18. Skye
— ? —
Skye
I don’t call first.
Don’t text. Don’t warn him. Just drive to the Malibu house - the house I shared with him for eight years, the house I fled with one suitcase and a broken heart - and stand at the front door trying to remember how to breathe.
The Pacific is loud behind me, waves crashing against the rocks like they’re angry about something. The salt air stings my eyes. Or maybe that’s something else. My hand hovers over the doorbell for what feels like forever, fingers trembling with a courage I’m not sure I actually possess.
The door opens before I can knock.
Jayden is standing there in jeans and a t-shirt, barefoot, looking nothing like the man who used to run a billion-dollar empire.
He looks younger. Softer. More like the boy I fell in love with than the CEO he became.
There’s stubble on his jaw - he never used to let himself be seen unshaven - and his hair is doing that thing it does when he’s been running his hands through it.
The gray at his temples catches the afternoon light.
I hate that I notice. I hate that my stomach flips at the sight of him, rumpled and real and here.
“Skye.” His voice catches on my name. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.”
“I wasn’t expecting - do you want to come in?”
I walk past him into the house. It’s different.
Quieter. Emptier. No assistants bustling around.
No phones ringing. No staff arranging flowers or fielding calls or making the machinery of his life run smoothly.
The grand foyer that used to feel like a hotel lobby now feels like a house. Just a house.
“Where is everyone?”
“I let them go. Most of them. Kept the housekeeper who comes twice a week, but otherwise…” He shrugs, and the movement draws my attention to his shoulders, the way the t-shirt stretches across them. I look away. “I don’t need a staff for one person.”
I turn to face him. He’s standing a careful distance away, like he’s afraid of spooking me. Like I’m something wild that might bolt.
“You resigned. Why?”
He doesn’t dodge the question. Doesn’t offer excuses or carefully worded explanations. Doesn’t do the thing he used to do where he’d answer a question with a question, deflecting until I forgot what I’d asked in the first place.
“Because I built that company while I was losing you.”
I wait. He continues.
“Every late night. Every premiere I went to alone. Every meeting I chose over dinner with my wife. It all added up.” He swallows, and I watch his throat work, watch the way his hands flex at his sides like he’s stopping himself from reaching for me.
“I told myself I was doing it for us. Building something for our future. But I was lying. I was doing it because it was easier than being present. Easier than being vulnerable. Easier than admitting that I didn’t know how to be the husband you needed. ”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t want it anymore. Not if it costs me everything that matters.”
I study his face. Looking for the performance.
The calculation. The practiced sincerity he’s so good at projecting - the one that landed him on magazine covers and convinced investors to hand over millions.
I know that face. I’ve watched him use it in boardrooms and at galas and in interviews where he said all the right things while meaning none of them.
I don’t find it.
What I find is something rawer. Scared. The face of a man who has stripped himself of armor and is standing here hoping I won’t run him through.
“That’s a nice speech. But what are you actually going to do? You can’t just… not work. You’ll go crazy.”
A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You know me too well.”
“I used to think I did.”
The smile fades. He nods, accepting the hit.
“I’m consulting. Part-time. Enough to stay busy, not enough to disappear.” He meets my eyes, and the directness of his gaze makes my chest tight. “And I’m in therapy.”
“Therapy?”
“Twice a week. Turns out I have some things to work through.” The smile returns, smaller, self-deprecating. “The therapist says I use work to avoid emotional intimacy. Apparently, that’s not ideal for a marriage.”
Despite myself, I laugh. It’s small, surprised, genuine - and it startles me. I haven’t laughed in this house in longer than I can remember.
“What’s his name?”
“Dr. Reeves. She.”
“She?”
“Yes. She. Before you ask - no, she’s not attractive, she’s seventy-three, and she knits during our sessions. Last week she finished a sweater for her cat.”
“Her cat.”
“His name is Purralot. There are photos. Many photos.” He pauses, and something complicated passes over his face. “She says I have an avoidant attachment style and a pathological need for external validation. I said, ‘Ma’am, I’m a Hollywood producer, that’s the job description.’”
I snort. Actually snort. The sound is undignified and loud and I immediately want to take it back, but Jayden’s whole expression transforms. Light floods his features, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and for a moment he looks exactly like the eighteen-year-old who used to make me laugh until I couldn’t breathe.
“What did she say?” I ask.
“She finished a row of stitches and said, ‘And how’s that working out for your marriage?’”
“I like her.”
“She’d like you too. She wants to meet you eventually. Says she needs ‘the wife’s perspective on my emotional constipation.’”
“Emotional constipation. That’s… accurate.”
“I know. I’m paying her four hundred dollars an hour to tell me things my wife tried to tell me for free.”
