9. Orion
— ? —
Orion
I stood outside Gianna’s apartment door for ten minutes before I knocked.
I’d counted. Ten minutes of staring at the cheap brass numbers, at the welcome mat that said “Home Sweet Home” in cheerful script, at the peeling paint on the doorframe. Rehearsing what I’d say, discarding every version, starting over.
I’m sorry felt insufficient. I love you felt like manipulation. Please let me in felt like begging, which it was, but I wasn’t sure I’d earned the right to beg yet.
I knocked.
The sound echoed in the empty hallway. Somewhere in the building, a TV was playing too loud. Someone was cooking something with garlic. Normal life, happening all around me, while I stood on the precipice of losing everything.
No answer.
I knocked again, waited. Nothing.
She was in there. I could see the light under the door, could hear the faint sound of movement inside. She just wasn’t answering.
She doesn’t want to see you, the voice in my head said. She told you to leave her alone, and you’re not listening. Again.
I pulled out my phone. Typed a message.
I’m outside. I know you probably don’t want to talk. I just wanted you to know I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.
I stared at the words, then deleted them too.
Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? I’d spent two years telling Gianna I wasn’t going anywhere while simultaneously being everywhere except where she needed me. Words didn’t mean anything anymore. I’d used them all up.
I set the flowers I’d brought on the doormat, stupid, I knew flowers were stupid, but I hadn’t known what else to do, and walked away.
The elevator took forever. I stood in it surrounded by my own reflection in the mirrored walls, a man in boots and a wrinkled henley who looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Because I hadn’t.
I got in my truck and sat there in the parking lot, hands on the wheel, going nowhere.
Now what?
I didn’t know. For the first time in my adult life, I had no plan, no strategy, no path forward. I’d built Cliff from a struggling family ranch into a billion-dollar empire through sheer force of will and the absolute certainty that I could solve any problem if I just worked hard enough.
This wasn’t a problem I could solve by working harder.
I drove back to the manor. It was dark when I got there, the windows unlit, Maya gone for the day.
The house felt enormous and empty, every room a reminder of what I’d lost. Gianna’s book still on the nightstand.
Her robe still hanging in the bathroom. The nursery still waiting for a baby who would never sleep there.
I poured myself a bourbon and sat in the dark, and I thought about calling someone.
I thought about calling Daisy.
The idea made my stomach clench. Daisy hated me. She’d made that clear at the hospital, in the way she’d looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe. She was Gianna’s person, her protector, and I was the enemy.
But she was also the only one who might tell me the truth.
I found her number in my phone (I’d gotten it months ago, back when I’d thought it might be useful for planning a surprise party that never happened) and stared at it for a long time.
This is going to be humiliating.
I called anyway.
She picked up on the fourth ring. “Who is this?”
“It’s Orion. Orion Barnes.”
Silence. Then, “You have got to be kidding me.”
“I know you don’t want to talk to me…”
“You’re right. I don’t. Goodbye.”
“Wait.” The word came out desperate. “Please. Just… five minutes. I’m not asking you to forgive me. I’m asking you to help me understand what I can do.”
“What you can do? WHAT YOU CAN DO!?” Her laugh was sharp, incredulous. “You want to know what you can do? You can build a time machine and go back and not abandon your wife while she was giving birth to your child. Can you do that, Orion? Do you have a time machine?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tell me what she needs.” I closed my eyes, pressed the phone harder against my ear. “Not what I think she needs. Not what I want to give her. What does she actually need right now?”
Daisy was quiet for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was different. Still angry, but curious too.
“Why should I help you?”
“You shouldn’t. I don’t deserve it. But Gianna does.” I swallowed hard. “She deserves someone who shows up. And I want to be that person. I just… I don’t know how.”
“You don’t know how to show up for your own wife. What kind of dumbass husband is that?”
“No.” The admission scraped out of me like glass. “I don’t. I never learned. My father…” I stopped, shook my head even though she couldn’t see me. “That’s not an excuse. I’m not trying to make excuses. I’m trying to understand what I did wrong so I can fix it.”
