Chapter 7
GWEN
Adrenaline can only sustain a human body for so long before the inevitable crash arrives.
Driving my SUV off the ferry ramp and onto the concrete slip of the island, I felt the final, frantic reserves of my energy begin to burn out.
From the moment I left the penthouse, I had existed in a state of suspended animation.
I had sat in the darkened cabin of my car on the lower deck of the vessel, staring blankly at the massive steel bulkhead in front of me, listening to the deep, vibrating thrum of the engines.
My hands had remained locked onto the leather steering wheel the entire time, my knuckles white, my spine entirely rigid.
I had been fueled by a primal, desperate instinct to simply escape the blast radius of my own collapsing life.
But as the ferry terminal faded into the rearview mirror and the dense, encroaching forest swallowed the two-lane road, that artificial momentum evaporated.
It collapsed in a sudden catastrophic failure within my own nervous system.
My shoulders slumped, the tension draining away to leave behind a profound, bone-deep exhaustion that made my limbs feel cast in lead.
A fine, uncontrollable tremor took over my hands, vibrating through my wrists and traveling all the way up my arms.
I navigated the winding, unmarked dirt roads entirely by muscle memory.
There were no streetlights out here, no glowing convenience store signs, no crawling headlights to guide the way.
There was only the narrow beam of my high beams cutting through the towering, oppressive stands of ancient Douglas firs, their massive trunks crowding the narrow path.
The darkness of the coastal night was absolute, a thick, suffocating blanket that pressed relentlessly against the glass of the windshield.
By the time the dirt road finally opened up into the clearing where the decommissioned lighthouse stood, my breath came in shallow, ragged gasps. The tires crunched loudly against the gravel driveway.
I killed the engine. The sudden silence that flooded the cabin was immediately filled with the distant, rhythmic roar of the tide slamming against the jagged sea stacks below the cliffs.
I sat in the driver's seat for a long time, staring blindly at the dark silhouette of the house against the night sky.
I had to force my fingers to pry themselves off the steering wheel and reach for the door handle.
Stepping out into the coastal air, the damp, freezing chill of the Pacific Northwest night hit me instantly.
The temperature had plummeted, and the wind bit viciously through the thin cotton of the trench coat I had grabbed on my way out the door.
The gale whipped my hair across my face, stinging my eyes, carrying the sharp, briny scent of salt, decaying kelp, and cold earth.
I walked up the wooden steps to the front porch, my boots echoing hollowly in the quiet.
I dug my keys out of my purse with shaking fingers.
The salt-warped wood of the front door always stuck, a stubborn quirk of the coastal climate that Reid usually handled with a firm, practiced shove of his shoulder.
Tonight, it took me three separate attempts, throwing my entire, shivering body weight against the solid wood before the rusted latch finally gave way with a loud, protesting groan.
I stumbled over the threshold, blindly slapping the wall until my palm found the light switch.
The warm, yellow glow of the entryway chandelier flickered to life, illuminating the space. And the very second the light hit the familiar walls, the absolute, profound stillness of the isolated house struck me like a physical blow to the sternum.
This place had always been our sanctuary.
It was the one location on the map where the relentless, buzzing frequency of Mitchell Energy was supposed to fade away.
It was a space defined entirely by our shared presence—the sound of him chopping firewood on the back deck, the smell of coffee brewing in the rustic kitchen, the quiet baritone of his voice as he read a book by the stone fireplace.
Now, it was just a tomb.
I stood in the center of the braided entryway rug, pushing the door shut and sliding the deadbolt into place. I looked down at my hands.
I was holding a leather purse. My car keys.
That was it.
Because I had left the Seattle penthouse so abruptly, driven by a pure, agonizing need to sever the connection before I completely lost my mind, I had brought absolutely nothing else.
I had no luggage. I hadn't packed a single suitcase.
I had no change of clothes, no toiletries, no familiar comforts to anchor myself to.
I didn't even have a plan for tomorrow morning.
A violent shiver wracked my body, my teeth chattering as the damp cold of the unheated house seeped through my clothes and settled directly into my bones.
