Chapter 7 #3
I sit up slowly, clutching the sheet to my chest. Rourke shifts beside me, then settles, his arm falling to the warm space I leave behind.
I turn the watch over.
The engraving waits on the back, small and precise.
For the man who carries everything. - J
At first, I read it without understanding.
The words are only words, polished into metal. A sentence someone chose, paid for, and approved. My mind handles the pieces separately because putting them together would require too much from me too quickly.
For the man.
Who carries everything.
- J.
The initial sharpens in the dark.
Jocelyn.
My fingers go cold around the watch.
No.
There are other Js. There must be. A board member. A vendor. A jeweler’s mark. Some corporate tradition I don't know because my role is flowers, dinners, guest flow, the soft side of an empire that hardens whenever I ask where I belong inside it.
I turn the watch closer to the lamp.
The engraving doesn't change.
For the man who carries everything. - J
Not Congratulations on Ridgeline.
Not For the deal.
Not With appreciation.
The words are intimate, though not in the obvious way.
There is no darling, no love, no date tucked like a confession.
It's worse because it speaks to the private weight of him.
The man beneath the name. The burden beneath the suit.
The place I once thought was mine because I met him before I knew what his last name meant.
I knew the man who laughed at himself on a beach.
I knew the man who ate pasta from a chipped bowl and looked at my small apartment like it was the first room where he'd ever been allowed to sit down without someone expecting something from him.
Jocelyn has put her initial beside that part of him.
The gala comes back in pieces.
Burgundy silk. Her hand on his forearm. Rourke lowering his head to catch her voice. Jocelyn answering half a question before he finished the other half. The two of them moving through a room I built as if the room belonged to both of them.
Then Ridgeline.
Two nights. Road flooded. Separate cabins. Caretaker. Everyone was fine.
Jocelyn’s photograph waiting unopened on his phone.
Evidence we survived.
The photo I never clicked because I was afraid of what I might see.
My skin still carries him. My body is warm from his mouth, his hands, the tender weight of him inside me.
My thighs ache softly. My lips feel swollen.
My hair is tangled from his fingers. The room still smells faintly of us, of sleep and clean sheets and the candles that burned low before we came to bed.
Nothing changes.
The earth doesn't open up for me. Rourke still sleeps beside me. His arm still lies across the sheet, reaching for the space where I was.
And the night splits open anyway.
I look at my husband’s sleeping face. The hard lines smoothed. The mouth that said he loves me only hours ago.
The same mouth that said after Ridgeline as if the words didn't carry another woman into our bed.
Did he wear this tonight?
Did he come home with Jocelyn’s private claim against his wrist, then touch my flowers, eat my pasta, dance with me, undress me, and make love to me?
I press the watch against my palm until the metal edge bites.
Wake him.
Ask him.
Put the engraved back in front of his face and make him tell me why another woman thinks she knows the weight he carries. Make him explain why I've never seen this watch before. Make him say her name in this bed where he just said mine.
My mouth opens.
No sound comes out.
If I wake him, the night becomes an argument while I am still half naked and tender from trusting him. If I wake him, he might answer too quickly. Too reasonably. He might tell me it's business. He might look confused that I could make something out of a gift.
He might make me feel foolish while the evidence of this night is still on my skin.
I can't survive that yet.
I turn the watch again, as if there's some alternate reading hidden in the hinge or clasp.
There's not.
For the man who carries everything. - J
My free hand moves to my stomach.
The words echo against what I haven't told him.
I am carrying our child.
A sound catches in my throat, too small to be crying and too sharp to be breath.
Rourke shifts.
I go still, every muscle locking, but he doesn't wake.
Carefully, I lower the watch back to the nightstand. I place it exactly where I found it, face down beside my reading glasses, angling the band the way it was.
Then I lie back down.
Rourke’s arm finds me again in sleep, settling across my waist, heavy and familiar. A few hours ago, that weight made me feel held. Now it pins one hand beneath the blanket while the other rests over my stomach.
The box is still hidden near the kitchen.
Cream booties. Star buttons. Tissue paper folded around a future I practiced saying out loud.
I stare into the dark.
The words are gone now.
Not misplaced. Not waiting for morning.
Gone.
Rourke breathes steadily beside me, unaware of how everything has shifted.
I stay awake with both secrets in the room.
One engraved in metal.
One growing silently inside me.