13. Lena
LENA
The light over the front door was on when I pulled into the driveway.
I sat in the car for a moment, hands still on the wheel, engine ticking as it cooled.
My chest felt tight, like I'd been holding my breath for hours.
The wardrobe. I just needed to look in the wardrobe.
The shirt would be there, hanging between the charcoal button-down and the navy one with the thin white stripe exactly where it had always been, or it wouldn't. And then I'd know.
God, what was I even doing?
I got out of the car and walked to the front door. My keys felt heavy in my hand, the metal cold against my palm. I unlocked the door and stepped inside, and that's when I smelled it.
Jasmine. Bitter orange peel underneath, sharp and invasive. That same cold layering I'd smelled on Bianca at the restaurant, the scent that had clung to the walls of the storage room and wouldn't let go.
Bianca's perfume.
I stopped in the entryway, my whole body going still.
The scent hung in the air like smoke, winding through the hallway and curling around the furniture.
It was everywhere. On the leather sofa in the living room, on the abstract art some decorator had chosen, on the reclaimed wood coffee table I'd never wanted.
She'd been here. In my house. In the place I'd walked away from because I couldn't stand to be in it anymore, and she'd been here.
My hands started shaking.
I moved through the hallway, past the minimalist art that had never felt like mine, past the expensive furniture that belonged in a showroom and not a home.
The living room was dark except for the light spilling in from the kitchen, and my footsteps sounded too loud on the hardwood floor.
Everything looked the same. Everything looked exactly like it always had, clean and expensive and empty, but the perfume was everywhere, clinging to the air like she'd left it behind on purpose.
And then I saw the dining table.
Two places set. Two napkins folded beside two forks, two knives, two glasses. The table I'd eaten at alone more nights than I could count, set for two like Theo had been expecting me. Like he'd been waiting.
Theo's chair was pulled out slightly, angled away from the table like he'd gotten up in a hurry when he heard me come in.
My throat went tight. I couldn't breathe. The perfume, the table, the chair—it didn't make sense. None of it made sense, and all of it made perfect, terrible sense at the same time.
"Lena."
I turned. Theo stood in the doorway to the kitchen, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his forearms dusted with flour like he'd been cooking.
His hair was disheveled, like he'd been running his hands through it, and his face—God, his face looked wrecked.
Tired and shadowed and desperate in a way I'd never seen before.
But I couldn't let that matter. I couldn't let any of it matter, not the table, not the way he was looking at me like I was something fragile he was afraid he'd already broken.
"Was she here?" The words came out flat and cold. I didn't recognize my own voice.
Theo went still. His whole body tensed, shoulders pulling tight, and he just stood there staring at me like I'd hit him.
"Lena—"
"Was Bianca here?" I said it louder this time, and I hated how my voice shook, how I couldn't keep the anger and the hurt out of it. "In this house. Was she here?"
He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His hand came up, rubbing at the back of his neck, and he looked away.
He didn't say no.
He didn't deny it.
God. He didn't deny it.
Something in my chest cracked wide open, a sharp fracture that spread fast, and I had to lock my knees to keep from collapsing.
The perfume was everywhere. The table was set like he'd been waiting for me.
And he wasn't saying no. He wasn't telling me I was wrong, that Bianca was lying, that of course she hadn't been here.
He just stood there, silent, and that silence told me everything.
"Please don't go," Theo said, and his voice came out rough and raw, almost pleading. He took a step toward me, his hand reaching out like he thought he could close the distance between us and make this okay. "Lena, please, just let me?—"
"Let you what?" I snapped, and the anger felt better than the grief clawing at my throat. Anger I could hold onto. Anger made sense. "Let you explain how your PR agent ended up in our house? Let you tell me it's not what it looks like?"
He took another step, close enough now that I could see the desperation in his face, the way his jaw was tight and his eyes were shadowed. "Lena—" His voice broke. "Wait. Just—sit down. Let me speak?—"
"Stop." I held up my hand, and he froze mid-step. "Just stop. Don't insult me by pretending this is something I misunderstood."
"Lena—" There was panic in his voice now, something frayed and breaking. "If you'd just listen for one second?—"
"I don't want to listen." My voice broke on the last word, and I hated myself for it, hated that I couldn't keep the hurt locked down where it belonged.
"I spent twelve years listening, Theo. Twelve years hearing all the reasons you couldn't be here, couldn't sit down, couldn't stay. I'm done listening."
He stared at me, his chest rising and falling too fast, like he'd been running.
I could see him working through it, trying to find the words that would fix this, and I knew if I let him talk he'd find them.
He always did. He'd tell me some version of the truth that sounded reasonable, that made me feel like an idiot for doubting him, and I'd go back to eating dinner alone and pretending everything was fine.
I couldn't do it anymore.
"Lena, please." He crossed the space between us in two strides, and suddenly he was right there, close enough that I could smell the kitchen on him.
Garlic and olive oil and rosemary, the scent of whatever he'd been cooking before I walked in.
His hand reached for mine, fingers outstretched, and for half a second I almost let him take it.
