15. Nora
— ? —
Nora
The kitchen table had seen better days.
I’d chosen it for this conversation on purpose.
Hunt sat across from me, his hands flat on the table like a man waiting to be sentenced.
He’d shown up exactly when I’d told him to, not a minute early, not a minute late, and he’d walked into my grandmother’s house with the careful reverence of someone entering a church.
He hadn’t commented on the peeling wallpaper or the ancient appliances or the fact that I was living in a farmhouse that probably cost less than his watch.
He’d just sat down and waited for me to speak.
I’d spent the last two days writing a list.
It was on the table between us now, three pages of yellow legal paper covered in my handwriting, every condition and boundary and non-negotiable term I could think of.
I’d started it at 2 a.m. the night after the fire, when sleep wouldn’t come and my brain wouldn’t stop spinning, and I’d added to it every time a new fear surfaced.
Every time I remembered a way he’d hurt me.
Every time I thought about what it’d mean to let him back into my life, even partially, even with walls.
“Before we start,” Hunt said, his voice careful, “I want you to know that I’ll agree to whatever you need. You don’t have to convince me or justify anything. Just tell me the terms and I’ll sign.”
“You don’t even know what they are yet.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I studied his face, looking for the angle. The negotiation tactic. The billionaire businessman who’d built an empire on knowing exactly when to push and when to pull back. But all I saw was exhaustion and hope and a desperate, naked need to be allowed to stay.
It made me angrier than the alternative would’ve.
“Fine.” I pulled the first page toward me.
“Rule one: you stay at the inn. You don’t come to this house unless I invite you, you don’t show up unannounced, and you don’t let yourself in with whatever key you’ve probably already had copied.
The Primrose Motor Lodge is your home base for however long this takes, and if I find out you’ve bought the building or bribed the owner or done anything to make that arrangement more comfortable than it needs to be, we’re done. ”
“Agreed.”
“I’m not finished.” I flipped to the second page.
“Rule two: not one dollar of Anderson money touches my practice, my farm, or my debts. I don’t care how bad things get or how much you want to help.
I built this life myself and I’m going to keep building it myself.
If I find out you’ve secretly paid off my student loans or bought my equipment supplier or donated to the county animal shelter in my name, we’re done. ”
“Agreed.”
“Rule three: nobody else from our old life learns where I am. Your mother already knows, and she can keep a secret. Not our old coworkers, not the board of directors or the investors or anyone else who might decide to come looking. Nora Anderson disappeared. I intend to keep it that way.”
His jaw tightened at that. Pain, maybe. Or understanding.
“Agreed.”
“Rule four.” I made myself hold his gaze.
“Husband is a title on pause. You don’t get to call me your wife.
You don’t get to act as if we’re married in any way that matters.
And being the baby’s father is a job you can earn, not a right you’re owed.
You show up to appointments. You help when I ask.
You prove, over and over, that you’re capable of putting us first. And if at any point I decide you’ve failed, you leave. No arguments. No second chances.”
He didn’t say agreed.
For the first time since he’d sat down at my grandmother’s table, he went still and stubborn, the immovable thing I’d fallen for across a bloody barn floor seven years ago. “No.”
“No to which part?”
“The appointments, yes. Earning it, yes, every hoop you want, I’ll jump through all of them.
But not that. Not the wife part.” His jaw was set.
“I’ll live at the inn. I’ll keep my money out of your life.
I’ll answer to any name you want in front of this town.
But I’m not going to sit at your table and agree to pretend I’m not married to you, because I am.
I signed a certificate three years ago and I meant it, and I mean it more now than I did then, and that’s the one thing you can’t make me sign away. ”
My heart was slamming, because this was the part I hadn’t planned for. Him refusing. Him refusing this, of all of it.
“That’s the point of the rule.” I heard my voice climb and couldn’t stop it.
“You don’t get the word anymore. You lost it.
You want to keep calling me your wife while I’m the one who left, while I’m the one carrying this alone, while the entire reason we’re at this table is that you couldn’t say one true thing to me the whole time you sat in that chair-”
“Then take everything else.” He leaned forward and his voice cracked straight down the middle. “Take the money, the distance, the last chance, I’ll sign it twice. But I’ll know it whether you let me say it or not, and I won’t promise you a lie just to make your contract cleaner.”