“You can’t fix it.”
“Then I want to do better. Even if she never takes me back. Even if this is over. I want to be a good father to Alex, and I can’t do that if I don’t understand what I’ve been doing wrong.”
The silence stretched so long I thought she’d hung up.
Then Daisy said, “You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Fine.” I heard her take a breath, like she was preparing for battle. “Buckle up, rich boy. This is going to hurt.”
She talked for twenty-three minutes.
I timed it, because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands, and because the numbers gave me something to focus on while she systematically dismantled every illusion I’d had about my marriage.
She told me about the nights Gianna had cried herself to sleep waiting for me to come home.
About the appointments I’d missed, the dinners that had gone cold, the conversations I’d had with my phone while my wife sat across from me trying to be heard.
She told me about the baby shower Gianna had planned alone because I’d been in meetings.
About the nursery she’d decorated by herself, sending me photos I’d responded to with thumbs-up emojis.
About the way she’d started to shrink, to take up less space, to stop asking for things because she’d learned that asking meant disappointment.
She told me about the Instagram post. About how Gianna had seen my arm around Demi while she was being cut open on an operating table.
“Do you have any idea,” Daisy said, her voice shaking with fury, “what it’s like to be alone in that moment? To be terrified and in pain and to find out your husband is at a party with your sister? The sister who’s wanted him since day one?”
“Nothing happened with Demi.”
“I don’t care if something happened! That’s not the point!” She was shouting now. “The point is that you weren’t there! The point is that you chose everything else over her, every single time, and she kept waiting for you to choose her, and you never did!”
I sat in the dark with my bourbon untouched, and I let her words wash over me like a tide I deserved to drown in.
“She loved you so much,” Daisy said, quieter now.
“She used to talk about you like you’re the only person in this world.
And I watched her stop. I watched the light go out of her eyes every time your name came up.
Do you know what that’s like? To watch your best friend fall out of love in slow motion? ”
“No,” I whispered.
“She didn’t want to leave you. She wanted you to give her a reason to stay.” Daisy’s voice cracked. “And you never did.”
I couldn’t speak. There was something lodged in my throat, something that felt like years of unshed grief.
“So you want to know what she needs?” Daisy laughed bitterly.
“She needs to know you see her. Not the mother of your child. Not Mrs. Barnes. Her. Gianna. The woman you met at that gala who was hiding by the bar because she felt like she didn’t belong.
She needs to know that woman still matters to you. ”
“She does. She matters more than anything.”
“Then prove it. Not with grand gestures that are really about making yourself feel better.” Daisy paused.
“She’s exhausted, Orion. She hasn’t slept more than two hours at a stretch since Alex was born.
I had to leave for my mom, and she’s doing it all alone because she’s too proud to ask for help and too hurt to accept it from you. ”
“What can I do?”
“I don’t know if there’s anything you can do. But if you want to try…” She sighed. “She needs rest. Real rest. Not a night nurse she has to manage or a nanny she has to train. She needs someone to take the baby for a few hours so she can sleep without one ear open. Someone she trusts.”
“She doesn’t trust me.”
“No. She doesn’t. So figure out how to earn it back.” Daisy’s voice hardened again. “And Orion? If you hurt her again, I will make it my life’s mission to destroy you. I don’t care how much money you have. I will find a way.”
“I understand.”
“Good.” She hung up.
I sat in the dark for a long time after that.
Someone she trusts.
Gianna didn’t trust me. That was the problem, wasn’t it? I could hire a hundred night nurses, a thousand nannies. I could throw money at this until I drowned in it. But none of that would give her what she actually needed.
She needed someone to show up.
I thought about my father. About watching him choose work over family, over and over, until it was just the way things were. About my mother making excuses for him, smoothing things over, teaching me by example that this was what love looked like.
I thought about Gianna’s face in the hospital. The emptiness in her eyes.
I thought about Alex, my son, who I’d held exactly once.
And I made a decision.
I picked up my phone and called my assistant.
“Mr. Barnes?” Sarah’s voice was groggy. It was past midnight. “Is everything okay?”
