Chapter 2 #2
For nearly ten minutes, neither of them spoke. Then he said, “I was talking to Brooke.”
Annie kept her eyes open. Rain tapped against the glass. “I know,” she said.
“I didn’t want you to think I was hiding it.”
Too late, she thought.
“She’s worried,” he said.
Annie closed her eyes.
Nathan continued, his voice low and weary. “She thinks maybe we should consider a weekend apart. Just to cool down. She said sometimes space keeps couples from saying things they can’t take back.”
There it was. Not a divorce. Not yet. A suggestion. A sensible one. A soft-gloved hand pressing against the first loose brick. Annie rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “And what do you think?”
“I think we’re hurting each other.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He did not answer.
Annie turned her head and looked at him in the dim room. Nathan lay on his back too, one arm bent behind his head, profile cut in shadow. He looked like a stranger and like the man she had loved for nine years. Both at once. That was what made it unbearable. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked.
His head turned. “No.”
“Do you want Brooke to stop advising our marriage?”
Silence.
Her throat tightened. “Nathan.”
“She’s trying to help.”
“She is trying to separate us.”
He sat up then, the mattress shifting beneath him. “You can’t keep making her the villain because we’re in trouble.”
“I’m not making her anything.”
“You are. You’re taking every hard thing between us and putting Brooke’s face on it.”
“Because she keeps volunteering to hold the knife.”
He exhaled sharply and got out of bed.
“Where are you going?” Annie asked.
“Guest room.”
The words landed with the clean, practical finality of a door closing.
Annie sat upright. “Nathan, don’t.”
He stopped near the dresser, but he did not turn around.
She hated herself for saying it. She hated the plea in her voice, hated that after everything, the threat of him sleeping ten yards away could still hollow her out.
“Please don’t,” she said more quietly.
His shoulders lowered. For a moment, she thought he might come back. Then his phone lit up on the dresser. Brooke Halpert. The name glowed in the dark between them. Nathan reached for it.
Annie moved faster. She snatched the phone from the dresser before he could pick it up.
His face went hard. “Give me my phone.”
“No.”
“Annie.”
The call stopped. A text appeared. Don’t let tonight become another cycle. If she escalates, disengage.
Annie held the screen toward him. “Another cycle.”
Nathan’s eyes flicked to the message. Something moved across his face. Discomfort. Irritation. Shame, maybe. But not enough. Never enough. “She’s repeating what Dr. Lane probably told you,” he said.
Annie stared at him.
“She’s using clinical language now,” he added, and there was a defensive edge in his voice, as if that somehow helped. “That doesn’t mean?—”
“How would Brooke know what Dr. Lane told me?”
Nathan said nothing. The room seemed to hold its breath.
Annie looked back down at the phone. Before Nathan could stop her, she tapped Brooke’s contact and opened the message thread.
The most recent texts filled the screen.
Brooke: Is she home?
Nathan: Yes.
Brooke: How did she seem?
Nathan: Upset. Suspicious.
Brooke: Stay calm. Remember what Bea said about not feeding the fixation.
Annie’s blood went cold.
Bea.
Nathan stepped toward her. “Annie.”
She backed away, still holding the phone. “Bea?”
He looked at the screen, then at her. For the first time that night, he had no immediate explanation.
Annie’s fingers shook around the phone. “Brooke knows my therapist.”
The bedroom door was open behind Nathan. The hallway beyond it lay dark and still. Nathan reached for the phone again, slower now. “Let me see.”
She let him take it because he had finally said the right thing, or close enough to it.
He read the texts. His expression tightened. “Maybe Bea is someone else,” he said.
Annie laughed once. “Stop.”
“I’m not saying?—”
“Stop.”
His mouth closed. The phone buzzed in his hand.
Brooke again.
This time, Nathan did not answer.
Annie watched him watch the screen. “Call her,” she said.
His eyes lifted.
“Put it on speaker,” Annie said. “Ask her who Bea is.”
Nathan hesitated.
There was her answer. Not all of it. Enough. “You’re afraid to ask,” she said.
“I’m trying not to make this worse.”
“No, you’re trying not to find out I’m right.”
He flinched. The phone buzzed a final time, then went quiet.
A voicemail notification appeared.
Annie and Nathan stood on opposite sides of their bedroom in the dim light, the air between them crowded with every conversation they had avoided.
“Play it,” Annie said.
Nathan’s thumb hovered over the screen. Then he pressed play.
Brooke’s voice filled the room, soft and urgent. “Nate, call me when you can. Don’t let her bait you tonight. Bea said the first session might make her defensive, especially if she has to confront how much of this is projection. Just keep your boundaries. I love you. I’m here.”
The voicemail ended. For several seconds, neither of them moved. Annie had imagined vindication would feel powerful. It did not. It felt like standing barefoot on broken glass.
Nathan looked down at the phone.
“Nathan,” she said.
He swallowed.
The man who always had a response, always had strategy, always found the angle before anyone else saw the board, stood in their bedroom with Brooke’s words still hanging in the air and looked suddenly, terribly unsure.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Annie believed him. That was almost worse.