6. The Door Stays Open
Chapter six
The Door Stays Open
Icame home at seven the next morning.
Not because I had to. Because I wanted my own shower, my own clothes. And because there was a particular, sharp pleasure in walking through my own front door wearing last night’s silk dress, my hair still loose and unbrushed from another man’s bed.
I’d slept better beside Roman than I had in months. He’d made me breakfast. He’d kissed me at the elevator like he didn’t want to let me go. Then he’d put a small velvet box in my hand and told me not to open it until I was in the car.
I’d opened it in the back seat. A tennis bracelet, a line of heavy, brilliant diamonds that caught the morning light and scattered it everywhere. No note. He didn’t need notes. The bracelet said everything it needed to.
I was wearing it when I walked into the kitchen, and Elliott saw it before he said a word.
He was already up, though he hadn’t dressed for work yet.
He stood at the island in his robe, stirring a mug of coffee he had no intention of drinking.
The metal spoon stopped dead against the ceramic the second his eyes locked onto my wrist. I watched him price the jewelry right there, his gaze calculating the cut of the stones and the sheer, obvious cost. Once he arrived at whatever astronomical number it was, the casual morning ease completely vanished from his expression.
“Morning.” I moved past him, bringing the scent of the cold air and expensive bergamot into the kitchen.
“Where were you?”
“Out.” I turned on the tap, letting the sound of the water cover the silence between us as I filled the kettle. “I told you not to wait up. Did you wait up?”
“You didn’t come home, Maeve.” His voice was tight with the effort of keeping it level. “All night. You were gone all night.”
“I was.” I reached into the cupboard for the chipped mug I liked, dropping a tea bag into the bottom. “That tends to happen on dates sometimes. You’d know.”
The kettle began to tick as the water heated.
I could feel his stare fixed entirely on my wrist. I left my sleeve exactly where it was, making no move to angle the diamonds away from him.
For the last two years, I had made myself physically smaller in this room, tiptoeing around his moods.
This morning, I took up exactly as much space as I pleased.
“Did he buy you that?” The question came out entirely stripped of its polish.
I glanced down at the bracelet. The platinum links felt heavy and ice-cold, a solid, expensive reminder of the world outside this kitchen. “Do you like it? It’s a little much for the morning, I know. I just didn’t want to take it off yet.”
“I asked you a question.” The spoon clattered sharply onto the counter as he dropped it, the ‘casual husband’ act finally slipping.
“You know the rules, Elliott.” I leaned back against the counter, resting both hands over the curve of my belly, utterly calm.
“We don’t ask each other questions. You were very firm about that.
Open and honest, you said. So I’m not going to grill you about where you go on your nights out, and you’re not going to grill me about a bracelet. ”
Realization finally caught up with him. This was the trap he’d built for himself, and he was only now seeing there was no way out.
Every rule he’d written to give himself a ‘free pass’ had become a rule that gagged him.
He couldn’t demand answers without admitting the whole arrangement had only ever been meant to run in one direction.
“This is different,” he snapped.
“It’s the exact same.” I poured the boiling water into my mug, watching the steam rise.
I took my time pressing the tea bag against the ceramic, letting the quiet, unhurried rhythm wear down whatever patience he had left.
“You go out. I go out. That was the deal. You sat in this very room and told me it would make us stronger. Make you a better father.” I tilted my head, studying him. “Are you feeling stronger?”
“You’re flaunting it.” He set his coffee down so hard the dark liquid slopped over the rim, staining the marble. “Walking in here at seven in the morning, wearing—that. You want me to see it. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re punishing me.”
“I’m having breakfast in my own kitchen.” I gestured with my mug toward the mess he’d just made. “You’re the one who can’t sit still.”
“Maeve.” He scrubbed a hand down his face.
Beneath the frustration lay the raw exhaustion of a man who had spent the entire night pacing a dark house.
“I think this has gone far enough. I’ve been thinking.
Maybe the open thing was a mistake. Maybe we moved too fast. We should close it back up, go back to normal, focus on the baby. ”
There it was. I’d wondered how long it would take.
