16. Beatrice
— ? —
Beatrice
I wake to the sound of my phone buzzing against the nightstand.
Seventeen missed calls. Eight from Kenneth. Nine from numbers I don’t recognize - journalists, probably, or society gossips hoping to get a quote for whatever story they’re spinning about last night.
Celia’s already texted: Everyone’s talking about it. You’re famous. Or infamous. Not sure which. Call me when you’re up.
I lie in bed, staring at the ceiling of Celia’s guest room, replaying last night on an endless loop.
Kenneth’s voice cutting through the ballroom. I wronged her. The affair was a lie my mother built.
The look on Josephine’s face when he turned away from her. The way the crowd parted. The way no one - not a single person - moved to comfort her.
She’s worth more than every person in this room combined. Including me.
And then me, walking out without saying a word. Leaving him standing there with a ballroom full of witnesses and nothing but silence from the woman he’d just defended.
My eyes are burning. I press the heels of my hands against them, trying to stop the tears before they start.
I miss him.
God help me, I miss him so much it feels like a physical wound, something torn open in my chest that won’t stop bleeding.
I miss the way he used to hold me. I miss the sound of his laugh.
I miss falling asleep next to him, even when he came to bed late, even when he was distracted and distant and not really there.
I hate myself for missing him.
I hate that after everything he did - the accusation, the humiliation, the boxes packed before he even knew the truth - I still want him. Still crave him. Still catch myself reaching for his side of the bed in the middle of the night.
The doorbell rings.
I hear Celia’s footsteps in the hallway, her voice muffled through the walls. Then a knock on my bedroom door.
“Bea? Kenneth’s here. He has flowers. Because of course he does.”
I close my eyes. Take a breath.
“Send him in.”
Kenneth appears in the doorway, looking like he hasn’t slept. His hair is disheveled, his eyes shadowed, and he’s holding a bouquet of white peonies - my favorites, the ones he used to have delivered to the hospital when I was working overnight shifts.
“Can we talk?”
“You said what you needed to say last night.”
“I said what everyone else needed to hear.” He takes a step into the room, then stops, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to come any closer. “But there’s more. Things I need to say to you. Just you.”
“Kenneth-”
“Please, Bea. Five minutes.”
Against every rational thought in my head, I nod.
We end up in Celia’s living room, sitting on opposite ends of the couch like strangers at a bus stop. The flowers are on the coffee table between us, their sweet scent filling the room.
“I wanted to thank you,” he says.
“Thank me? For what?”
“For letting me come to the appointments. For not shutting me out completely when you had every right to.” He runs a hand through his hair, that familiar gesture of overwhelm. “For being better than I deserve.”
“I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for our child.”
“I know. You’re doing it for the baby’s sake, not mine. But still.” His eyes meet mine, dark and earnest and so vulnerable it makes my chest ache. “It means everything to me. Every moment you let me be part of this, it means everything.”
The silence stretches between us. I can hear the clock on Celia’s wall ticking. Can hear my own heartbeat, too fast, too loud.
“You think a speech in a ballroom fixes this?” The words come out harder than I intend. “Last night. The big public defense. Standing up in front of everyone and telling them you were wrong.”
“I don’t think-”
“You cut off your mother. You chose me. You said I was worth more than everyone in that room.” I wrap my arms around myself, trying to hold something together that keeps threatening to fall apart.
“And part of me wanted to run to you. Part of me wanted to forget everything and just let you hold me and pretend none of it ever happened.”
“But?”
“But then I remembered.” My voice cracks. “I remembered standing at our dinner table, telling you I was pregnant, watching your face turn to stone. I remembered you saying the baby wasn’t yours. I remembered my mother’s expression when she realized what was happening. My father’s. Celia’s.”
“Bea-”
“You defending me in a ballroom doesn’t erase you accusing me at a dinner table.
” The tears are falling now, and I don’t bother wiping them away.
“It doesn’t erase the weeks I spent alone in this guest room, wondering what I did wrong.
Wondering how I could have loved someone so much and been so invisible to them.
It doesn’t erase losing my job and my reputation and my home. ”
“I know it doesn’t-”
“Do you?” I stand up, needing to move, needing distance.
“Because a grand gesture is easy, Kenneth. Standing up in front of a crowd takes one night of courage. One speech. One dramatic moment. But what I went through?” I turn to face him.
“That was months. That was every single day. That was waking up and not knowing who I was anymore because the person I trusted most in the world had looked at me like I was garbage.”
He doesn’t try to defend himself. Doesn’t make excuses. Just sits there, absorbing it, his face a mask of pain.
“I’m sorry.” His voice is barely a whisper. “I know it’s not enough. I know nothing I say or do can undo the damage I caused.”
“Then why do you keep trying?”
“Because you’re the only thing that matters.” He stands too, but doesn’t move toward me. Keeps that careful distance I’ve trained him to maintain. “Because I would rather spend the rest of my life trying and failing than give up on the only person I’ve ever truly loved.”
The words hang in the air between us.
I think about the baby shoes in my drawer. The note about therapy. The house signed over without conditions. All the ways he’s been trying to prove himself, day after day, grand gesture after grand gesture.
“The grand gestures have to stop.”
“What?”
“The billboards. The house. The public speeches.” I take a shaky breath.
“If you want to fix this - really fix it - you can’t just throw money and drama at it.
You have to actually be present. Actually show up.
Not for the big moments that everyone can see, but for the ordinary ones that nobody notices. ”
“I can do that.”
“Can you?” I search his face for any sign of the old Kenneth, the one who was always rushing off to something more important.
“Because the man I married never showed up for the ordinary moments. He was always somewhere else. Always distracted. Always making me feel like I was an afterthought in my own life.”
“I’m not that man anymore.”
“Prove it.” I walk to the door. Open it. “Prove it every day. For weeks. For months. Without any guarantee that it will make a difference. Without any grand gesture to fall back on. Just… showing up. Being here. Being present.”
“I will.” He’s standing now, watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “Whatever it takes. However long it takes. I’ll prove it.”
“We’ll see.” I hold the door open, a clear signal. “But Kenneth? If you really want a chance at getting me back?”
“Anything.”
“We start from the beginning.”
He stares at me like I’ve just spoken a foreign language. “The beginning?”
“You never really courted me. We went on three dates before you decided we were together. Before you swept me up into your world and your family and your expectations.” The memory aches - those early days, how fast everything moved, how I’d convinced myself the whirlwind was romance instead of warning.
“I never got flowers for no reason. Never got dinners that weren’t about impressing someone or closing some deal.
Never got time that was just ours, without an agenda. ”
“I didn’t realize-”
“No. You didn’t.” I soften my voice, just slightly. “If you want a second chance, you have to earn it. Like we just met. Like you’re trying to win me over. Like you don’t already know how the story ends.”
Kenneth straightens. Something shifts in his expression - determination, maybe, or hope.
“Beatrice Sinclair.” He takes a single step toward me. “Will you go on a date with me?”
I almost smile. Almost.
“Ask me again tomorrow.”
I close the door.
But through the wood, I hear his voice:
“I’ll ask you every day until you say yes.”
I lean my forehead against the door, breathing hard, heart racing.
And despite everything - despite the hurt and the anger and the walls I’ve built so carefully around myself - I believe him.