The kitchen went dead quiet. Under my chair, Waffles had gone still.
I could’ve thrown him out. It would’ve been easy, and it would’ve felt like winning.
Instead I looked at the man who’d agreed to every humiliation I could invent without a flicker and drawn his one line in the sand here, on the only word that had ever actually mattered to him, and my chest gave a warning creak I didn’t like at all.
“Fine,” I said, before I could think better of it.
“You keep it behind your own ribs. You don’t get to wield it, you don’t get to act like nothing’s broken, you don’t get to my-wife me into forgetting what you did.
What happens inside your own head is your problem.
” I pushed the page at him. “That’s the only inch you get, and you sign the rest exactly as written. ”
“Agreed,” he said, and for the first time all afternoon it cost him nothing, because I’d just let him keep the one thing he wasn’t willing to lose.
“Rule five: you working my emergencies is a courtesy I can revoke at any time for any reason. You’re useful and I’m understaffed, but the second you start thinking you’re indispensable, the second you try to leverage that position into more than it is, you’re out.
This is my practice and my town and my life, and you’re a guest in all of it. ”
“Agreed.”
I set down the papers. Took a breath. Made myself look at him, really look, at the man I’d married and the stranger he’d become and the person he was trying to be now.
“And the last one.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. “This is the one that matters, Hunt. This is the one I need you to hear.”
He straightened in his chair. Gave me his full attention, the way he used to when I was explaining a case, back before important stopped including me.
“One real, last chance.” I spoke slowly, deliberately, making sure every word landed.
“That’s what this is. One chance to prove that you can choose us.
And if you choose anything over us once, one call, one crisis that isn’t ours, one turn of your head toward whatever matters more, we’re done.
And this time I’ll be hiding on purpose.
I’ll take our baby and I’ll disappear so thoroughly that all your money and all your resources and all your connections won’t be enough to find me. Do you understand?”
His throat moved as he swallowed. “I understand.”
“Say it back to me.”
“If I choose anything over you and our baby, even once, you’ll leave and I’ll never find you.” His voice was rough, scraped raw. “I understand, Nora. I understand exactly what you’re saying and exactly what’s at stake.”
“Good. Then we understand each other.”
I pushed the papers across the table toward him. He didn’t reach for them.
“Is there anything else?” he asked. “Any other terms, any other conditions, anything at all that would make you feel safer? Because I’ll agree to it. Whatever it is. I’ll agree to anything you need.”
“I think three pages is enough for now.”
“Then I’d like to write it out.” He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket. “Formally. In my handwriting. So there’s no question later about what I agreed to.”
I hadn’t expected that.
I watched him pull the legal pad toward himself and begin to write, his hand moving across the page in the blocky all-caps I recognized from years of surgery notes and roster boards.
The handwriting of a man trained to document everything, to leave nothing to chance, to create records that could withstand scrutiny.
He wrote every word I’d spoken. Every rule, every boundary, every condition. He didn’t paraphrase or summarize or soften anything. He just transcribed it, exactly as I’d said it, his pen moving steadily across one page and then another and then a third.
At the bottom, he signed his name.
Hunt Anderson. The signature that had authorized million-dollar purchases and life-or-death decisions and the marriage certificate that still technically bound us together. He signed it like it was the most important document the Anderson fortune had ever produced.
Maybe to him, it was.
“You’ll never need to enforce that last one.” He slid the papers back across the table, his eyes holding mine. “But I’ll sign it as many times as you want.”
I didn’t know what to say to that.
Under the table, Waffles made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a bleat.
He’d been there since Hunt arrived, positioned directly beneath my chair, and I’d felt him bristle every time Hunt moved or spoke.
Now he emerged from his hiding spot, his eyes fixed on my husband with the particular intensity he reserved for people he’d decided to hate.
“Your goat doesn’t like me.” Hunt’s voice was carefully neutral.
“He’s an excellent judge of character.”
“He’s also standing on my foot.”