10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
Caroline
The door had barely closed behind Hayden when Hank said:
“Do you have any idea what a penthouse in New York costs?”
Caroline stayed where she was. Her laptop was closed under her hands.
She could still see Hayden in the apartment, too tall for the small rooms, his dark suit too perfect beside the worn couch and crowded counter.
She could still hear him offering homes as if he could reach into his pocket and pull out a different life for all of them.
For one weak, awful moment, she’d wanted to let him.
“Hank,” Jemma warned.
“I’m only saying, the man offered three houses.” Hank held up three fingers. “Maybe four, depending on how you count the penthouse. You don’t say no before asking about the square footage.”
“She said no.” Caroline’s mother gathered the empty mugs from the counter. “That ends it.”
“Easy for you to say. You were getting the penthouse.”
Her mother set a mug down harder than she needed to. “I don’t want a home that costs my daughter her peace.”
Hank gave a rough laugh. “Peace doesn’t pay rent.”
Caroline pushed back from the table. The chair scraped across the floor, and everyone looked at her.
“I’m going to lie down.”
Her mother started toward her. “Honey…”
“I’m okay. I just need quiet.”
She escaped to the bedroom before Hank could put a price on anything else.
There was hardly room to walk between the bed, dresser, and her suitcase.
She turned sideways to get past the corner of the mattress, then sat on the side that had become hers.
The bed dipped under her weight. Her mother’s pillow rested beside hers, and two sets of clothes hung from hooks on the door.
Hayden had seen all of it. He’d seen her half drawer and two hangers. He’d seen the laptop sitting among dirty cups, and the charger crossing the floor. Then he’d looked at her as if he couldn’t understand how she could stay here when he owned rooms nobody used.
She’d almost said yes. That was the part she couldn’t admit to anyone.
She missed their bed in Southampton, wide enough that her pregnant body didn’t crowd anyone.
She missed having a bathroom where she could be sick without somebody knocking.
She missed her desk in the library and the garden beyond the windows.
She missed opening a cupboard without worrying that she’d finished something Jemma needed.
Most of all, she missed the relief of believing someone else would help carry the weight of her life. Hayden had made that relief feel like love. Maybe it had been love when he offered it. That hadn’t stopped him from turning it into evidence when he was angry.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. Hayden’s name appeared above a new message.
Hayden: I heard what you said. I know I didn’t listen today. I saw where you were living and tried to change it. I should’ve asked what you needed.
Another message arrived before she could decide whether to read the first one twice.
Hayden: Will you meet me once more? I won’t ask you to come home. I want to listen.
Caroline locked the screen. She set the phone on the bed, stood up, then picked it up again.
She walked the few steps to the dresser and back.
Hayden had apologized on the phone. He’d apologized in this apartment.
Each apology had come with an explanation, a demand, or a plan.
Even now, he was asking her for something.
But they couldn’t keep doing this. He couldn’t stay in a Bakersfield hotel waiting for her to change her mind while she avoided saying what came next. They were married. Their daughter would be born soon. Love hadn’t made the situation simple, and silence wouldn’t either.
She typed before she could lose her nerve.
Caroline: The diner. Tomorrow while Mom is working. I need to talk too.
His answer came immediately.
Hayden: I’ll be there. Thank you.
***
The next day, Caroline chose a booth near the back of the diner.
The lunch rush had ended, and only a few customers remained along the counter.
Her mother moved between them with a coffee pot in one hand, topping off cups and talking to a regular about his grandson.
She looked comfortable here. Capable. Nobody corrected the way she held the pot or told her that her hair needed to be controlled.
Caroline wished she could borrow that ease.
She had a glass of water in front of her and a folded menu she hadn’t opened. Her daughter shifted low in her belly, and Caroline rested a hand over the movement.
“I know,” she whispered. “I’d rather be anywhere else too.”
Hayden came through the door before she was ready.
He’d left his tie at the hotel. The top button of his white shirt was open, and his jacket hung over one arm.
He still looked too polished for the sun-faded booths, but he paused to say hello to Caroline’s mother.
When he reached the table, he didn’t slide into the seat next to Caroline. He took the place across from her.
“Thank you for coming,” he said.
