18. Carly
CARLY
The house looked exactly the way I had left it.
I sat in the car for a full minute, hands tight on the steering wheel, staring at the big windows and the perfectly maintained landscaping. Part of me wanted to back down the long driveway and never come back. The other part needed answers, even if I already knew what they would be.
Emily had confirmed the charger. The Atlanta dinner. The wrong bag.
Savannah had told me the rest.
I forced myself out of the car. My legs felt unsteady, like I had been running for hours and was only now realizing how tired I was.
The guitar pick was in my pocket, a small weight I kept touching to remind myself I was still real, still here.
It was warm from my body heat, the engraving worn smooth under my thumb.
Then I saw it.
A broken heel, lying on the driveway near the bottom of the porch steps. Snapped clean off. A jagged piece of black lacquered wood and metal, expensive and ruined, left behind like it had been thrown there in anger. Not mine.
My stomach dropped.
I crouched down beside it, staring at the sharp edges where it had broken, the way the wood had splintered.
I reached out and picked it up, turning it over in my hands.
The weight of it felt wrong, deliberate, like proof of something I did not want to be true.
God, I wanted it to be innocent. Wanted there to be some other explanation, some reason it was here that had nothing to do with what I already knew.
I wanted to set it down and walk away and pretend I had never driven out here, never asked Emily those questions, never let Savannah sit across from me at the bar and tell me things I could not unhear.
But the heel was real. Solid. Proof.
I set it back down on the pavement, carefully, like it might explode if I moved too fast. My hands were already shaking. I pressed them flat against my thighs, trying to steady myself, but it did not help. Nothing was going to help.
The front door was unlocked. Of course it was.
Boone never remembered to lock it when he was home alone, said it made the house feel like a prison instead of a place to live.
I had stopped arguing with him about it years ago, the same way I had stopped arguing about a hundred other small things that added up to this.
I pushed the door open.
The entryway was silent. No music playing from the studio downstairs.
No television noise from the living room.
Just the hum of the air conditioning and the faint creak of the house settling around me.
It smelled like home, like the lavender sachets I kept in the closets and the cedar wood Boone insisted on using for everything. It smelled safe.
It was not safe. Not anymore.
"Carly?"
I looked up. Boone was standing in the doorway to the living room, barefoot and rumpled like he had just woken up. His hair was a mess. His shirt was untucked. He looked surprised to see me, which made sense because I had told him to leave me alone two days ago and I had meant it.
For a second I wanted to run to him. Wanted to let him hold me and tell me everything was going to be okay, the same way he used to when we were younger and the world was smaller. But that was the problem, wasn't it? I had spent ten years wanting him to fix things he had broken, and he never did.
"Was Savannah Merritt here?" My voice came out steadier than I expected.
He went still. His jaw tightened, and I watched him think about lying, watched him weigh his options the same way he always did when he did not want to deal with something difficult. Then his shoulders dropped.
"Yeah."
Just like that. One word, and the floor gave out.
I had wanted him to say no. I had wanted him to look confused, to ask me why I would even think that, to tell me Savannah was lying and Emily had misunderstood and the heel belonged to his sister or his mother or anyone else in the entire world. I had wanted to be wrong so badly I could taste it.
But he said yeah.
"Okay." I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold the pieces together. "Okay."
"Carly, listen?—"
"How long?"
He blinked. "What?"
"How long has this been going on, Boone?" I stepped further into the entryway, even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to leave. "Just tell me that much. I deserve that much."
"It's not—" He stopped, ran a hand through his hair. "It's not what you think."
I laughed, and it came out bitter and sharp. "You don't even know what I think."
"Then tell me."
God, he looked so earnest. So confused. Like he genuinely could not understand why I was upset, why finding another woman's broken shoe in my house might be a problem.
I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to throw something.
I wanted to rewind ten years and choose differently, walk away before I got in so deep I forgot how to breathe without him.
"I think you've been letting her closer than you've ever let me," I said.
My throat felt tight, but I pushed through it.
"I think she gets your time and your attention and the parts of you I've been begging for since the day we got married.
I think I've been standing next to you for a decade, writing your songs and running your house and fixing your words, and you still don't see me. "
"That's not true."
"Isn't it?" I crossed my arms, trying to hold myself together. "When's the last time you asked me about my day, Boone? When's the last time you put your phone down when I was talking to you? When's the last time you defended me when your mother said I wasn't good enough?"
He flinched. That was something, at least. Proof that some part of him knew I was right.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly.
The apology landed like a stone. Too little.
Too late. I had heard him say those words before, usually right before he went back to doing exactly what he had apologized for.
Sorry he missed dinner. Sorry he forgot our anniversary.
Sorry he did not notice I had been crying.
Sorry, sorry, sorry, but never sorry enough to change.
"I don't want your apology." My voice cracked, and I hated myself for it. "I want you to tell me the truth."
"I am telling you the truth."
"No, you're not." I took another step toward him, and he did not move.
"You're telling me what you think I want to hear.
You're trying to manage me, the same way you manage every difficult conversation we've ever had.
But I'm done being managed, Boone. I'm done being the wife you check on when it's convenient and ignore the rest of the time. "
He opened his mouth, closed it again. For once, he did not have words ready. For once, I had caught him completely off guard.
The silence stretched between us, heavy and awful.
I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.
Could feel the guitar pick digging into my palm where I had clenched my fist around it.
The house felt too small suddenly, like the walls were closing in.