I needed to get warm. I needed to move. If I stood in the entryway any longer, the crushing, paralyzing reality of what I had done was going to drop me to my knees, and I wasn't sure I possessed the strength to ever get back up.
I kept my coat on, wrapping my arms tightly around my waist, and walked slowly toward the staircase.
Every single creak of the wooden floorboards under my boots sounded like a gunshot in the silent house.
The staircase led up to the main bedroom, a sprawling, lofted space that looked out over the ocean.
As I crested the landing and flipped the switch for the bedside lamps, I was immediately confronted by the overwhelming, suffocating ghosts of my marriage.
The thick quilt we had picked out together at a local artisan market lay perfectly smoothed over the mattress.
The stack of paperback books on his nightstand sat exactly where he had abandoned them months ago.
The framed photograph on the dresser, taken on a rocky beach during our first summer out here, mocked me from across the room.
Back then, his smile had been easy, relaxed, and entirely focused on the camera.
I squeezed my eyes shut, a jagged breath tearing at the back of my throat. I couldn't look at the photograph. I couldn't look at the bed.
I walked stiffly over to the tall oak dresser in the corner of the room, desperate to find something, anything, dry and warm to sleep in. I pulled open the middle drawer. It was filled with old clothes we kept at the lighthouse so we wouldn't have to pack bags for our weekend trips.
My fingers brushed past a pile of thick woolen socks and caught on a soft, familiar fabric. I pulled it out into the lamplight.
It was an old, faded gray University of Washington engineering t-shirt. The cotton was worn tissue-thin at the collar, the purple block letters cracked and peeling from years of rough use.
I held the shirt up, my hands trembling violently. Without thinking, driven by a deep, masochistic instinct, I brought the soft cotton up to my face and inhaled.
The fabric still carried his scent. The fragrance wasn't the sharp, sterile bite of the expensive designer cologne he wore to board meetings now. It smelled faintly of cedar, clean laundry, and the distinct, intoxicating warmth of his skin. It smelled exactly like the man I had married.
The scent shattered the final, fragile dam holding my composure together.
A sob ripped out of my chest, a loud, ugly sound that echoed in the empty room. My knees buckled, entirely losing their structural integrity, and I collapsed onto the edge of the mattress.
I didn't bother taking off my coat. I didn't take off my boots. I just crawled blindly into the exact center of the large bed, pulling my knees tight to my chest, curling into a defensive ball as the grief finally consumed me.
I gripped the faded gray t-shirt in both hands, pressing the cotton fiercely against my face, burying my sobs in the fabric. The tears came in a violent, unending flood, burning my eyes and scalding my cheeks, stealing the breath from my lungs until I was gasping for air in the quiet room.
The absolute, devastating tragedy of my situation wasn't that I hated my husband.
It would have been so incredibly easy if I could just summon a blinding, righteous fury. It would have been a relief to hate him, to view him as a monster, to burn his memory to the ground and walk away with my head held high in triumphant defiance. Anger was a shield. Anger provided momentum.
But I didn't hate him.
The tragedy was that I was still deeply, desperately, agonizingly in love with the man he used to be.
Lying in the dark, my face buried in his old shirt, the memories assaulted me with a cruel, unrelenting clarity.
I remembered the brilliant, messy, passionate inventor I had fallen in love with in our twenties.
I remembered the Reid Mitchell who used to run complex chemical experiments at our tiny, scarred kitchen table, the air in our drafty apartment smelling of burnt coffee and a chemical odor I had never been able to identify.
I remembered the way he would look up from a tangle of copper wire, his dark hair falling into his eyes, a smudge of grease on his jawline.
I remembered the exact, breathtaking way he used to look at me across that table.
It was a gaze of absolute devotion, an intensity so focused it made the rest of the world blur into insignificance.
When that Reid looked at me, I wasn't an obligation.
I wasn't a schedule conflict. I was the absolute center of his universe, the only element in the room that actually mattered.
He had loved me with a fierce, protective fire that had made me feel invincible.
But that man was a ghost. He had been slowly murdered by the CEO.