14. Jarec
— ? —
Jarec
I stand in the foyer, staring at the ring on the table.
I’ve been standing here for seventeen minutes.
I know because I’ve been counting. Seventeen minutes of looking at the diamond solitaire I picked out myself, the one I told the jeweler was “appropriate for the situation,” the one she wore every day like it meant something even when I gave her no reason to believe it did.
The wedding band isn’t beside it.
She kept the band. Left the diamond - the stone, the price, the transaction - and kept the plain circle of gold that stood for the vows.
I don’t know what to do with that. Whether it’s mercy or accusation.
Whether some part of her couldn’t sever it completely, or whether she wanted me to spend the rest of my life wondering.
I only ever wanted your time.
I read the note again. And again. The words blur and sharpen, blur and sharpen, like my eyes can’t decide whether to see them clearly or not.
You couldn’t even give me that.
She’s gone.
I knew she would leave eventually. Everyone leaves.
That’s the lesson my father taught me before he died - not in words, but in absence, in the way he poured himself into work and women and anything that wasn’t home.
The lesson my mother hammered home every time she reminded me that sentiment is weakness, that attachment is vulnerability, that the safest thing is to never want anything too much.
But knowing she would leave and feeling the house without her in it are two entirely different things.
The foyer echoes. The chandelier hangs above me like judgment. The silence presses against my ears with a weight that feels like drowning.
She’s gone.
She’s actually gone.
***
I walk through the rooms like a ghost.
The dining room, where she ate alone more nights than I can count because I was too much of a coward to sit across from her.
The chair she always chose faces the windows, positioned to watch the sea.
I wonder how many sunsets she watched without me.
I wonder if she counted them. I wonder if each one felt like another small death, another evening I chose to spend anywhere but with her.
The kitchen, where I bandaged her finger and felt her pulse race beneath my thumb.
The spot by the counter where she stood, blood welling from the cut, refusing to admit she needed help until I took her hand myself.
I remember the way she trembled. I told myself it was pain.
Now I wonder if it was something else entirely.
The living room, where the storm threw us together and I kissed her like I was drowning.
The couch where she pressed against me, where I felt the heat of her body through wet clothes, where I almost broke every promise I’d made to myself about keeping her at arm’s length.
I walked away that night. Walked away and left her alone in the dark, wanting, wondering what she’d done wrong.
She didn’t do anything wrong. She was never the problem.
I was the problem. I’ve always been the problem.
The bathroom.
I stop in the doorway, unable to cross the threshold.
The shower gleams white and empty. The tile is dry, spotless, betraying nothing of what happened here.
But I can still see her - eyes closed, head thrown back, water running down her body while she touched herself and thought I couldn’t see.
I can still hear her voice, that choked gasp when I stepped in behind her.
Still feel her pulse pounding against my fingers as I brought her to the edge and over.
I made her come on my fingers and tasted her afterward. Then I walked away, still hard, still wanting her so badly it burned. I told myself I was being noble. Told myself I was protecting her, protecting the arrangement, protecting something.
I was protecting myself. She was right about that.
I was protecting myself from how much I wanted her. How much I already needed her. How terrifying it was to feel something real for the first time in my life and know - know - that I would find a way to destroy it.
And now I’ve destroyed it anyway.
The bathroom offers no comfort. I turn away and keep walking.
***
I find myself at the door of her studio without meaning to go there.
The room is full of half-finished canvases, jars of brushes, tubes of paint squeezed and scattered across every surface.
Evidence of a life. A passion. Something she built while I was busy ignoring her, pretending she didn’t exist, walking past this door a hundred times without ever once asking what she was creating inside.
Her supplies are still here. She left in the night with one suitcase, and she left this behind.
She’ll come back for it. Or she won’t. Either way, this room holds more of her than any other space in the house. The smell of oil paint and turpentine. The chaos of creativity. Canvas after canvas after canvas, some complete, others abandoned halfway through.
And in the corner, covered with a drop cloth, something larger than the rest.
I pull the cloth away.
And stop breathing.
***
It’s me.
Jarec Fairweather, rendered in shadow and light, half-turned away like I’m already leaving.
The brushstrokes are raw, almost violent in places, tender in others.
She’s captured something in my expression that I’ve never seen in a mirror - something hungry and sad and desperately lonely. Something true.
I stare at the portrait for a long time.
