13. Elizabeth
— ? —
Elizabeth
I wait for him in the study.
The leather chair by the window holds me like a confession booth, its back pressing against my spine as darkness deepens outside. I’ve been here for hours, watching the light die over the water, watching my reflection sharpen in the glass as the sky turns from gray to indigo to black.
My hands are steady. My heart is not.
The scarf sits in my lap, folded into a precise square. I haven’t decided if I’ll show it to him. Haven’t decided what good it would do - what proof offers when the truth is already carved into every hollow space inside me.
Convenient virgin. Placeholder. He still finishes with me.
Victoria’s voice loops in my head, a recording I can’t stop playing.
I’ve examined the photograph from every angle in my memory.
The rumpled sheets. His bare chest. The blonde hair spilling across the pillow beside him.
It looked real. It felt real. And even if some desperate part of me wants to believe it was staged, manufactured, a lie designed to wound-
What difference would it make?
He still chose silence over me. Still walked away from the bathroom with my taste on his tongue. Still let his mother make me feel like an intruder in my own marriage while Victoria circled like a shark scenting blood.
The truth of that photograph matters less than the truth of everything that came before it.
When Jarec finally appears in the doorway, I don’t stand.
He’s still in his coat, briefcase in hand, looking like he’s just come from somewhere important. Somewhere that wasn’t here. Somewhere that didn’t include me.
“Elizabeth?” He pauses, registers the darkness of the room, the single lamp I’ve left burning. Something shifts in his expression - concern, maybe, or wariness. “What are you doing in here?”
“We need to talk.”
My voice doesn’t shake. I won’t let it.
He sets down his briefcase. Moves to the sideboard. Pours himself a whiskey he doesn’t drink, the amber liquid catching the lamplight as it settles in the glass. A ritual. A shield. Something to do with his hands while he decides how to handle whatever this is.
“About what?”
“About this.” I gesture between us, at the empty air that has always filled the space we share. “About us. About the fact that I can’t do this anymore.”
He turns. His face is carefully blank, but I see the way his fingers tighten on the glass.
“Elizabeth-”
“I waited for you.” The words come out measured, controlled, each one a stone I’ve been carrying for months.
“Every night since I moved into this house, I waited. I left my door unlocked. I tried to talk to you, to know you, to be something more than a debt you’re paying off.
” I take a breath, force myself to continue.
“And you shut me out. Every single time.”
“I was trying to protect-”
“You were trying to protect yourself.” I stand, and he takes an involuntary step back. The movement is small, barely perceptible, but I see it. I see everything now. “Not me. Never me.”
My fingers close around the folded silk in my lap. I could take it out. Could drop it on the desk between us and watch his face while I lay every ugly thing Victoria showed me bare. Could beg him to tell me it isn’t what it looks like.
I don’t. I won’t give either of them the satisfaction of watching me plead to be proven wrong.
“Victoria made sure I saw exactly what she wanted me to see,” I say instead.
His brow furrows. “Elizabeth - what are you talking about?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
And that’s the worst part, I realize. That’s the part that breaks me.
“Because I’m not going to beg. Whatever the truth is, you still chose her silence over my presence.
You still let me believe I was nothing. You still left me alone with my pain and her poison and your mother’s cruelty, and you never once-” My voice cracks, just slightly.
I press on. “You never once fought for me.”
The study feels smaller than it did before. The walls press in. The air thickens. Jarec stands frozen in the middle of the room, glass still in his hand, looking at me like I’ve shot him.
“Elizabeth, wait-”
“I’ve been waiting.” I pick up the bag I left by the door.
One suitcase. Everything that matters. Everything I need to start over somewhere that doesn’t hurt to breathe.
“That’s all I’ve done since I came here.
Wait for you to see me. Wait for you to want me.
Wait for some sign that this marriage was something other than an obligation you resented. ”
“I never resented-”
“Then what would you call it?” I turn to face him fully, and something in my expression makes him flinch.
“What would you call the months of silence? The dinners alone? The way you looked through me at every event, every party, while Victoria hung on your arm and your mother reminded me that I don’t belong? ”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. The whiskey glass trembles in his grip.
“I’m not fighting for scraps anymore, Jarec.” The words come out quiet now, almost gentle, and somehow that makes them sharper. “I deserve someone who chooses me in the daylight. Not just when no one’s watching. Not just when he’s weak enough to give in.”
“You’re leaving.”
It’s not a question.
“I’m going to Maya’s. My cousin has a cottage on the coast.” I adjust the strap of my bag, feel its weight settle against my shoulder like permission. “Don’t follow me. Don’t call.”
“Elizabeth-”
“If you want to see me again, you’ll have to figure out how to be the man I painted instead of the one you’ve been pretending to be.”
His brow furrows. “What does that mean?”
But I’m already at the door. Already leaving. Already gone in every way that matters.
“Ask yourself, Jarec.” I pause at the threshold, don’t turn around. “Ask yourself why you’re so afraid of wanting me that you’d rather lose me than admit it.”
I walk out into the night.
I don’t look back.
***
The drive to Maya’s cottage takes two hours.
I make it in silence, the road unspooling before me like a promise, headlights cutting through darkness that feels less like an ending and more like the space before something begins. My hands are steady on the wheel. My breathing is even. The tears I expected never come.
Maybe I’ve already cried enough for this marriage. Maybe there’s nothing left to grieve.
The cottage is dark when I arrive, salt-stained shingles silver in the moonlight. Maya left the key under the mat, as promised, and when I turn it in the lock, the door opens onto air that smells of dust and sea and possibility.
I set my suitcase on the bare floor. Close the door behind me. Lean against it in the darkness and listen to my own heartbeat - still going, still strong, still mine.
I left.
The thought sits in my chest like a bird testing its wings. Terrifying. Exhilarating. Real.
I actually left.
***
By dawn, he’ll find what I left behind.
My ring on the foyer table, the diamond catching the first light through the tall windows. Beside it, a folded note in my handwriting.
***
I only ever wanted your time. You couldn’t even give me that.
- E
The house will wait in silence. The staff won’t arrive for another hour. Jarec is still wherever he went after I walked out - his study, probably, surrounded by expensive whiskey and the ghost of a conversation he never saw coming.
Let him find the ring. Let him read the note. Let him understand, finally, what it cost me to stay as long as I did.
I left them there before I walked out. My last act in that house.
Now I’m here, in the cottage, listening to the sea, and it’s the first night in months that belongs entirely to me.