Chapter 9 Abbie
ABBIE
The parking structure is concrete and fluorescent lighting and the echo of my heels, and I'm almost to my car when I hear him running.
"Abbie. Abbie, wait—"
I keep walking.
"Abbie, please." His hand catches my elbow, spinning me around. He's breathing hard, his tux jacket gone, his shirt half-untucked. "It's not true. I have never touched her. I swear to God, I have never—"
"I believe you."
The words stop him cold. He blinks, confusion cutting through the panic on his face. "You... what?"
"I believe you about the sex." I pull my arm free from his grip. The trophy is heavy in my other hand, and I shift it to my hip. "You didn't sleep with my sister. I know that. You're many things, Gray, but you're not that."
"Then why are you—"
"Because it doesn't help."
"How can it not help?" He rakes both hands through his hair, and he looks destroyed, genuinely destroyed, but I can't make myself care. "She's lying. About all of it. The pregnancy, me being the father, she's making it up to hurt you, and I'm going to fix it, I'm going to—"
"You're going to what?" The laugh that comes out of me sounds nothing like me. "Go back in there and take the microphone? Tell the whole industry she's a liar? Because you didn't do that, Gray. You didn't do it when it mattered."
"I came after you—"
"While she still had the mic." My voice cracks on the last word, and I hate it. Hate that he can still do this to me. "My sister just told the entire industry that she's carrying your baby, and you chased me to a parking garage while she stood up there with a microphone."
"What was I supposed to do?" His voice rises. "Stand up there and call her a liar in front of everyone?"
"Yes!" The word echoes off concrete. "Yes, that's exactly what you were supposed to do. That's what a husband does, Gray. He stands up. He defends. He doesn't run after his wife like she's the problem."
"You're not the problem—"
"Then why do I always feel like one?"
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I've hit him. Good. I want to hit him. I want to hit something.
"You want to know why I'm walking away right now?" I take a step closer, until I can see the tiny lines at the corners of his eyes. "It's not about tonight. It's not even about Delaney, as much as she'd love to believe she's that important."
"Then what—"
"It's the pattern." The words pour out of me, the speech I've been rehearsing in my head for a year without knowing it.
"I'm not your wife, Gray. I'm the background.
I wanted to be your partner. Remember that?
Remember when we used to talk about building something together?
And somewhere along the way, I became the afterthought.
The thing you deal with when you have time. "
"That's not—"
"You missed my birthday." The crack in my voice is wider now, harder to hide. "Not just the dinner. Not just the party I didn't throw because I knew you wouldn't come. You forgot it existed. You talked to me on a phone call, Gray, and you didn't even remember what day it was."
His face goes gray. "Abbie—"
"And you handed the keys to my sister." I'm crying now, silent tears tracking down my cheeks, and I hate it.
"The one person who's wanted every single thing I've ever had since I was nine.
She wanted my toys. She wanted my room. She wanted our parents to love her more, and they did, they always did, and now she wants my husband, and you—" I choke on a sob.
"You let her in. You gave her pieces of us.
She knows about the elevator, Gray. How does she know about the elevator? "
"I never told her about the elevator." He's crying too, I realize distantly. Grayson Valentine, who didn't cry at his father's funeral, has tears streaming down his face. "I swear to you, I never—"
"She quoted details back to me. The five things exercise.
The counting." I wrap my arms around myself, the trophy digging into my ribs.
"Either you told her privately, or she's been holding onto a story from our engagement party for six years waiting to weaponize it.
And either way, the fact that she could use it means you gave her access.
You let her close enough to collect ammunition. "
"The engagement party." He exhales. "I told that story to fifteen people, Abbie. I didn't think—"
"No. You didn't." I cut him off. "I’m not asking you to have predicted this six years ago.
You didn't think about setting boundaries with your assistant that would protect us from whatever this is.
And maybe you never told her anything privately, I believe you, actually, I do, but you still let her into our lives far enough that she could twist a public story into something that sounds like intimacy. "
"You're right." His voice is raw. "I failed at protecting you. I failed at seeing what she was doing. That's real, and I own it."
