3. The Open Door #2
Roman let it lie. Whatever he’d been about to say, he set it down. “Most complicated things are simple underneath.” I got the sense he was talking about more than my marriage now. “People just don’t like the simple version.”
“And what’s the simple version of mine?”
“I don’t know it yet.” He didn’t look away from me, and I made myself not look away either. “I’d like to.”
The hour caught up with me all at once then. The lateness, the heat of him beside me. I’d come to use a ‘hall pass’ and spent sixty minutes simply feeling like myself again. It unsteadied me.
“I should go.” I reached for my bag before I could talk myself into staying.
He stood when I stood. Of course he did. He walked me out.
Outside, the night had cooled. The valet hurried off to fetch my car. We stood under the awning in the amber light, and the easy rhythm between us suddenly stalled. There was a car coming, bringing our goodbye with it.
I made myself say it. If I didn’t say it now, I never would.
“I have a husband,” I said. The words came fast, before my nerve could fail. “And I have a ‘hall pass’. His idea, not mine. He’s so sure I’ll never use it.” I looked up at him. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
Roman fell into a sudden, deliberate silence, the absolute stillness of a big man holding himself in check. His expression went rigid, and for a moment I couldn’t tell if it was anger or something underneath the anger.
“He gave you a ‘hall pass’,” he repeated. His voice had gone flat and careful, like a man checking the depth of water before he stepped in.
“He did.”
I waited for the recalculation. For the moment when he decided a married pregnant woman was more trouble than she was worth and started looking for the exit. It didn’t come.
“Because he was sure it would only ever gather dust.”
“Those were close to his exact words.” Said out loud to a stranger, it sounded different than it had in my own head. Less like a thing that had happened to me. More like a dare someone had made and was about to lose.
His expression finally hardened into anger, but not at me. It was cold and quiet, entirely controlled. The anger of a man who didn’t need to raise his voice to be understood.
“Your husband,” he said, pronouncing the word like it left a bad taste, “is an arrogant fool.”
“He’s a lot of things.”
“He’s a man who looked at you and saw something he could set down and pick back up whenever he felt like it.
” His voice stayed even, which was somehow worse than if he’d shouted.
“He gave away the one person in his life worth keeping, and he thinks he’s clever for it.
That’s not a clever man. That’s a man who’s about to learn otherwise. ”
I should have found it alarming, a near-stranger talking about my husband that way. I didn’t. For months, everyone had expected me to manage their feelings. This was the first time anyone had simply been angry on my behalf, and something long-starved in me stirred.
He reached out, slow enough that I could have stepped back, and cupped the side of my face. His hand was large and warm, framing my jaw, his thumb resting just at the corner of my mouth. I should have pulled away. I didn’t.
I stood in the amber light with a stranger’s hand on my face. For the first time in longer than I could measure, the urge to shrink away completely vanished.
“This isn’t a line,” he said quietly, almost to himself, like he was working it out as he spoke. “I want you to understand that. I don’t do this. I don’t follow women out of bars.”
“You seem like a man who’s very sure of what he does and doesn’t do.”
“I am. That’s the problem.” There it was a third time, a slight hesitation that proved he wasn’t quite as detached as he was trying to be.
“I’m standing here trying to work out why I can’t make myself go back in.
You not wanting anything from me threw me off balance.
I don’t have an answer, and I’m not used to not having an answer. ”
“That makes two of us.” I held his eyes and let him see I meant it.
“Good.” The tension in his expression eased, which was the closest he’d come to a real smile all night, and the warmth of it caught me entirely off guard. “Then we’re even.”
“When you decide to use that ‘hall pass’.” His voice dropped low, carrying a quiet, undeniable certainty. “And only when you decide, not him, not anyone, you. When you’re ready to see how a man is supposed to treat the woman carrying his future, you call me.”
My car pulled up. Headlights swept across us. He let his hand fall, reached into his jacket, and pressed something into my palm, folding my fingers over it with both of his.
A card. Heavy stock, matte black, his name in plain silver.
“Goodnight, Maeve.” He stepped back to let the car door open between us.
I got into my car, the card clutched tight in my fist. In the rearview mirror, as I pulled away, he was still standing under the awning. Watching me go, an unmoving silhouette in the gold light.
I drove three blocks, pulled over, and finally exhaled.
He looked at me, I told the baby, my hand pressed to her. The whole time. He never once looked away.
She kicked, once, light against my palm.
I opened my hand. The card sat there, a solid piece of evidence that the last hour had actually happened.
Roman Thorne, it said, and a number, and nothing else.
I thought about Elliott, home in our bed, sleeping soundly these last three nights. So certain his open door would only ever swing one way.
I put the card in the inside pocket of my bag, where it would be safe.
Then I drove home to my husband, and I smiled the whole way.