This was the place I had cleaned and decorated and filled with pieces of myself, and now it felt like a trap.
Then he moved. One step, then another, closing the distance I had put between us. He reached for my hand, his fingers brushing against mine the way they used to when we were young and everything was still simple. The touch was familiar, warm, exactly the kind of gesture that used to make me melt.
I pulled away.
"Don't."
He froze, his hand still outstretched. "Carly?—"
"Don't touch me." I stepped back, putting space between us, my shoulder brushing the doorframe. My heart was hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat. "Don't try to fix this with a gesture. Don't act like holding my hand is going to make me forget what you've done."
"I haven't—" He stopped himself, jaw working. "Whatever Savannah told you, it's not the whole story."
"Then tell me the whole story."
"I can't."
I stared at him. "You can't, or you won't?"
"I don't—" He shook his head, frustrated. "I don't even know what she said, Carly. I don't know what you think happened, so I don't know how to explain it."
"You told her about Atlanta. About the dinner and the charger and all the little details you never shared with me.
" The words came out flat, emotionless, because if I let myself feel them I would fall apart right there in the entryway.
"Emily confirmed the dinner. Confirmed the charger that ended up in the wrong bag.
Savannah knew about them. She repeated them back to me like they were common knowledge, and the only way she could know is if you told her.
You've been telling her things—giving her the parts of your life that used to be mine.
I know she was at this house, in our home, and you never told me.
You admitted she was here. I've spent ten years watching you check your phone when I'm talking to you, watching you forget I exist the second someone more important walks into the room, and now I find her broken shoe on our driveway and you can't even look me in the eye.
So tell me—what part of what I've seen with my own eyes am I getting wrong? "
His face went pale. "Jesus, Carly."
"Am I wrong?"
"You're—" He took a breath, visibly trying to steady himself. "You're not wrong about the facts, but you're wrong about what they mean."
"Then explain it to me."
"I want to," he said, and he sounded desperate now, like he was finally realizing how bad this was. "God, Carly, I want to tell you everything, but I need to know what she told you first. I need to understand where you're coming from so I don't make it worse."
I laughed again, sharp and humorless. "You think you can make this worse?"
"I don't want to lose you."
The words should have mattered. A week ago, they would have. But standing there in the house we had shared for ten years, staring at the man I had built my entire life around, all I felt was tired. Bone-deep tired. The kind of tired that came from carrying something too heavy for too long.
"You already did."
He went very still. "What?"
"You lost me, Boone." My voice was calm now, almost detached.
"You lost me the day you stopped seeing me as your partner and started seeing me as someone who would always be there no matter what you did.
You lost me every time you checked your phone while I was talking.
You lost me every time your mother said something cruel and you just stood there and let it happen.
You lost me when you started telling Savannah about your life—about Atlanta and everything else—the way you used to tell me.
You lost me when you let her closer than you've let me in years, and you lost me again when you opened the door to her at this house and never said a word to me about it. "
"I didn't choose her?—"
"Yes, you did." I felt the tears coming, hot and furious, but I did not try to stop them. "You've been choosing her for months. Maybe you didn't mean to. Maybe you told yourself it was just work, just business, just keeping the label happy. But you chose her, and now I'm choosing me."
"Carly, please?—"
"I want a divorce."
The words hung in the air between us, impossible to take back.
Boone looked like I had hit him. His face went from pale to gray, his eyes wide and uncomprehending. "You don't mean that."
"I do."
"No." He shook his head, frantic now. "No, Carly, we can fix this. Whatever I did, whatever I didn't do, we can fix it. We've been together ten years. You can't just—you can't just walk away."
"Watch me."
I turned and headed for the door, my whole body shaking with the effort of staying upright. Behind me, I heard Boone take a step, heard him start to say my name, but I did not stop. I could not stop. If I stopped, I would break, and I needed to get out of here before that happened.
The sunlight outside was too bright, washing everything out until it looked unreal.
I fumbled for my keys, got into the car, started the engine.
My hands were still shaking so badly I could barely grip the steering wheel, but I managed to back down the driveway without hitting anything.
In the rearview mirror I saw Boone standing in the doorway, backlit and motionless, watching me leave.
He did not follow me.
He never followed me.
I made it three miles before I had to pull over.
The tears came all at once, a wave so strong it knocked the air out of my lungs.
I pressed my forehead against the steering wheel and sobbed, ugly and loud and completely alone.
Everything hurt. My chest, my throat, my hands from gripping the wheel too hard.
I felt like I was being torn apart from the inside, like something vital had been ripped out and I was only now realizing I could not survive without it.
I had meant every word I said to him.
God, I had meant it.
But that did not make it hurt any less.
Ten years. I had given him ten years, and this was what I had to show for it. A broken marriage. A career I had abandoned. Songs with my name nowhere on them. A family that had never wanted me and a husband who had forgotten to see me.
I thought about the wedding ring I had left at the studio. Simple silver band, both our names engraved on the inside. Carly and Boone. Like we were a unit. Like we were supposed to last forever.
We were not going to last forever.
The thought should have felt freeing. Instead it just felt empty.
I cried until there was nothing left, until my throat was raw and my face was swollen and the sun had moved lower in the sky. Then I wiped my eyes, took a shaky breath, and pulled back onto the road.
I did not know where I was going. The bar, maybe. Or just driving until I ran out of road. Somewhere that was not here, not the house, not the life I had built around a man who could not even fight for me when it mattered.
I just knew I could not go back.