“I need you to clear my calendar.”
“For tomorrow?”
“For the foreseeable future. Cancel everything. Meetings, calls, trips. All of it.”
A pause. “Sir, the Hendricks deal is supposed to close on…”
“Let Robertson handle it. Or push it. I don’t care.” I took a breath. “I’m taking a leave of absence, Sarah. Effective immediately.”
“A leave of…” She trailed off, clearly trying to process. In five years of working for me, I’d never taken more than three consecutive days off. “How long?”
“As long as it takes.”
I hung up before she could ask any more questions.
Then I went to pack a bag.
***
The next morning, I stood outside Gianna’s apartment again.
This time, I had a duffel bag over my shoulder. A bag of groceries in one hand. And absolutely no idea what I was doing.
I knocked.
The door opened.
Gianna stood there in sweatpants and a stained t-shirt, her hair a mess, dark circles under her eyes so deep they looked like bruises. Alex was crying somewhere behind her, that thin, exhausted wail that meant he’d been at it for a while.
She looked at me. At the duffel bag and at the groceries.
“What is this?”
“I called Daisy,” I said. “She told me what you need.”
“And what’s that? A billionaire on my doorstep at seven in the morning?”
“Rest.” I held her gaze, trying to communicate something I didn’t have words for. “You need rest. And I’m here to make sure you get it.”
“By doing what, exactly?”
“By taking care of Alex. By handling the night feedings, the diapers, all of it.” I gestured to the groceries. “By making sure you eat actual food and sleep more than two hours at a time.”
“You don’t know how to change a diaper.”
“I’ll learn.”
“You’ve never heated a bottle in your life.”
“I’ll figure it out.”
“You…” Her voice cracked, and she stopped. Pressed a hand to her mouth. When she spoke again, it was barely a whisper. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to show up now, after everything, and act like…”
I set down the groceries. Dropped the duffel bag.
Held up my hands, empty, surrendering. “I know I don’t deserve this.
I know I don’t deserve anything from you.
But I’m asking anyway. Not for me. For you.
Because you’re exhausted, and you need help, and I’m the one who should have been helping all along. ”
Alex’s crying got louder. Gianna flinched, that automatic response of a mother who’d been running on empty for too long.
“Let me take him,” I said. “Just for a few hours. You can sleep. I’ll be right here. I won’t leave.”
“You always leave.”
“Not this time.” I stepped closer, close enough to see the tears she was trying to blink back. “I cleared my calendar, Gianna. Canceled everything. I’m not going back to work until… until I’ve figured out how to be the man you needed me to be.”
She stared at me. Searching my face for the lie, the catch, the inevitable disappointment.
I let her look. I had nothing to hide anymore.
“The couch,” she said finally, her voice rough. “You sleep on the couch. You don’t come into the bedroom. You don’t touch me. And you leave the second I tell you to.”
“Understood.”
“And if you check your phone during a feeding, even once, I will throw it out the window.”
“I’ll leave it in the car.”
She stepped aside.
I picked up my bags and walked into her apartment, into the tiny space that was nothing like our manor, into the life she was building without me.
Alex was in his bassinet, red-faced and furious. I crossed to him and lifted him carefully, the way I’d seen Gianna do it, supporting his head, cradling him against my chest.
“Hey,” I murmured. “Hey, buddy. It’s okay. Daddy’s here.”
He kept crying. Of course he did. He didn’t know me. I was a stranger who smelled wrong and held him wrong and wasn’t his mother.
But I didn’t put him down.
I swayed with him, the way I’d seen parents do, and I whispered nonsense words, and I let him cry against my chest while Gianna watched from the doorway with an expression I couldn’t read.
“Go to bed,” I told her. “I’ve got this.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“No,” I agreed. “But I’m going to learn.”
She stood there a moment longer. Then, slowly, like it cost her something, she turned and walked into the bedroom.
The door closed behind her.
I looked down at my son, still wailing, still furious at the world.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s just you and me, Alex. Let’s figure this out together.”