5. Christine
— ? —
Christine
He comes home.
I almost don’t believe it at first - the sound of the door, the familiar footsteps in the hallway, the particular way he drops his keys on the marble table by the entrance. I’ve been alone so long that my brain takes a moment to process the reality of another person in this space.
Benedict Morgan, in the flesh, at eleven o’clock at night, still dressed for the office, as though the three days between us had never happened.
I watch him from the living room doorway. He doesn’t see me yet - he’s hunched over his laptop at the kitchen island, the blue light casting shadows under his eyes, making him look older than thirty-eight. Tired. Hollowed out.
Good, whispers that vicious part of me again. Let him feel it.
The tabloid is in my hand. I printed it this afternoon, because I wanted something physical, something I could throw, something he couldn’t dismiss as a glitch or a misunderstanding or whatever lie would be most convenient.
I walk into the kitchen.
He looks up.
For one second - one stupid, treacherous second - my heart does that thing it’s been doing for seven years.
That leap, that flutter, that desperate recognition of the man I fell in love with.
His dark eyes, bloodshot now but still so familiar.
The way his hair falls across his forehead when he’s been running his hands through it.
The shape of his shoulders, the hands I’ve memorized, the mouth I’ve kissed a thousand times.
I hate that I still see him.
I hate that part of me still wants him.
“You’re awake.” His voice is rough. Surprised. “It’s late.”
“Yes. It is.”
He frowns at my tone - the flatness of it, the careful control - and closes his laptop slowly. “Christine. What’s wrong?”
I cross the kitchen. My bare feet are silent on the cold marble, and I feel every step like a countdown. Three. Two. One.
I throw the tabloid in front of him.
“Explain.”
He looks down at it. I watch his face as he processes the headline, the photo, the implications splashed across the page in bold black letters. His jaw tightens. His shoulders go rigid.
“It’s nothing.” His voice is careful now. Measured. The voice he uses in boardrooms when he’s trying to control a situation. “A business dinner. The press are vultures - they’ll make anything into a scandal.”
“A business dinner.”
“Yes.”
“The third one this month.”
Something flickers in his eyes. Guilt, maybe. Or annoyance at being caught. “The Budapest deal requires constant coordination. Pauline is my VP of Operations. We work together.”
“You work together.” I can hear my own voice getting higher, tighter, and I force it back down. Control. I need control. “Is that what you call it? When she has her hand on your back? When you’re laughing with her like-”
I stop.
Like you used to laugh with me.
The words hang unspoken between us, but he hears them anyway. I see it in the way he flinches, in the way his eyes drop to the counter instead of holding mine.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“Then what is it, Benedict? Because from where I’m standing, it looks like you have time for dinner with her but not our anniversary. It looks like you can smile for her but not for me. It looks like-”
“That dinner saved seven thousand jobs.”
The words hit like a slap.
“What?”
“The dinner. With Pauline.” He’s looking at me now, something hot and desperate in his eyes.
“We were meeting with Japanese investors who required off-the-record negotiations. I couldn’t tell you because the deal wasn’t public.
But that one dinner - those three hours - saved an entire division from being liquidated.
Seven thousand families who still have income because I sat in a restaurant instead of coming home. ”
I want to believe him. God, I want to believe that there’s a reasonable explanation, that I’ve been building castles of suspicion out of nothing, that my husband isn’t slipping away from me one business dinner at a time.
But.
“And the photo? Her hand on your back? The way you’re looking at her like she-”
“She asked for a picture. Said it was for the press team, for the announcement once the deal closed. I didn’t think-” He runs his hands through his hair, that familiar gesture of frustration. “I didn’t think about how it would look.”
“You never think about how it looks. You never think about me at all.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it?” The control I’ve been clutching starts to slip, and I let it go.
Let the anger rise, let the hurt bubble up, let him see exactly what he’s done.
“You had time for dinner with her, Benedict. Three dinners. And our anniversary, I sat alone in this apartment, nine months pregnant with your daughter, staring at a text from your assistant because you couldn’t even be bothered to send your own apology. ”
“I was trying to provide for us! For our future!”
“And what about our life?” I’m yelling now. I don’t care. Let the walls hear it. Let the whole building hear it. “What about me? What about the wife who’s been waiting for you for months?”
“Christine-”
“The baby needs a father! I need a husband! Not a ghost who leaves jewelry boxes like they’re apology notes!”
He stares at me. The exhaustion on his face shifts into something harder - frustration, maybe, or the defensive anger of a man who knows he’s wrong but can’t admit it.
“What do you want from me?” His voice rises to match mine. “I’m trying to hold everything together - the company, the employees, the legacy my father built-”
“Everything except us!”
The words echo off the marble, the high ceilings, the empty spaces that used to feel luxurious and now just feel hollow.
We stand there, three feet apart, breathing hard, and I realize I can’t remember the last time we touched.
The last time he reached for me without obligation.
The last time I felt like his wife instead of another item on his to-do list.
The silence stretches. Heavy. Brutal.
“I don’t have time for this,” he says finally.
The words are quiet. Almost gentle. And they land like a blade between my ribs.
“You don’t have time for this.” I repeat it slowly, tasting each word. “You don’t have time for me.”
He doesn’t deny it.
That’s the worst part. He doesn’t deny it. He just picks up the closed laptop - carefully, precisely, like we’re wrapping up a meeting - and turns toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“The office.” He doesn’t look at me. “I’ll sleep there.”
“Benedict-”
“I can’t do this right now, Christine. I can’t fight with you and save the company and-” His voice cracks, just slightly, just enough to show me the fractures underneath. “I can’t do everything. Something has to give.”
And you chose me, I think. I’m the thing that gives.
“If you walk out that door-”
I don’t finish the sentence. I don’t know how to finish it. What am I going to threaten him with? Leaving? He’s already left. The only difference is that he still pays the mortgage.
He pauses at the kitchen doorway, his back to me, and for one moment I think he might turn around. Might come back. Might choose me, just this once, over the empire that’s been slowly crushing us both.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
The door closes behind him.
I stand in the kitchen, alone, listening to his footsteps fade down the hallway. The elevator dings. And then nothing. Just silence, and the hum of the refrigerator, and the distant sounds of a city that keeps moving even when your world has stopped.
I sink to the floor.
The marble is cold through my pajamas, cold against my palms as I brace myself, cold and hard and unforgiving. I press my hand to my belly, feeling our daughter shift and kick.
He chose the office. He chose the deal. He chose everything except me, and maybe he’s been choosing everything except me for longer than I wanted to see.
The tears come then - hot and relentless, streaming down my cheeks, dripping onto the marble floor where we danced on our first night in this penthouse.
He’d spun me around the empty living room, laughing about the echo, promising to fill every room with so much love that we’d never notice how big it was.
We noticed.
I notice every day.
The baby kicks again, harder this time, like she’s trying to remind me she’s still here. Still counting on me. Still waiting for me to be strong enough for both of us.
I press my palm flat against my stomach and make her another promise.
“It’s okay, baby,” I whisper into the empty kitchen. “Mommy’s here. Mommy’s always here.”
The cold seeps into my bones, but I don’t move.
I’m so tired of moving. Of waiting. Of hoping.
Maybe it’s time to stop.