“No.” I let the word hang there, flat and final, and didn’t offer a single explanation to soften the blow.
He blinked, thrown off balance. “No?”
“You don’t get to prop a door open because you wanted to sleep with other people, then slam it shut the second I have a better time than you.” I took a slow sip of my tea. “It’s open, Elliott. You made it open. It stays open until I decide otherwise. Those are the rules. Yours.”
“I’m your husband—”
“You’re a man who told me he needed an outlet so he wouldn’t resent me.
” My tone stayed perfectly level, which seemed to unnerve him far more than shouting would have.
“You can’t unsay that. You can’t take it back just because the math stopped working in your favor.
You wanted honest. This is honest. I’m not closing anything. ”
My phone buzzed on the counter between us. I picked it up. Roman’s name illuminated the screen, followed by a message: You left your earring here. I’m keeping it. Insurance that you’ll come back.
I smiled at it helplessly before I could think to hide it. A real, genuine smile, the kind I hadn’t aimed at Elliott in a year. My husband stood there and watched me light up for another man, his stubborn confidence finally giving way.
“Who is that?” It wasn’t really a question, just a desperate attempt to regain some control over the conversation.
“That’s a question, Elliott.”
I set the phone face down and went back to my tea.
Across the kitchen, he stared at me. It was the first time since the cabana that I let myself really look at him without his judgment dictating what I saw.
He was just a handsome man coming undone with panic, watching the ‘asset’ he thought he owned slide entirely out of his control.
I watched him recalculate. He wasn’t used to the authoritative approach failing. He’d spent eight years getting what he wanted from me with some combination of charm and guilt. Now both had fallen flat, and I could see him mentally scrambling for another way to bring me back into line.
He crossed the kitchen, stepping into my space.
His palms dropped heavily onto my bare shoulders, sliding down my arms. It was a rushed, careless grip, pulling me against him with no regard for the child between us.
A man hastily trying to secure his territory, not looking at me at all.
He ducked his head, his mouth hovering just inches from the side of my neck.
“Come back to bed with me,” he murmured, trying for the rough, intimate voice he once used, the one that had worked on me for the better part of a decade. “Forget all of this. Let me remind you what we are. I’ve missed you, Maeve. I have.”
I stood perfectly still, taking a silent second to absorb exactly what he was trying to do.
He hadn’t touched me in months. He’d flinched from my changing body, made his little excuses, told me I was too much and not enough in the same breath.
And now? Now there was a man putting diamonds on my wrist, and suddenly my husband remembered he could touch me.
I slowly turned around inside the circle of his arms and looked at him until he realized my expression was completely blank.
“No.” I didn’t soften it this time either.
“Maeve—”
“We have an open marriage, Elliott. Your idea.” I stepped backward, smoothly sliding out of his reach, and set my mug in the sink. “You don’t get my yes this morning. You don’t get it tonight either. You’ll know if that ever changes, and right now I wouldn’t hold my breath.”
The expression that crossed his face then wasn’t hurt. It was the specific, ugly outrage of a man who had suddenly been denied the very access he used to take for granted.
“This isn’t you,” he said. He sounded like a man clinging to a map that no longer matched the road.
“It is, though.” I almost felt sorry for him. “You just never met her.”
He left for work twenty minutes later, slamming the front door and then the car door hard enough to rattle the garage.
I stood at the kitchen window as his sedan backed down the drive.
He was on his phone already, gesturing, talking fast to someone, and I had a fair guess who.
Bella, probably. Telling his twenty-four-year-old mistress that his pregnant wife had stayed out all night with a man who bought her diamonds.
I wondered how that conversation was going. I wondered if Bella found it as funny as I did. The ‘great manager’ of our marriage was finally realizing he’d entirely lost his grip on it.
The sound of his engine faded down the street, and the house went quiet.
I stood alone in the kitchen, the morning sun streaming across the tile, the weight of the diamonds cool against my skin.
The urge to shrink, to fix, to apologize was completely gone.
I didn’t need to go anywhere. I had everything I needed right here.