The man in the painting is terrified. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands are blurred as if he can’t stop moving, can’t settle, can’t allow himself to be still long enough for anyone to really see him.
The man in the painting is aching for connection.
It’s there in his eyes - not the cold gray I cultivate in board meetings and social functions, but something deeper, something wounded.
The man in the painting is drowning in his own isolation and too proud to reach for the hand extended toward him.
She saw me.
Through all my coldness, all my distance, all my careful walls, she saw me.
And she painted it. Poured her heart onto canvas while I was too busy protecting myself to notice.
While I was walking past this room and never once asking what she was working on.
While I was canceling dinners and avoiding conversations and convincing myself that keeping her at arm’s length was the kindest thing I could do.
She saw me. And I made her leave.
I sink to the floor in front of the portrait, knees hitting the ground hard enough to ache. My chest feels like it’s being crushed by something invisible, something that presses tighter with every breath.
This is what she saw when she looked at me. This is who I was to her - not a husband, not a partner, not even a proper villain. Just a man too afraid of his own wanting to accept what was being offered.
I only ever wanted your time.
Time. That’s all she asked for. Not my money. Not my name. Not the protection my family could offer or the doors my connections could open. Just my presence. My attention. The simple act of being in the same room without looking for an excuse to leave.
And I couldn’t give her even that.
***
That night, I drink.
The whiskey doesn’t help. Nothing helps. I sit in my study with her portrait leaning against the wall opposite my desk, watching myself watch myself, trapped in a loop of recognition I can’t escape.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her face in the doorway. Hear her voice, steady and broken at the same time.
You chose her silence over my presence.
Victoria. The lies she must have told.
I should have known. Should have seen it. Victoria has always been cunning, always calculating, always playing games I refused to acknowledge because acknowledging them would require admitting what she wanted from me - and what I was too weak to refuse.
I never touched her. Not since the contract. Not since Elizabeth. But I let her exist in my orbit. Let her attend functions at my side when Elizabeth wasn’t watching. Let her whisper in my mother’s ear and poison whatever fragile thing was growing between me and my wife.
I should have protected Elizabeth from all of it. Should have stood beside her and told Victoria to disappear. Should have told my mother that her opinions about my marriage were unwelcome and would remain so.
Instead, I let Elizabeth drown in their cruelty while I pretended not to see.
The whiskey burns going down. I pour another. Then another.
The portrait watches from the wall. The man in shadow, always turning away.
That’s me, I think. That’s who I’ve been.
But it doesn’t have to be who I am.
***
At three in the morning, I reach for my phone.
“I need to know where she went.” My voice is rougher than it should be, thick with whiskey and something else. “I need to know she’s safe.”
My assistant’s voice is groggy, confused. “Sir, it’s the middle of the night-”
“I don’t care what time it is. Find her.”
But even as I say it, I hear her voice in my head.
Don’t follow me. Don’t call.
She doesn’t want me to find her. She wants me to earn the right to be found.
I hang up the phone.
Sit in the dark.
The portrait watches me from the wall. The man in shadow. The man who is always leaving. The man who never learned how to stay.
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.
What man did she paint?
I look at the canvas again. Really look this time, past the shadow and the turning away and the obvious loneliness. And I see something else there - something I missed the first time, hidden in the lines she chose to emphasize.
Longing. Not just hunger, not just need, but a desperate, aching longing for something just out of reach. The man in the portrait wants to be known. Wants to be seen. Wants, more than anything, to stop turning away long enough for someone to catch him.
She painted the man I could be. The man buried beneath all the walls I’ve built. The man I’ve been too afraid to become.
Earn it, she said. Earn the right to see me again.
I don’t know how. I don’t know what earning looks like, or how long it takes, or whether she’ll even give me the chance to try.
But I know one thing with absolute certainty: I cannot lose her.
I’ve spent my whole life losing things - my father, my faith in my mother, my belief that love was anything other than weakness waiting to be exploited. I’ve protected myself from every possible hurt by refusing to let anything matter too much.
And in doing so, I’ve lost the only person who ever mattered at all.
The sky outside the windows is beginning to lighten. Dawn, creeping over the horizon, painting the sea in colors I’ve never bothered to notice before.
I pick up a pen. Find a notebook.
And I begin, for the first time, to think about what earning might look like.
Every mistake I’ve made. Every coldness. Every moment I chose fear over her.
I write them all down. Every single one.
And beneath the list of sins, I write one word.
Earn.