“I was here first,” she said.
For a second, something almost like a smile touched his mouth. “Then thank you for letting me come.”
Her mother arrived with the coffee pot. “Coffee?”
“Please.” Hayden turned over the cup near his hand.
She filled it, then looked at Caroline. The question was clear even without words.
“I’m fine, Mom.”
Her mother didn’t pretend to believe her, but she returned to the counter.
Hayden wrapped both hands around the cup. He didn’t drink.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “For yesterday. For the way I arrived and started telling you what should happen. I said I wanted to fix this, but I was still trying to fix everything except what I did.”
Caroline looked at his hands. She knew those hands on her body, gentle and sure. She knew the faint, pale line near his thumb and the way he tapped one finger when a business call tested his patience. She’d known him in so many close ways and not known what he believed about her.
“You keep coming back to the fight,” she said.
His brow tightened. “Because what I said was unforgivable.”
“It was. But you talk as if we were happy before that. Like we had one terrible night and I left.”
“I don’t think that.”
“You said our marriage was bigger than one fight.”
His eyes closed for a moment. “I did.”
“It wasn’t one fight, Hayden.”
He nodded. “Tell me.”
The words made her angry. They were so simple. She’d wanted them for months, and now that he’d finally said them, she didn’t know where to begin.
“I waited for you,” she said. “That’s what most of our marriage became. Waiting for you to come home. Waiting to find out if you were staying in Manhattan again. Waiting until you weren’t tired, or angry, or thinking about work.”
“Caroline…”
“You said you’d listen.”
He stopped. His jaw tightened, but he nodded again.
“I kept trying to work out what I’d done wrong.
At first, you came home because you wanted to be with me.
Then you stayed away more, and every time I asked, you had a reason.
Work was easier from the city. You had an early meeting.
The drive was too much. They were all good reasons.
” She rubbed her thumb over her glass of water.
“There were so many good reasons that I started feeling stupid for being lonely.”
Hayden stared at her.
“And when we were with your family, you always told me later that I shouldn’t care what they thought. You’d kiss me. You’d tell me you chose me. Then we’d go back, and they’d do it again.”
“I should’ve stopped it,” he said.
“You should’ve seen it.”
He flinched.
Caroline remembered the long table, the rows of silver, Larissa’s soft voice guiding her toward the right fork.
She remembered Hayden’s smile after Paulie chose the wrong one on purpose.
At the time, she’d tried to tell herself he was smiling at his brother.
It hadn’t mattered. She’d been the reason there was a joke at all.
“Your mother called me a wildflower and talked about taming my hair. Your father said the one thing you could count on was a good cocktail. Dasha talked about how refreshing it was that I had no self-consciousness.” Caroline met his eyes. “You smiled.”
“I thought…” He stopped himself and looked down. “No. You told me how all that made you feel. I answered by explaining what I thought they meant.”
“Then you told me to ignore it.”
“Yes.”
There was no defense in the word. That should’ve made speaking easier. Instead, it hurt. She’d prepared herself to fight for every fact, and he was leaving each one in front of her without trying to move it.
Her mother passed their booth on the way to the kitchen. She slowed, but Caroline gave a small shake of her head. Not yet.
“It wasn’t only your family,” Caroline said.
Hayden went very still.
She could’ve stopped. She’d protected him from this truth for so long that giving it to him felt almost disloyal. That old habit made her hate herself a little.
“The stylist didn’t help me. She fixed me.
” Caroline swallowed. “Every appointment was another list of things wrong with me. My hair was too long. My clothes showed I didn’t understand my body.
What I liked wasn’t suitable. She’d smile while she said it, and I’d thank her because you hired her for me. ”
“I thought you liked having someone choose things,” Hayden said.
“I didn’t even like having someone in the room,” she said.
His fingers tightened around the cup. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you were proud of arranging it. Because your mother said I needed help, and I knew she was right about one thing. I didn’t know how to dress for your life. I thought that maybe feeling ashamed was part of learning.”
“It isn’t.” His voice was rough. “It never should’ve been.”
Caroline looked toward the front windows. Sunlight lay in wide blocks across the tile. A man at the counter laughed softly at something her mother said.