7. Rhodes #2
The caption reads: EXCLUSIVE: Rhodes Calloway and Rachel Vaughn spotted leaving the same hotel room, sources say they’ve been “inseparable” for years.
“This is nothing,” I say. “This is literally nothing. She brought me contracts to sign before a meeting.”
“I know that. You know that. The internet isn’t interested in knowing that.”
“I’ll release a statement-”
“Rhodes.” Julian’s voice is careful. “Your wife is probably seeing this right now.”
Maren.
I turn toward her side of the bed, but she’s already gone. The sheets are cold, her phone missing from the nightstand.
The ranunculus is still there. Watching me like an accusation.
I grab my phone and call her. It rings once, twice, five times.
Voicemail.
“Maren, I need you to call me back. There’s a photo going around, and I need to explain before you-” I stop. Take a breath. “I didn’t do anything. Nothing happened. Rachel came to my room because we had a meeting and she needed me to sign contracts, and that’s it. That’s all of it. Please call me.”
I hang up and call back, and get her voicemail a second time.
She’s seen it. She’s seen it and she’s not answering, and every second of silence is another second where she’s looking at a photo that tells a story I didn’t write.
I pull on clothes, grab my keys, head for the door. She’s probably at the shop. She always goes to the shop when she’s upset.
My phone buzzes. A text, finally.
But it’s not from Maren.
It’s from Rachel: I’m so sorry. I didn’t see the photographer. I’ll send a statement to your PR team immediately.
I text back: Where’s Maren? She’s not answering.
Rachel: I don’t know. I’m not exactly the person she wants to hear from right now.
No. She’s not.
I drive too fast. Run two yellow lights. Pull up outside Bellamy Blooms and see the lights on, see movement through the window.
But before I can get out of the car, my phone rings.
Maren.
“Hey.” My voice comes out rough. “Where are you? Are you at the shop?”
“I’m at the shop.”
“I’m outside, coming in. I need to explain-”
“Did she stay the night?”
The question stops me cold.
“What? No. Of course not. Rachel had her own room, she just came by in the morning to-”
“To what?”
“To bring contracts. For the contractor meeting. I told you about the pipes, remember? The HVAC issue? There was an emergency meeting at seven, and she needed my sign-off on the revised estimates-”
“At six in the morning. In your hotel room.”
I do the math on how it sounds, land on the truth and understand it won’t save me.
“Yes.”
“While you were still in yesterday’s clothes.”
“I hadn’t slept, Maren. I was exhausted and I fell asleep on the couch without changing, and then she showed up with coffee and paperwork, and that’s it. That’s all it was.”
Silence.
“I didn’t touch her,” I say. “I’ve never touched her. Not once in ten years. I know how this looks, and I know the photo is bad, but nothing happened. Nothing has ever happened. You have to believe me.”
More silence.
“Maren?”
“I want to believe you.”
“Then believe me.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Yes, it is. Either you trust me or you don’t.”
“I trust you.” Her voice cracks. “I just don’t trust the version of us that keeps ending up here. The campaign photos, the article, and now this. Every time I try to believe we’re okay, something else appears to prove me wrong.”
“This isn’t real. The photo, it’s nothing. It’s a moment taken out of context-”
“Everything is taken out of context, Rhodes. Everything is a moment that looks worse than it is. At some point, the moments add up.”
“To what?”
She’s quiet for so long I think she’s hung up.
Then, softly: “I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that out.”
I see her through the shop window. Standing at her worktable, phone pressed to her ear, surrounded by flowers for the gala. My gala. The celebration of everything I’ve built while she decorated it from the sidelines.
“I’m coming inside,” I say.
“Don’t.”
“Maren-”
“I need time, I need to think - I can’t do that with you standing in front of me, asking me to believe something I’m not sure I know how to believe anymore.”
“I didn’t cheat on you.”
“I know.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that you shouldn’t have had to tell me that.
” Her voice is steady now, the way it gets when she’s decided something she can’t take back.
“The problem is that I looked at that photo and for one second, just one, I didn’t immediately know what the truth was.
That’s never happened before. Not once in eleven years. And if it can happen now…”
She trails off.
“What?” I ask. “If it can happen now, what?”
“Then maybe we’re not who I thought we were.”
The line goes dead.
Through the window, I watch her set down the phone. Pick up scissors. Go back to work on flowers she’s making for a party celebrating a life we built together.
I should go inside anyway. Break down the door if I have to. Make her look at me and see the truth I know is there.
But I don’t.
Because she asked me for time, and I’ve spent eleven years not giving her what she asked for, and maybe this is where it finally has to stop.
I drive away.
Behind me, my wife is standing in her flower shop, looking at a photo of another woman leaving my hotel room.
And for the first time in our marriage, she didn’t immediately believe I was innocent.
The gossip sites move fast.
By noon, the photo has been picked up by three more outlets.
Two hours later, there’s a think piece about workplace relationships and power dynamics.
By four, someone has dug up the campaign photos from the magazine shoot and arranged them in a timeline that makes Rachel and me look like the worst-kept secret in the hospitality industry.
My phone won’t stop buzzing. Rachel with updates. Julian with damage control options. My publicist with draft statements I can’t bring myself to approve.
None of them are Maren.
I text her twice. Call once. Leave a voicemail that’s probably too long and definitely too desperate.
Nothing.
At six o’clock, I drive past the shop again. The lights are still on. She’s still there.
I don’t stop.
At eight, I go home to an empty house. The ranunculus is still on her nightstand. Her closet is still full of clothes. The champagne bottle I brought back from Bellamy Blooms three nights ago sits in the exact same spot, the crooked flower inside it looking more fragile than ever.
She hasn’t left. She’s just not here.
I pour myself a drink. Then another.
The third one doesn’t help either.
My phone lights up. My heart stops.
But it’s not Maren.
It’s a link. From Nora, of all people. No message, just a URL.
I click it.
It’s another photo. Same gossip site, same photographer, apparently.
This one is from inside the hotel lobby. Rachel and me, walking toward the elevators, her hand on my arm while she points at something on her phone. Probably the contract details, probably something completely innocent.
But the angle makes it look like something else entirely.
The caption reads: More Evidence? Rhodes Calloway and Rachel Vaughn Caught in Intimate Moment Just Hours Before the Hotel Room Photo.
I call Nora.
“What the hell is this?”
“I thought you should see it before Maren does.”
“Is she okay? Have you talked to her?”
“She’s…” Nora pauses. “She’s working on the gala flowers. She won’t talk about it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
“Tell her I love her. Tell her I didn’t-”
“I know you didn’t, Rhodes. I’ve known you for eleven years. You’re not a cheater.” Nora’s voice is careful. “But I’m not the one who needs to believe that right now.”
She hangs up.
I sit in my empty house, staring at a photo that looks exactly like what it isn’t, and wait for my wife to come home.
She doesn’t.