Chapter 6 #2
I walked into the kitchen. The moonlight filtered through the fog outside, casting a pale, ghostly light over the sprawling quartz island.
This was the room where she had tried to talk to me.
I stopped at the edge of the island, resting my hands flat against the cold stone.
I closed my eyes, and the memory played with crystal clarity.
I saw her standing right there, wearing her oversized fleece sweater, her hands wrapped tightly around a ceramic mug.
I heard the exhaustion in her voice as she tried to tell me about the battered mastiff mix.
She had sat on a concrete floor to comfort a terrified animal, and she had come home desperate to share that burden with me.
And what had I done?
I had told her to have the accountant send me an invoice.
I had raised my finger to silence her so I could argue about a percentage point with a venture capitalist five thousand miles away.
I gripped the edge of the quartz so hard my fingers went entirely numb. The guilt was a physical, living thing, clawing its way up my throat.
I understood her loneliness now. I was drowning in it.
Throughout our marriage, I had left her in this sprawling, empty museum while I chased phantom victories in boardrooms across the globe.
I had told myself I was building a kingdom for us.
I justified the eighty-hour work weeks, the missed dinners, and the distracted conversations by telling myself that my relentless ambition was a form of devotion.
I was securing our future. I was ensuring she never had to want for anything.
But I wasn’t building a kingdom. I was building a vault. And I had locked her inside it, entirely alone.
I remembered the dinners she used to make when we first moved in. She would spend hours cooking, setting the table, waiting up for me to come home. I remembered the way her smile used to reach her eyes when I walked through the door.
I also remembered the slow, quiet fade of that smile. I remembered the way the elaborate dinners turned into covered plates left in the refrigerator. I remembered the way she stopped waiting up, choosing instead to fall asleep with a book on her chest.
I had noticed the shift. I wasn’t blind.
But I had been too arrogant, too consumed by my own momentum, to stop the machine and fix it.
I thought my wealth was a sufficient apology for my absence.
I thought as long as her bank accounts were full and the rescue was funded, the foundation of our marriage was secure.
The truth is, Hayes, I am completely empty. And you are the one who starved me.
The words wrecked me all over again.
I pushed away from the island and walked back into the foyer. I stopped in front of the sleek silver console table near the front door.
Sitting in the exact center of the tray was her wedding ring.
I hadn’t moved it. I hadn’t been able to bring myself to touch it. For a week, it had sat there, catching the ambient light, a flawless, brilliant monument to my colossal failure as a husband.
I reached out slowly, my hand trembling, and picked the ring up.
The platinum was cold against my skin. I rolled the heavy band between my thumb and forefinger, staring down at the diamond. It was perfect. Symmetrical. Immensely valuable.
And it meant absolutely nothing to her.
A terrifying, paralyzing fear gripped me. It was the same fear that had kept me trapped in this house for a week, preventing me from driving down to the clinic and demanding to see her.
What if I couldn’t fix this?
What if the damage was too severe? What if she looked at me with those hollow, exhausted eyes and told me that she was happier sleeping in a freezing concrete box than she ever was with me? What if Brooks was already filling the vast, empty spaces I had left inside her?
My pride screamed at me to maintain my distance. It told me to wait her out, to let the reality of a life without my resources wear her down. It told me that a man of my stature didn’t beg.
But the silence of the house roared back, crushing my pride into dust.
I didn’t care about my stature. I didn’t care about my firm, my board members, or my acquisitions. If I had to live the rest of my life in this echoing, sterile tomb without her, the empire was completely worthless.
I couldn’t send Diane to negotiate a truce.
I couldn’t send my high-priced corporate lawyers with a perfectly drafted contract offering compromises and financial endowments.
She had already proven that my money was a toxic, poisoned well.
If I approached her wielding my wealth, she would reject me immediately.
I had to dismantle the armor.
I couldn’t fix this as Hayes Easton, the untouchable CEO. The CEO was the man who had destroyed the marriage. The CEO was the man who had weaponized a charity.
I had to fix this as the man who loved her.
I had to strip myself bare. I had to go to her, completely exposed, and earn her forgiveness in the dirt, entirely on her terms. I had to swallow the bitter, burning bile of my own jealousy regarding Brooks, because the brutal truth was that Brooks had simply caught my wife when I pushed her off a cliff.
He had provided the safety and comfort I had arrogant withheld.
I closed my fist around the platinum ring, the sharp edges of the diamond biting into my palm. The physical pain was a welcome, grounding anchor.
The paralyzing fear of rejection was still there, a massive, looming shadow in the back of my mind.
But the reality of letting her slip away without a fight was infinitely worse.
I couldn’t undo the starvation of the last two years.
I couldn’t erase the cruel, baseless accusation I had hurled at her in this very foyer.
But I could show up.
I could put my hands in the dirt. I could stand in the rain.
I could do the grueling, unglamorous, heavy lifting required to prove that I finally understood the value of the work she did.
I would shovel kennels, I would haul bags of food, I would scrub floors until my hands bled if it meant I could be in the same room as her.
I looked up at the heavy oak front door.
The agonizing, cowardly wait was over. It was time to stop managing the fallout from a distance and step into the wreckage I had created.
I slipped the wedding ring into the front pocket of my trousers, the heavy metal settling against my hip. I turned away from the console table and walked swiftly toward the mudroom. I bypassed the row of tailored wool overcoats and grabbed a heavy, waterproof canvas jacket I hadn’t worn in years.
I didn’t bother checking the financial markets. I didn’t care what Tokyo or London were doing.
I grabbed my keys, pushed the door open, and walked out into the dark.