6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
Wendy
The zipper caught on the sleeve of a cotton sweater.
Wendy eased the fabric free and tried again.
The sound seemed too loud in the bedroom, but nothing else changed.
The lamps next to the bed cast an even glow over the pale rug, the upholstered bench, and the white duvet she’d straightened out of habit before opening the travel bag.
One bag. That was all she could manage without turning this into a negotiation with herself.
She packed jeans, soft shirts, two sweaters, underwear, and the plain black dress she wore when a client needed to believe the person across from them could hold steady.
Her laptop went into its case with her license records, insurance documents, tax copies, and the contracts that belonged to her work rather than Hunter’s.
She added a folder of listener letters she’d never been able to throw away, and three notebooks full of episode plans.
A narrow box of family photographs and her grandmother’s handwritten recipe cards went underneath them.
The forest-green Vesper Hill binder barely fit. Wendy pressed it hard between the clothes and the laptop case, until she could close the bag around it.
She left the gowns and stylist-selected jewelry in the dressing room, along with the shoes and evening bags sent by designers. Even the diamond earrings Hunter had given her after his first stadium tour stayed in their velvet box.
Her phone lit up on the nightstand. Another headline had found its way past her muted alerts. Under it sat messages from people who’d not spoken to her in years and suddenly needed her to know they were available. Hunter’s name was not among them.
Wendy slipped the phone into her coat pocket.
She went to the bathroom for her toothbrush and stopped in front of the double vanity.
His things were arranged next to hers with the careless intimacy of a shared life.
Razor, comb, the dark bottle of cologne she could recognize on a jacket days after he wore it.
Her body knew that scent as home. She took only her toothbrush.
That was when she heard the garage door begin to rise. Wendy went still. The low motor reached her through two floors, followed by the faint vibration of a car rolling in. She checked the bedside clock. The sky beyond the windows was still black.
She’d wanted to leave before he came home because she knew what his face could do to her certainty.
Fifteen years of loving him had trained her to notice every change in his voice and every frightened shift in his eyes.
For most of their life together, his pain had been a call she answered before he made it.
The door of the garage closed downstairs. Wendy pulled up the handle of the bag.
Footsteps crossed the lower hall and took the stairs fast. Hunter called her name, his voice sounding rough and urgent.
He appeared in the bedroom doorway with his shirt wrinkled, his hair disordered, and dark shadows under his eyes.
He looked as though he’d driven with both hands locked around the wheel. His gaze found her face first.
“Wendy. That video is cut.”
Then he saw the bag. His whole body froze.
She squeezed her fingers around the handle. “I knew it might be.”
“Might be?” He came one step into the room. “It is. Serena asked me to say it. She wanted to know if there was a version of my life where she could be beside me. I repeated what she was asking, and then I told her it wasn’t true.”
Wendy listened. Part of her had been waiting for those facts since the first alert crossed her screen. The relief came, but it was thin and painful. It didn’t reach the deeper wound.
“I told her there was no us,” he continued. “There never has been. The recording stops before I reject her.”
“All right.”
“All right?” His eyes went back to the bag. “You believe me?”
“I believe the video doesn’t contain the whole conversation.”
Hunter let out a breath and moved toward her. “Thank God. Then let me call Billy. We can get ahead of this before morning. We can demand the original from whoever made it, put out the context, get–”
“Stop.”
He stopped close enough that she could see the red around his eyes. His hand lifted toward her arm. Wendy stepped back before he could touch her. The shock on his face hurt more than she expected.
“The crop changes what you said to Serena,” she said. “It doesn’t change the last three months of our marriage.”
“This is why you’re packing.”
“No. The video is why I’m packing tonight instead of next week, or next month, or after I let you explain one more thing until I can bear it again.”
He stared at her. “You were planning to leave me?”
“I was finally considering what it would mean to stop waiting.”
“Wendy, nothing happened with Serena.”
“You keep saying that as if sex is the only thing that can betray a marriage.”
“I’m saying I don’t want her.”
“And I’m telling you that isn’t enough.” Her voice shook.
She tightened her grip on the bag until the hard edge of the handle pressed into her palm.