"None of it matters now." I'm so tired of standing in a parking garage fighting for a marriage I'm not sure I want anymore. "You want to know the truth? The pregnancy thing doesn't even rank. It's just... noise. The latest in a year of noise."
"Then tell me." He steps closer, reaches for my hands. I let him take them. I don't know why. "Tell me what you need. Tell me what I'm missing."
"Tell me what I'm missing," I say quietly. "That's your answer. After everything I just said, your answer is to ask me for the solution. Because that's what I've always been, right? The fixer. The planner. The one who makes everything work while you chase the next deal."
"That's not fair—"
"You were going to fix it after Europe." I pull my hands free. "That's what you said, isn't it? That's what you keep saying. After Europe. When is that, Gray? When does Europe end? When does our life start being something you prioritize instead of something you fit in around the edges?"
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again.
"I was going to fix it after Europe."
The laugh that comes out of me is broken. "There it is."
My phone buzzes. I pull it out automatically, and Delaney's name glows on the screen.
Before you forgive him, ask him who paid for Lisbon.
I stare at the text. Then I look up at Gray.
"Who paid for Lisbon?"
His face drains of color.
"What?"
"Lisbon." My voice is very calm. Very quiet. The voice of someone who's already falling and knows there's no bottom. "The Europe expansion. The whole thing that's been eating our marriage for a year. Who paid for it?"
"Abbie—"
"Tell me."
He closes his eyes before he answers.
"Your father."
The parking garage tilts.
"Your father wrote a check." Gray's voice is hoarse. "Eight months ago. He came to me and he offered to invest, and I said no at first, but the Lisbon expansion was moving fast and I chose—"
"Eight months." I'm very still. Very calm. "My father has been financing your company for eight months, and you didn't tell me."
"He asked me not to."
"He asked you not to."
"He said you'd be upset. That you had complicated feelings about the family money, and he wanted to help without—"
"Without me knowing." I nod slowly. "So you took my father's money, behind my back, at his request. The one thing I asked you for, Gray. The one boundary I set when we got married. No Montgomery money in our marriage."
"I know—"
"And Delaney knew before I did."
He doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. Gray rides beside me on the silent drive home. In the dark house, I go straight to the closet and pull down my suitcase.
"Abbie." Gray's voice is ragged. He's standing in the doorway, watching me. "Abbie, please. Let me explain—"
"There's nothing to explain." I start pulling clothes from hangers. Not carefully. Just grabbing. "You took money from my father. You hid it for eight months. My sister knew before I did."
"I was trying to protect you—"
"You were trying to protect yourself." I throw a handful of shirts into the suitcase. "You knew I'd be angry, and you didn't want to deal with it, so you just... didn't tell me. That's not protection, Gray. That's cowardice."
"You're right." He slides down the doorframe, lands on the closet floor with his back against the wall. "You're right. I was a coward. I am a coward. And I'm sorry, Abbie, I'm so sorry—"
"Sorry doesn't fix this." I'm crying again.
I can't stop. The suitcase is filling up with clothes I can't see through the blur of tears.
"Sorry doesn't give me back eight months of not knowing that my husband was lying to me.
Sorry doesn't fix the fact that you let my father, my father, Gray, buy his way into our marriage. "
"Please." He's crying too, openly now, his face wet and broken. "Please don't leave. I know I don't deserve—"
"You don't." I stop. Turn to face him. "You're right. You don't deserve for me to stay. But that's not why I'm leaving."
I kneel in front of him. My hands shake as I work the ring free and fold his fingers around it.
"You lost me on my birthday." My voice is steady. Clear. The steadiest it's been all night. "You just didn't notice."
I close my suitcase and put the trophy in a tote. One bag. One trophy. Six years of marriage, and that's what I'm taking with me.
The drive to West Hollywood is quiet. I find a boutique hotel that isn't a Montgomery property, that isn't anywhere my family's money has touched, and I check in under my maiden name.
The room is small and clean and anonymous.
The kind of room where no one knows who you are or what you've lost. I close the door.
I lock it.
And then, finally, finally, I let myself cry.