CHAPTER FIVE
Payton
THE BALLROOM WAS CROWDED by the time Max and I arrived. A string quartet played near the far wall while servers moved between guests carrying champagne, and photographers waited beneath a backdrop covered in sponsor logos.
Max rested his hand against my lower back as we entered.
“Mr. and Mrs. Winslow,” a photographer called. “Over here, please.”
Max leaned closer. “Ready?”
“Always.”
His mouth curved slightly before we stepped in front of the cameras. He wrapped an arm around my waist, and I rested my hand against his chest as flashes went off around us.
“Max, look at your wife.”
He turned toward me. His expression softened, and his thumb moved lightly against my waist as he lowered his head toward mine. After six years of attending events together, we knew exactly how to stand for these photographs, although the warmth in his eyes still affected me.
“Perfect,” the photographer called.
We thanked him and moved into the crowd.
“Champagne?” Max asked.
“Sparkling water.”
“You always say that like you think I’ll forget.”
“You brought me champagne at the Walters dinner.”
“That was two years ago.”
“And you still remember.”
He handed me a glass without a hint of lemon. He knew I hated lemon in my water, along with dozens of other small preferences I couldn’t remember telling him.
Before I could dwell on that, Daniel and his wife approached.
“Max,” Daniel said, offering his hand.
“Good to see you,” Max replied.
Daniel’s wife smiled at me. “Payton, you look gorgeous.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
The conversation drifted toward vacations. “We’re going to St. Barts next month,” she said. “You two should come.”
“That sounds dangerous,” I said.
“Why?”
“Max would bring his laptop.”
“I can take a vacation,” he protested.
“You took three conference calls on our honeymoon.”
Daniel laughed into his drink.
“One was unavoidable,” Max said.
“Three calls.”
“Two.”
“I counted.”
His mouth twitched. “Apparently you’ve been holding on to this.”
“For six years.”
Daniel’s wife laughed. “You two are adorable.”
Public events had always been easier for us. Max knew how to take care of me in crowded rooms — introducing me before anyone could overlook me, redirecting conversations when someone interrupted me. Those gestures were genuine, which made them harder to dismiss once we went home.
A man from one of the foundation’s corporate partners soon joined us and began discussing a retail property in Arizona with Max. I started to excuse myself.
Max touched my wrist. “Stay.” He turned to the man. “Payton knows more about customer behavior than I do.”
The man turned toward me with interest. “Really?”
“She spent years in independent retail,” Max said. “Tell him what you said about the Phoenix concept.”
Weeks earlier, Max had been reading a proposal over breakfast when I noticed the bookstore section was too far from the café and children’s area.
“The layout separates spaces likely to attract the same customers,” I explained.
“Families using the children’s section are also likely to visit the café.
Putting them closer together keeps people in the store longer. ”
The man nodded slowly. “That makes sense.”
“That’s what I said when I sent the plans back,” Max told him.
I turned toward him, surprised. The conversation continued for several minutes, both men asking for my opinion instead of treating it as a courtesy.
After the man left, I faced Max. “You remembered.”
“Of course I remembered.”
“I mentioned it once over breakfast.”
“You were right.”
“Careful,” I said. “If you keep saying things like that, people might think you respect me.”
“I do respect you.”
The teasing response I’d been preparing disappeared. Before I could answer, someone called his name across the room.
He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be back.”
A woman nearby followed my gaze and smiled. “You two are lovely together.”
Max glanced back a moment later and caught me watching him. He smiled. I returned it, feeling that familiar hope stir again. Everyone in that ballroom saw a husband who remembered what I drank, valued my opinions, and looked for me across a crowded room.
For a few seconds, I saw him too.
We got home a little after eleven. I’d kicked off my heels in the car and was carrying them by the straps when Max unlocked the front door.
He glanced down at my bare feet. “Very elegant.”
“My feet hurt.”
“You insisted on those shoes.”
“They looked good.”
“They also looked painful.”
I smiled as he held the door open. “I stand by my decision.”
I handed my clutch to the housekeeper waiting in the entryway. “You don’t have to stay this late.”
“I know,” she said, heading down the hall.
Max loosened his tie as I started toward the stairs.
“Drink?” he asked.
I stopped, surprised. After events, he usually disappeared into his office.
“What are you having?”
“Whiskey.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Wine?”
“That I’ll take.”
He poured himself a whiskey and opened a bottle of red for me. I settled onto the sofa while he took the chair opposite.
“You were good tonight,” he said.
“At standing around?”
“With the Phoenix discussion. I changed the plans. Sent them back three weeks ago, after our conversation.”
