10. Izzy #3
“Your daughter has been dismantling my marriage since the day she appeared in it, Mr. Burnham.” The words come out steady while my hands shake. “I think that buys me a little difficulty.”
Sabrina makes a small wounded sound, her free hand fluttering to her collarbone. Her father’s arm tightens around her.
“Oh, Daddy, don’t be upset with her.” Sabrina’s voice turns to sugar. “The poor thing has been through so much. The separation has taken such a toll.”
Her eyes find mine and settle in, satisfied.
“Wilson mentioned just the other day that she’s been struggling. Paranoid, I think was the word he used. Seeing threats where there aren’t any. It’s really quite sad.”
The world goes white at the edges.
Either he said that to her, or she invents him fluently. It doesn’t matter which.
I am done letting either of them write me.
My body moves before I decide anything. I close the distance until I can see the flecks of gold in her eyes, until my breath stirs the hair at her temple.
“Let me make this very clear.” I keep it low and steady, each word laid down flat and final. “I know exactly what you are.”
Her smile wavers. First time all night.
“I know you’ve been circling my husband like a vulture for months.” I take another step and she gives up half a pace, her grip tightening on her father’s arm. “I know you position yourself at every meeting, every dinner, every camera angle.”
She opens her mouth. I don’t let her.
“I’d bet my life you leaked that photo of my cousin. And I know you’ve been pouring poison in ears all over this city, including the one you’re hanging off right now.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her voice pitches higher. “I would never…”
“And whatever you think happens when my divorce is final?” I lean in until our noses nearly touch, close enough to watch her pulse jump. “It doesn’t.”
The lobby has gone tomb-silent.
Phones are up. I can feel every lens.
“Wilson may be an oblivious, workaholic disaster who couldn’t prioritize his marriage to save his life.” My voice rises, filling the marble, bouncing off the columns. “But he’s MY oblivious, workaholic disaster. Mine.”
I let that sit.
“And you?” I let my eyes travel down her, slow, and back up. “You’re nothing. You’re just someone who wanted what she couldn’t have.”
I turn on my heel and walk to the doors.
My legs are shaking so hard I don’t know how they’re carrying me. But they carry me, through the revolving door and out onto the sidewalk, where the night air hits my wet face and the street blurs into taxis and town cars and strangers whose lives didn’t just detonate in a hotel lobby.
I don’t get far before my legs quit.
My hand catches a lamppost. The iron is cold under my fingers and I hang on to it, forehead against the metal, pulling for air that won’t come.
Did I really just do that? Did I really just defend Wilson Carter to his would-be mistress?
The first sob bends me double. Then another, then a flood of them, shaking my shoulders while the city streams past without slowing down.
The man who knelt in a puddle on Bleecker Street to ask for my whole life couldn’t cross a terrace for me tonight. I loved them both with the same heart. That was always the problem.
I called him mine.
My mouth went around him before my brain could catch up, the way it always does. I’ve been defending this man at dinner parties for years. To my mother. To myself in the mirror at 2 AM when I can’t sleep.
And I just did it again. I stood in that lobby in front of Richard Burnham and his scheming daughter and every phone recording the whole thing, and I claimed a man I’m literally divorcing.
He made me invisible for years. He couldn’t even say one sentence on that terrace. And I still stood there in front of all those people and called him mine.
What is wrong with me?
My phone starts buzzing against my hip and doesn’t stop. I drag it out with hands that won’t hold still.
Wilson: Izzy please answer me
Wilson: I froze. I know I froze and I hate myself for it.
Wilson: I told her to leave after you walked out. I finally said it. I finally said the words.
Wilson: Please tell me where you are. I need to make this right.
I stare at the screen until the letters swim together.
He found the words the moment they stopped costing him anything. That’s the whole story of us, right there in a text thread.
My thumbs hover over the keyboard. I type the start of a sentence and watch the cursor blink after it.
I still
I delete it one letter at a time, and send the other thing instead.
Me: Don’t follow me. I need to think.
Then I open a new thread. Isaac, Wilson’s oldest friend, the one who stood next to him at our wedding and cried before Wilson did.
Me: Whatever’s happening tonight, don’t let them tear him apart. Please.
I don’t wait for a reply. Isaac will understand.
I pocket the phone, push off the lamppost, and make my legs carry me down the block with no destination anywhere in me.
The city keeps moving and so do I. Block after block, no destination, just my feet and the one thing I can’t stop thinking about.
I called him mine. In front of everyone in that fucking lobby. And the worst part is I meant it.