CHAPTER FIFTEEN
NORA
Day Eleven
The payment arrives before breakfast.
Not from Rhett. From the Stoneharbor Breakers, accompanied by an itemized licensing audit, tax documentation, and a request for approval before continued use of each image.
It is professional, correct, and infuriating.
I call him.
Directly.
He answers on the first ring but says nothing for half a second, as if my name on his screen has changed the pressure in the room.
"Nora."
"Did you order the team to pay me?"
"I requested an audit. Elena authorized payment."
"You knew I would think this was a gesture."
"That is why the money came from the team."
"You still initiated it."
"Because I saw the contracts."
"You are trying to repair everything at once."
"No." His voice remains calm. "I am correcting things that can be corrected. The rest may not be repairable."
I pace Maren's guest room. "You don't get to become ethical at high speed and make me look unreasonable for needing time."
Silence.
Then, "You're right."
"Stop agreeing with me."
"Would you prefer I lie?"
"I would prefer you be irritating in a familiar way."
A sound comes through the phone. Not quite laughter. "I can argue about the rate if that helps."
"It is too high."
"It is market rate."
"My work eighteen months ago was not worth my current rate."
"It was to me."
The intimacy of the answer knocks the next accusation out of my mouth.
He inhales. "That was not intended as persuasion."
"Everything you say sounds like persuasion now."
"Then I will say less."
He waits.
He does not ask why I called instead of going through Tessa.
"I need equipment from the penthouse," I say. "Two hard cases in the office closet."
"Tell me when. I will leave."
"Three o'clock."
"I have treatment at three. The place is yours."
The penthouse smells faintly of cedar and coffee when I enter.
Nothing has changed.
My boots remain beneath the bench. A scarf hangs over the stair rail. The dried eucalyptus I bought last month still leans from a ceramic vase. Rhett has not converted my absence into tidiness.
Upstairs, my office is exactly as I left it.
The equipment cases sit in the closet. Behind them is a blue shoebox I have never seen.
I should not open it.
It is in my closet, in my office, in a home where I am still legally married.
I open it.
Inside are postcards.
Every postcard I sent Rhett from assignments over seven years. Lisbon. Prague. Montreal. Nairobi. Oslo, from the trip I took instead of accepting Ingrid's six-month project.
On the back of each, beneath my handwriting, Rhett has written a date.
The day I came home.
He kept count.
At the bottom lies a folded napkin from the diner where we met, the receipt from our courthouse wedding lunch, and a print of the first photograph I ever took of him. He was twenty-four, scowling at the sun beside an outdoor rink, beautiful without knowing the camera had chosen him.
The front door opens downstairs.
I freeze.
"Nora?" Rhett calls.
He appears in the office doorway a minute later, wearing training clothes and an expression of alarm.
"Treatment ended early. Tessa said security logged you in. I should have checked before coming up. I'll leave."
His gaze drops to the box in my hands.
Color rises along his neck.
"You kept these," I say.
"Yes."
"Why did you write the dates?"
He leans against the doorway, careful not to enter. "Because coming home mattered."
"But not enough to tell anyone I was there."
The words are cruel.
True, but cruel.
He accepts them.
"No," he says. "Not enough in the ways that counted."
I put the box on the desk. "Did you sleep here after I left?"
"No. Hotel."
"Why hasn't anything moved?"
"Because it is yours."
"The apartment is legally yours."
"I mean the life in it."
We stand in the room where I edited half his career and hid all of our marriage.
His eyes move to my mouth.
Mine move to his.
The attraction between us has always been physical before it becomes reasonable. Even now, fury and grief sharpen it. I remember his hands on my waist, his voice in the dark, the private certainty of being wanted by a man who denied wanting a wife in daylight.
He takes one step forward.
Then stops.
"Tell me to leave," he says.
I should.
Instead, I whisper, "Why?"
"Because if I kiss you, I will spend the rest of the night pretending it means more than you promised."
My breath catches.
"And if I kiss you?"
His eyes close briefly. "I will let you. Then I will hate myself for accepting comfort from the person I hurt."
The honesty is almost unbearable.
I pick up the equipment case.
At the door, I turn back and take my wedding ring from the dresser.
Rhett watches but does not speak.
I slide it into my pocket.
Not onto my finger.
His face holds both hope and restraint.
I leave before either can become a promise.