots are still there. The hotel reservation. The words that keep crawling through my brain like something with teeth: Ask your husband where he really goes on Tuesday nights.
Jayden is somewhere in the house. I heard him come in twenty minutes ago, heard the familiar sounds of his routine: keys on the console table, briefcase dropped by the study door, footsteps heading toward the bedroom to change.
Now he’s in the living room, probably checking emails, probably not wondering where I am or why I haven’t come to greet him.
I should let this go. I should wait until I have proof, until I’ve talked to Ellen, until I’m calm enough to have a rational conversation.
I am not calm.
My bare feet carry me into the living room before I’ve decided to move. He’s on the couch, phone in hand, still wearing the dress shirt he wore to work. The top button is undone. He looks tired. He looks like my husband.
He looks like a stranger.
“Where were you last Tuesday?”
The words come out sharper than I intended. Jayden looks up, brow furrowing, that familiar expression of mild irritation crossing his features.
“What?”
“Tuesday night. Last week. Where were you?”
“I was at work, Skye. Where else would I be?” He’s already looking back at his phone, already dismissing me. “We had the Tokyo call, remember? It ran late.”
“And the Tuesday before that?”
Now he sets the phone down. Gives me his full attention, though it feels more like scrutiny than care. “What is this about?”
“Just answer the question.”
“I don’t know. Working. Same as always.” He stands, and I hate that I notice how he moves, the familiar mechanics of his body that used to feel like home. “What’s going on with you?”
“Tuesday nights, Jayden.” My voice is climbing, cracking at the edges. “Every Tuesday night for the past couple months. Where have you actually been?”
Something shifts in his expression. Not guilt, exactly. Wariness. The careful blankness of a man calculating his next move.
“I’ve been at work. At dinners. At meetings. The same places I’m always at.” He takes a step toward me, and I take one back. “Where is this coming from?”
“Don’t.” The word comes out ragged. “Don’t stand there and lie to me.”
“I’m not lying. You’re the one making accusations out of nowhere.
” His jaw tightens, that familiar clench that used to mean he was stressed, that now just looks like armor.
“Is this about the premiere again? Because I already explained that Adriana is a colleague, and I’m getting tired of having the same conversation. ”
“This isn’t about Adriana.”
“Then what is it about? Because you’re standing in our living room interrogating me about my schedule like I’m some kind of criminal.”
I want to tell him. I want to pull out my phone and show him the screenshots and watch his face when he sees them. I want him to explain it away, to prove that it’s fake, to give me something solid to hold onto.
But if I show him, he’ll know someone is feeding me information. He’ll ask questions I can’t answer. And some desperate, furious part of me wants to see what he does when he doesn’t know how much I know.
“You don’t come home anymore.” My throat is closing around the words. “You’re never here. And when you are here, you’re not really here, you’re somewhere else, and I keep asking myself where that somewhere else is, and you won’t tell me, you never tell me anything.”
“Because there’s nothing to tell.” He’s angry now, properly angry, his voice rising to match mine. “I work late because I’m running a company. I miss dinners because I have obligations. That’s not a mystery, Skye, that’s our life. That’s the life we built together.”
“The life we built together?” I laugh, and it sounds unhinged even to my own ears. “What life? I found out about your last premiere from Instagram. I sit in this house alone every night wondering if my husband even remembers I exist. That’s not a life, Jayden. That’s a prison sentence.”
“Now you’re being dramatic.”
“Am I? Am I being dramatic?” I’m shaking, my whole body trembling with something that might be rage or might be grief or might just be exhaustion. “Tell me where you were on Tuesday. Look me in the eye and tell me.”
He stares at me. The silence stretches between us, filling the room like smoke.
“I was at work,” he says finally, slowly, like he’s explaining something to a child. “I don’t know what you think is happening, but you’re wrong. You’re being paranoid, and frankly, it’s getting concerning.”
The word lands like a slap. Paranoid.
“Don’t you dare.” My voice drops to something cold and quiet. “Don’t you dare stand there and tell me I’m paranoid when you can’t even give me a straight answer.”
“I gave you an answer. You just don’t like it.” He grabs his phone from the couch, shoves it in his pocket. “I’m not doing this tonight. I have an early call tomorrow, and I’m not going to stand here being accused of things based on nothing.”
“Where are you going?”
“To bed. You should try it sometime. Maybe you’d be less prone to conspiracy theories if you actually slept.”
He walks past me toward the stairs. Doesn’t touch me. Doesn’t look back.
I stand alone in the living room, listening to his footsteps fade, and I think about the gala in two days. I think about Adriana in her red dress. I think about the anonymous texts sitting in my phone like a ticking bomb.
He called me paranoid.
And now, when I walk into that gala and the accusations drop, he’ll already be primed to believe them. He’ll already have decided I’m unstable, irrational, not worth defending.
Whoever sent those texts knew exactly what they were doing.
The house is silent except for the distant crash of waves outside. I wrap my arms around myself and wonder how I got here. How I became the kind of woman who stands alone in the middle of all that cold marble, shaking, while her husband walks away without a backward glance.
The gala is in two days.
Something terrible is coming.
And I just handed my husband every reason not to believe me when it does.