Almost let him pull me in and tell me it was going to be okay, that we'd figure it out together, that he was sorry and he'd do better.
But I saw Bianca's face in my head. The way she'd described that shirt like she'd held it in her hands, like she'd folded it and washed it and kept it in her apartment.
The way her perfume had filled the storage room at the restaurant and now filled this house, my house, the place that was supposed to be mine and only mine.
I pulled my hand back before he could touch me.
Theo's fingers closed on empty air. He stood there frozen, his hand still reaching, and the look on his face nearly broke me.
Shock and hurt and something that looked like devastation, all of it written plainly across his features.
And then slowly, so slowly it hurt to watch, he let his hand drop to his side.
"Don't," I said, and my voice was barely above a whisper. "Please don't."
My left hand moved without me thinking about it, my fingers finding the base of my ring finger and pressing against the bare skin there.
It felt hollow, that narrow band where the gold used to sit.
I'd worn that ring every single day for twelve years.
Twelve years of believing in something that maybe had never been real at all.
I dropped my hand and made myself look at him.
"I want a divorce."
The words fell into the silence between us like stones into still water, and I watched them hit.
Theo went absolutely still, all the color draining from his face, and for a long moment neither of us moved.
The dining table sat behind him with its two place settings, the empty chair pulled out and waiting like it always had, and I realized I'd been waiting too.
Waiting for him to notice. Waiting for him to sit down.
Waiting for him to choose me over his empire and his show and the world that had swallowed him whole.
Waiting for something that was never going to happen.
"Lena—" His voice cracked on my name, and he took a step toward me, his hand coming up again like he still thought he could reach me.
"I'll have my lawyer send the papers," I said, cutting him off before he could say anything else, before I could let him talk me out of this the way I'd let him talk me out of a hundred other things.
I needed to leave. I needed to get out of this house before I fell apart in front of him, because if I did he'd see it and he'd try to fix it, and I couldn't let him.
Not this time. Not when fixing it meant going back to the way things were.
I turned and walked back toward the front door. My legs felt shaky, my whole body trembling with the effort of staying upright and keeping my face blank, but I kept moving. One foot in front of the other. Don't stop. Don't look back. Don't let him see you break.
"Lena, wait?—"
I didn't wait. I pulled the door open and walked out into the cool night air, and I didn't let myself look back at him standing there in the entryway, his hand still half-raised like he could call me back if he just said the right thing.
I got in my car, started the engine, and pulled out of the driveway.
The street was empty and dark, the houses all quiet, their windows glowing soft yellow against the night.
I made it three blocks before I had to pull over.
My hands were shaking so hard I could barely grip the steering wheel. I put the car in park on a side street I didn't recognize and just sat there, staring at the dashboard, at the blurred shapes of trees outside the windshield, and everything I'd been holding back came crashing down all at once.
The grief rose up like a wave, huge and unstoppable, and it hit me so hard I couldn't breathe.
I pressed my hands to my face and felt the tears come, hot and fast, running down my cheeks and into my palms. My shoulders shook with it, my whole body curling in on itself, and I let it happen.
I let myself break apart in the dark, alone in my car on a street I didn't know, where no one could see me and no one could tell me to stop.
I'd asked for a divorce.
God.
I'd stood in that house, in front of the man I'd loved since I was twenty-three years old, the man I'd built a life with, and I'd asked him for a divorce.
And he hadn't denied that Bianca was there.
He'd tried to explain, tried to reach for me, and I'd pulled away.
The look on his face when I did, the way his hand had just hung there in the empty space between us?—
I couldn't think about that. I couldn't think about any of it or I'd turn the car around and go back, and I couldn't do that. I couldn't keep living like this, couldn't keep eating alone and waiting for him to come home and telling myself it was enough when it had never, ever been enough.
I cried until my throat ached and my eyes burned and there was nothing left inside me but a hollow, exhausted quiet.
And then I just sat there in the silence, my hands still pressed to my face, trying to figure out how to start breathing again like a normal person instead of someone whose entire world had just collapsed.
The street outside was empty. The houses dark. Somewhere a dog barked once, sharp and lonely, and then stopped.
I lowered my hands and looked down at my left ring finger. The pale stripe of skin caught the glow from the streetlight, a narrow band of white where the sun hadn't touched in twelve years. A mark of something that used to be there and wasn't anymore.
Twelve years. Gone.
I wiped my face with the back of my hand, my fingers coming away wet, and took a shaky breath.
Then another. My chest still felt tight, my heart still felt like it was being squeezed in a fist, but I could breathe.
I could sit up straight. I could put the car in drive and figure out where to go next.
I pulled back onto the road and headed toward Maggie's, because I didn't have anywhere else to go, and because my sister's house was the only place left that felt even remotely safe.
The streets blurred past, streetlights and stop signs and dark windows, and I drove through all of it on autopilot, my hands steady on the wheel even though the rest of me was still shaking.
I'd done it. I'd asked for a divorce. I'd walked out.
And I had no idea how I was going to survive what came next.