“You hid a song from me. You let the world call another woman your muse. You agreed to a tour with her and announced it while I sat in an audience with a camera waiting to see what my face would do. I asked you who the song was for, and you made me feel unreasonable for asking.”
“I was afraid you’d hear something in it that wasn’t there.”
“I heard what you chose to sell.”
He looked down for a second. “I should’ve told you about the duet.”
“Yes.”
“And the tour. I know that.”
“Do you?” Wendy asked. “Because knowing after everyone else knows isn’t the same as choosing me before it costs you.”
His jaw tightened. “You think I chose Serena.”
“No.”
The answer landed between them. Hunter’s brows pulled together.
“I think you chose what people believed about Serena,” Wendy said. “You chose what it did for you. She didn’t have to be in your bed. You gave her a place in our marriage in front of millions of people, and when I asked you to tell me the truth, you protected that place.”
“The song wasn’t for her.”
“Then who was it for?”
Hunter went silent.
Wendy felt the old instinct to rescue him from the answer. She’d spent years making hard moments easier for him – changing the subject, accepting a kiss, letting an unfinished conversation become a finished one because he’d held her afterward. She didn’t help him now.
“Who was it for, Hunter?”
“You.”
The single word passed through her so cleanly that pain took a moment to follow. She released the bag. It settled against the bench by her leg.
Hunter watched her as if he could see the blow arrive. “I wrote it for you.”
“No.”
“Every part of it.” His voice broke. “The truck, the rain, running out of gas because we were twenty and stupid, and I thought the gauge was wrong. You laughing at me while we waited on that county road. The picture from that day was still in my old guitar case. I found it three months ago.”
Wendy remembered the rust-red truck and wet hair plastered to Hunter’s forehead.
She remembered sitting on the hood after the rain eased, their shoulders touching, both of them hungry and nearly broke.
He’d promised he’d buy her dinner when the tow truck came, then spent their last cash on gas.
They’d shared crackers from her purse and laughed until their stomachs hurt.
Those memories had been inside the song while Serena stood under gold light and sang them to him.
Wendy pressed a hand to the edge of the bench.
“I was going to give it to you on our fifteenth anniversary,” Hunter said. “Just us. Chinese takeout, no cameras. The way we used to do it.”
“Our anniversary,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“You wrote me a gift.” She could barely hear herself. “And I heard it for the first time with seventeen thousand strangers.”
“Billy heard the demo before it was finished. He said it was the song that could bring everything back. Serena didn’t write the composition or give me those memories. She helped shape the duet arrangement, but…”
“Sang my part.”
Hunter flinched. “That’s not how I thought of it.”
“How did you think of it?”
“As a record. Then a performance. It got bigger so fast, and every time I meant to tell you, there was another reason to wait.”
“No. It was the same reason every time. Telling me might’ve cost you the campaign.”
He dragged a hand over his face. His wedding band caught the lamplight before his hand dropped. “The song made people care again.”
“People cared before.”
“Not like that.” His answer came too quickly. He heard it, too. Shame changed his expression. “The videos with Serena moved faster than anything I’d released in years. The label wanted more. Sponsors came back. Every room I walked into felt different.”
“You felt relevant.”
“Yes.”
“And fearless.”
He glanced at her. “Yes.”
The word sounded tired now, stripped of the excitement she’d seen around him for months.
“So, when I asked if the song was about her,” Wendy said, “you decided my pain was less urgent than keeping that feeling.”
“I decided I could fix it after the launch.”
“You decided I would still be here after the launch.”
Hunter looked at the bag again. “I love you.”
The words struck the part of her that still belonged to him. Her chest tightened. She wanted to cross the space between them and put her face against his neck. She wanted the familiar weight of his arms, and the relief of not having to break her own life open before dawn.
That want was exactly why she had to leave.
“I know,” she said.
He stared at her. “Then why are you doing this?”
“Because love didn’t protect me.”
“I never intended to hurt you.”
“Your intention isn’t protection, Hunter.” She swallowed against the ache in her throat. “Loving me in private doesn’t make it acceptable to erase me in public. And stopping short of sleeping with someone else isn’t the same as being faithful to our marriage.”
“I was faithful.”
“You were physically faithful. I believe you.”
His face changed with a brief, desperate hope.