I lowered my wine. “You never said anything.”
“I didn’t realize I needed to. You barely looked up from the proposal. You grunted and kept reading.”
“I don’t grunt.”
I laughed. “You absolutely do.”
He shook his head, then laughed too, his shoulders relaxing, some of the usual reserve dropping from his expression.
“That is exactly what you do,” I told him.
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve heard. From my husband.”
“I’ve never called you impossible.”
“Perhaps you grunted it.”
The conversation stayed easy after that.
We talked about the terrible-coffee bookstore in Vermont, the dog that slept in the middle of the floor, the six books I’d bought there even though I already owned four of them with different covers.
Max gave me a doubtful look at that, but he was still smiling.
Eventually he looked into his glass. “Your mother still hates me, doesn’t she?”
The question caught me off guard. “She doesn’t hate you. She worries about me.”
“She always looks at me like she’s waiting for me to disappoint you.”
“She knows how our marriage started.” I should have left it there, but the relaxed evening made honesty feel safer than it usually was. “Sometimes she worries I gave up too much.”
“For the marriage?”
“For everything.”
His gaze held mine, and the warmth between us gradually turned into something more serious. I wanted to ask whether he regretted marrying me, whether he’d ever imagined this becoming more than an arrangement. I couldn’t make myself ask either one.
“You don’t have to answer,” I said.
His jaw tightened. “I wasn’t going to.”
The answer hurt more after the evening we’d just shared. He stood and finished his drink. “I should check a few things before bed.”
“Work?”
“Yes.”
He picked up his phone, hesitated, and looked at me. “Good night, Payton.”
“Good night.”
He left me alone in the sitting room. Twenty minutes earlier we’d been laughing over bad coffee and old bookstores. That was the boundary Max never seemed willing to cross.
I stayed in the sitting room until my wine had gone warm, replaying the conversation. After six years, I knew the pattern. We could talk easily about work, books, travel, our families. Any conversation about what we meant to each other brought that ease to an end.
I poured out the wine and headed upstairs. Light showed beneath Max’s office door. I paused, considered knocking, and continued to our bedroom instead.
I sat at the vanity to remove my makeup.
His occasional acts of tenderness made it almost impossible to stop wanting more from him.
Our first winter married, I’d gotten sick before a charity dinner and told him to go without me.
He canceled and spent the evening checking on me.
Months later he flew home early from Chicago when Mom had minor surgery, claiming his meetings were finished — I found out later he’d rescheduled one.
I looked at my reflection and sighed. “You have got to stop doing this.”
The bedroom door opened behind me. Max walked in with his jacket gone and his sleeves rolled to his forearms.
“You’re still awake,” he said.
“It isn’t that late.”
He checked the clock. “It’s twelve twenty.”
“Exactly.”
He gave me a doubtful look before removing his watch. A minute passed while I finished my makeup. Then he stopped behind me, and our eyes met in the mirror.
“You were quiet when I left,” he said.
“I was tired.”
“Payton.”
“You don’t have to worry about it.”
“I didn’t say I was worried.”
“You came upstairs and immediately mentioned it.”
He considered that. “Fair.”
I closed the jar of moisturizer and waited.
“Your mother is wrong,” he said. “If there are things you want to do, you should do them.”
“That isn’t what she means.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
His expression turned guarded. I recognized the change and knew I should stop. Instead I asked the question that had followed me for years.
“Have you ever wondered what our marriage would be like if our fathers hadn’t arranged it?”
Max went still. It took him several seconds to answer. “There’s no point wondering about something we can’t change.”
The response was calm and practical, which somehow made it worse.
“Right.”
“Payton.”
“It’s fine.”
“It clearly isn’t.”
I stood and faced him. “What do you want me to say? Sometimes I wish my husband had met me and wanted me before someone handed him a contract.”
His jaw tightened. I’d pushed him past the point where he’d stay in the conversation.
He stepped back. “I don’t want to discuss this when we’re both tired.”
“Of course.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It never is.”
He reached for his phone on the nightstand. The movement told me the conversation was over before he spoke. “I have an early morning.”
I climbed into bed. “Good night, Max.”
He stood there a moment. “Good night.”
A few minutes later he joined me, the mattress shifting as he settled beside me, close enough for me to feel his warmth without either of us touching.
I stared into the darkness and thought about the first edition he’d searched weeks to find, the Phoenix plans he’d changed after listening to me, the laughter we’d shared downstairs. Those moments had sustained my hope for years, each one suggesting there might be more beneath his careful distance.
Tonight had come closer than most.
Then I asked what our marriage meant to him, and the wall went straight back up.