14. Lucas
— ? —
Lucas
The ring sits on the nightstand like an accusation.
I don’t notice it at first. I’m still thinking about the interview, about Dario’s advice, about how to fix what’s broken between us.
The conversation plays on repeat in my head - different since the hospital, like living with a stranger - and I wonder if I said too much, if Dario will keep it to himself, if there’s any way to unsay the words that felt true when I spoke them.
Then I see the glint of diamond, and my blood turns to ice.
Her wedding ring. The one I slipped on her finger while she cried happy tears, while I promised to love her forever, while we stood in front of everyone we knew and declared ourselves a team.
It’s lying on the nightstand. Beside a note.
I don’t want to read it. I already know what it says.
But I pick it up anyway, my hands unsteady, and I force my eyes to track across her handwriting.
I heard everything. I’m tired of choosing someone who can’t choose me - not at home, not in public, not anywhere. For Allana’s sake, I’ll stay close. The old foreman’s cottage. Don’t follow me tonight.
-Delilah
She heard me talking to Dario.
The realization hits like a punch to the gut. She was there, in the hallway, listening while I called her paranoid. While I said I didn’t know how to reach her. While I talked about her like she was a problem to be managed instead of the woman I married.
I’m tired of choosing someone who can’t choose me.
The words blur. I blink, and realize my eyes are wet.
I sink onto the edge of the bed - our bed, though it hasn’t felt like ours in so long. The mattress dips under my weight, and I stare at that ring, watching it catch the lamplight, watching it throw tiny rainbows across the wood like it’s mocking me.
She left.
My wife left.
The thought doesn’t quite compute. Delilah has always been here - a fixed point in my universe, the foundation everything else was built on.
Even during the worst of it, even during the fighting and the silence and the slow erosion of everything we used to be, I never actually believed she would leave.
I thought there would be more time. Time to fix things. Time to figure out what went wrong. Time to become the husband she deserved.
But she’s gone, and I’m sitting alone in a bedroom that smells like her perfume, holding a note that says she heard everything.
She heard me call her paranoid.
Paranoid.
The word tastes different now. Less like frustration and more like shame.
I think about the necklace. About the accusation in her eyes when she confronted me in the kitchen.
I said I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I didn’t - I’ve never bought Aimie jewelry, would never even think of it - but Delilah didn’t believe me.
Why would she? I’ve given her no reason to trust me lately.
No reason to believe I’m still on her side.
The interview plays in my head. Aimie beside me, her hand resting on the chair arm inches from mine. The interviewer asking about chemistry. My voice saying she’s extraordinary while my wife - my actual wife - watched from wherever she was.
Did she watch? Is that why she came to the house tonight?
The thought makes me nauseous.
I’m moving before I realize I’ve decided to go. Running, really, though my legs feel like they’re made of lead and my lungs are burning before I even reach the front door.
The cottage is a ten-minute walk from the main house. I make it in five, my boots pounding against the dirt path, my breath coming in ragged gasps.
The windows are dark. Of course they are - it’s the middle of the night.
I pound on the door hard enough to rattle the frame.
Nothing. No sound of movement inside.
“Delilah!”
My voice cracks on her name. I sound desperate. I am desperate.
I pound again. “Delilah, please. I need to talk to you.”
The door swings open.
She stands there in the doorway, still in the clothes she was wearing earlier. No - different clothes. Sweatpants and an old t-shirt, one of mine, the Montoya Rodeo logo faded and cracked. She looks exhausted. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry, like she’s cried herself out and has nothing left.
She looks at me like I’m a door-to-door salesman she’s deciding whether to let in.
“What are you doing here?”
“What am I-” I’m gasping, trying to catch my breath. “My wife left me. She’s living in this cottage. What do you think I’m doing here?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Her voice is flat. Cold. Like she’s talking to a stranger. “I’ve already taken everything I need.”
“Delilah-”
“And I hope you get used to calling me just Delilah from now on.” She crosses her arms over her chest, and something in her posture shifts. Hardens. “I’ll be filing for divorce. I recommend you start looking for a lawyer.”
The word hits me like a physical blow.
Divorce.
“Wait-” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Are you out of your mind?”
Something dangerous flashes in her eyes. Something I’ve never seen before - or maybe something I stopped looking for. “Yes. Maybe I am out of my mind. Maybe I’m paranoid too.”
She spits the word back at me like poison.
“But not enough to keep living in that house while another woman replaces me, while my husband doubts me, while he’s incapable of standing up for me on public television.”
I stare at her. At this woman I’ve loved for so long, who I thought I knew better than anyone in the world. And for the first time in longer than I can remember, I really see her.
This isn’t the woman who’s been tiptoeing around our marriage.
This isn’t the silent partner who smiled for cameras and swallowed her opinions.
This is the woman I met all those years ago - the one who walked toward a dangerous horse without flinching, who looked me in the eye and told me she didn’t break horses, she listened to them.
That woman is back. And she’s terrifying.
“I told Allana I was sick,” she continues, her voice steady now. Controlled. “That I needed rest and some space to heal. She wanted to take care of me - she’s the only reason I didn’t leave the property entirely. But we can figure out custody arrangements through the lawyers.”
“Delilah, wait-”
The door slams in my face.
I stand there in the dark, staring at the weathered wood, listening to her footsteps retreat inside. The lock clicks. Final. Absolute.
For a long moment, I don’t move. Can’t move. The night presses in around me - crickets chirping, wind rustling through the trees, all the normal sounds of a Texas evening - and I feel like I’m standing on the edge of a cliff, watching my whole life crumble into the void.
Divorce.
She’s filing for divorce.
The word keeps echoing, bouncing around my skull like a bullet ricocheting off walls. Divorce. Custody arrangements. Lawyers.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be real.
I sink down onto the porch steps, my legs giving out beneath me. The wood is cold and rough through my jeans, but I barely feel it. I barely feel anything except the hollow ache in my chest where my heart used to be.
I’m tired of choosing someone who can’t choose me.
The accusation in those words. The years of hurt packed into a single sentence.
Did I really never choose her? I thought I did. I thought everything I was doing - the business, the competitions, the endless hours of work - was for us. For our family. For the future we planned together.
But sitting here in the dark, staring at the cottage where my wife has exiled herself, I’m starting to see how it must have looked from her side.
The gala. Dancing with Aimie while Delilah stood alone on her crutches.
The interview. Praising another woman on national television while my wife watched from home.
The conversation with Dario. Calling her paranoid. Saying I didn’t know how to reach her.
A hundred small betrayals, piling up like stones, until the weight of them crushed everything we’d built.
And I didn’t even notice. I was so busy trying to save the business that I forgot to save my marriage.
I sit on those steps until the cold seeps into my bones. Until the sky starts to lighten at the edges, that particular Texas gray that comes just before dawn.
Then I get up, and I walk back to the main house.
The bedroom is exactly as I left it - ring on the nightstand, note beside it, bed still made because neither of us has slept in it. I pick up the ring and hold it in my palm, feeling the weight of it, remembering the day I gave it to her.
We were so young. So certain. So convinced that love was enough to carry us through anything.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe love was never the problem. Maybe I was.
I close my fist around the ring and stand there in the darkness, making a decision.
I’m not going to let her go. Not without a fight. Not without showing her that I can be the man she married, the partner she deserves.
I just have to figure out how.
But first - first I need to understand what went wrong. Really understand it, not just the surface arguments about Aimie and the business. There’s something deeper here, something I’ve been too blind or too stubborn to see.
And I’m going to find it. Whatever it takes.
I slide the ring into my pocket, where it sits like a promise.
Or maybe like a penance.