The laughter dies in my throat. Because that’s the thing, isn’t it? I did try to tell him. For years. In every way I knew how. And he didn’t hear me - or couldn’t, or wouldn’t - until it was almost too late.
Jayden seems to realize what he’s said. His expression sobers.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to make light of it.”
“You weren’t. You were being honest.” I take a breath. “That’s new.”
“I’m working on it.”
We stand there in the vast living room, the ocean visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows, waves rolling in with the same relentless rhythm they’ve always had. This room used to feel like a stage set. Now it just feels empty.
“I laughed,” Jayden says suddenly.
“What?”
“When you snorted just now. It made me laugh. I realized I haven’t laughed - really laughed - in months.” His voice goes rough. “I missed that sound.”
“Don’t.” I hold up a hand. “Don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m something precious. You looked at me like that at the beginning too. And then you stopped.” My voice hardens, the wall going back up brick by brick. “How do I know you won’t stop again?”
“You don’t.”
The honesty startles me. I expected deflection. Promises. The kind of reassurances that sound good but mean nothing.
“I can’t promise I’ll be perfect,” he says. “I can only promise I’ll keep trying. Every day. Even when it’s hard. Even when I fail. I’ll keep trying.”
I don’t forgive him. But I don’t leave either.
We sit in the living room - the room where I used to wait up for him, where I fell asleep alone so many nights curled on this very couch - and we talk. Really talk. For the first time in years.
“When did things change?” I ask. “When did we stop being us?”
“I don’t know. It was gradual. One night of working late became every night.
One missed dinner became every dinner.” He’s staring at his hands, and I notice they’re not perfectly manicured anymore.
There’s a callus on his palm that wasn’t there before.
“I told myself you understood. That you knew I was doing it for us. But I never asked, did I? I just assumed.”
“I tried to tell you. A hundred times. But you were never there to hear it.”
“I know. I was a coward. It was easier to stay at the office than to come home and face the fact that I was failing you.”
The admission hangs in the air between us. I think about all the nights I waited. All the dinners that went cold. All the times I started to say something and stopped because what was the point?
“We used to talk about kids,” I say quietly.
He looks up. “I remember.”
“You said you wanted three. That we’d coach their soccer teams and embarrass them at school plays.”
“I remember.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Work got busy. The timing never seemed right.
” He meets my eyes, and there’s something broken in his expression.
“But that’s not really true, is it? The truth is I was scared.
Scared that I’d be a terrible father. Scared that I’d fail at something I couldn’t delegate to an assistant. ”
“And now?”
“Now I want a life. A real one. Not meetings and board rooms and premieres.” He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and the intensity in his gaze pins me in place.
“I don’t want to raise children in the spotlight, Skye.
I don’t want paparazzi at their school plays.
I want something quieter. Something smaller. Something real.”
I realize he’s thought about this. Really thought about it. This isn’t just a grand gesture or a desperate plea. It’s a plan. A vision of a future that looks nothing like the one we were living.
“I’m not ready to come home,” I say finally. “But… I don’t want you to stop trying.”
Something shifts in his face. Hope, maybe. Or relief. Or the fragile beginning of something I’m not ready to name.
I stand to leave. He walks me to the door.
On the threshold, I turn back. The afternoon light is golden now, painting everything in shades of honey and amber. It catches the silver in his hair, the lines around his eyes that weren’t there when we met. We’re not kids anymore. We haven’t been for a long time.
“The flowers,” I say. “The memories. How did you remember all of them?”
“I remembered everything. I just stopped showing it.” His voice is rough, scraped raw. “I’m never going to make that mistake again.”
I reach up and straighten his collar. An old habit. A gesture from another lifetime, from when touching him was as natural as breathing.
He catches my hand. Holds it against his chest. I can feel his heart pounding under my palm, fast and uneven, and the vulnerability of it undoes something in me.
“I love you,” he says. “I never stopped. I just forgot how to show it.”
“I know.” I pull my hand back gently, even though part of me wants to leave it there, wants to step closer, wants to let myself fall back into the familiar gravity of him. “That’s what makes this so hard.”
I walk to my car. He watches from the doorway. The sun is lower now, the sky starting to streak with pink and orange, and the ocean sounds different - softer somehow, like it’s holding its breath.
I don’t look back.
But I don’t say goodbye either.
Driving away from the Malibu house, I realize my hands have stopped shaking. I’m not ready to forgive him. I may never be ready. But somewhere in the last hour, something shifted. The wall around my heart developed a crack.
I’m not sure if that’s hope or just exhaustion.
But for the first time in weeks, I feel like I can breathe.