3. Rae
RAE
Nash had already showered by the time I woke up. The bathroom door stood open, steam drifting into the bedroom, and I could hear him moving around in the walk-in closet. I sat up, pushing the covers back. My head felt heavy from sleeping badly.
He came out buttoning a fresh shirt, his hair still damp at the edges. The collar wasn't sitting right on one side. He didn't look at me.
"Morning," I said.
"Morning." He crossed to the dresser and pulled open the top drawer, pawing through it for cufflinks.
I watched him hunt, his movements quick and distracted like he was already halfway out the door. He'd gotten up at five without setting an alarm, which meant he'd been thinking about the FAA inspection all night. He was already gone, even standing right there in front of me.
"Nash."
"Yeah?" He threaded a cufflink through one sleeve, frowning at it.
"I was thinking we could go out to Cibolo Heights today." I kept my voice light, like I was suggesting lunch instead of asking for the thing I'd been asking for all week. "Just the two of us. Maybe spend the afternoon at the little house. We haven't been back since we moved the last of my tools."
He glanced up, and for a second I thought he might actually be listening.
Then his brow furrowed and he looked back down at his wrist. "Can't.
I've got the FAA inspection in Austin, and after that Adriana wants me to walk through the maintenance schedule with the new crew lead.
" He finished the second cufflink and reached for his watch on the dresser. "It's going to be an all-day thing."
The tightness in my chest spread to my throat. "What about tomorrow?"
"There's the debrief." He buckled the watch, his fingers working the strap without hesitation. "And I need to review the route expansion files before the board meeting on Monday."
I sat there in my old sleep shirt with the bleach stain on the hem, watching him get ready to leave. My hands twisted together in my lap. "You said we'd have the weekend."
"I know." He didn't look at me. "But this inspection determines whether we keep our operating certificate, Rae. I can't blow it off."
I wanted to say that I wasn't asking him to blow anything off.
That I was asking for Sunday, or even just Saturday evening, for a few hours where we could sit in the house that used to be mine and pretend we still had something that felt like a marriage instead of a shared mailing address.
But the words stuck in my throat. They felt too big, too raw, too much like begging.
"Right," I said instead.
Nash grabbed his phone from the nightstand, his thumb already moving across the screen before he'd fully picked it up. He started scrolling through his email as he walked toward the closet. I was still talking. "Maybe next week, then, or we could?—"
His eyes stayed on the phone. His thumb kept swiping while my sentence trailed off into nothing. He turned slightly, angling the screen to catch the light from the window, and I realized he hadn't heard a single word I'd just said.
God, I wanted to scream.
I didn't. I sat there on the bed with my jaw clenched so hard my teeth hurt, watching my husband read his email like I wasn't even in the room.
His phone buzzed in his hand. The screen shifted to an incoming video call.
Adriana's name and face filled the display, her expression bright and awake like she'd already been up for hours.
Nash swiped to answer without hesitating and propped the phone against the lamp on the dresser, tilting it so the camera caught him while he shrugged into his suit jacket.
"You're up early," he said, and his voice was warmer than it had been when he'd said good morning to me.
Adriana smiled at him through the screen. "I wanted to catch you before you left. Do you have a minute?"
"For you? Always."
The words hit me like whiplash. I'd just asked him for an entire afternoon and gotten work prevents it, but Adriana asked for a minute and got always. My stomach dropped. I couldn't look away.
She leaned closer to her camera, and I could see she was already dressed for the day, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, a coffee cup in one hand.
Professional. Put together. Not sitting on a bed in a ratty T-shirt like an afterthought.
"I know you're handling the FAA walk-through today, but I wanted to make sure we're on the same page about the crew lead conversation.
Elias and I were going over the personnel files last night, and we think it would be better if you stayed in Austin through the evening debrief as well, just to make sure we're all aligned before Monday's board meeting. Can you do that?"
Nash adjusted his jacket collar, smoothing it down. "Absolutely. I'll clear my schedule."
"Thank you." Adriana's smile softened, and it was the kind of smile that looked like relief and gratitude and trust all wrapped together.
"I know it's a lot to ask, especially on such short notice, but it makes a real difference having you there for this.
Elias and I can handle the business side, but the operational piece—the crew management, the safety protocols, the maintenance windows—that's you. We need you."
Something tightened in my chest. We need you. She'd said it so easily, like it was just a fact, and Nash was nodding like he'd never heard anything more reasonable in his life.
"I'll take care of it," he said. "I can stay as late as you need. That way I'm there for the whole debrief, and we can go over the route expansion files together before Monday."
"That would be perfect." Her voice dropped, going quieter and warmer. "I really appreciate it, Nash. I know how much you're juggling right now, and I don't want to add to your plate, but this inspection is make-or-break for us."
He smiled at the screen. At her. "It's fine, Adriana. This is what I'm here for."
They talked through a few more details—timelines, personnel questions, some issue with a fuel vendor contract.
I sat on the bed with my hands folded in my lap, my nails digging into my palms, and watched my husband give another woman the time and attention and reassurance I'd been trying to get from him for months.
Adriana didn't know I could hear her. She didn't know I was sitting ten feet away in an old T-shirt with a bleach stain, watching her get everything I couldn't.
Nash ended the call and pocketed his phone, reaching for his keys on the dresser. "I'll probably be late tonight," he said, glancing at me like he'd just remembered I was there. "There's leftover chicken in the fridge if you don't want to wait."
"Okay."
He paused, his hand on the doorframe. For a second I thought he might actually say something—might ask if I was all right, or apologize for bailing on the weekend, or even just look at me long enough to notice that I was barely holding it together.
But he just nodded once and walked out. The front door clicked shut a moment later, and then I heard the elevator chime in the hallway.
I sat there in the quiet, listening to the hum of the air conditioning and the faint buzz of traffic forty-three floors below.
The penthouse felt enormous. All clean lines and recessed lighting and floor-to-ceiling windows that showed off the downtown skyline like we'd accomplished something.
We hadn't made anything. We'd signed a lease.
Nash had signed it, actually—I'd been in Cibolo Heights finishing an engine overhaul when he'd toured the place and put down the deposit.
We'd moved in three months ago and I still hadn't unpacked half my things. The boxes were stacked in the second bedroom, the one that was supposed to be an office or a guest room or something we'd figure out later.
I stood up and walked out into the main living area.
Nash's coffee cup sat on the counter next to the espresso machine, still half full and going cold.
I picked it up and dumped it down the sink.
Then I yanked open the dishwasher and started pulling out the clean dishes from last night's load, slamming them into the cabinets with more force than I needed.
A glass knocked hard against the shelf. I didn't care.
The apartment was perfect. Spotless. Soulless. It looked like a staged unit from a real estate listing. Nash had picked it out while I was working. He'd sent me photos of the view from the balcony and said it was a good investment, that I'd love the natural light in the second bedroom.
I hated it.
I shoved the silverware into the drawer and shut it hard enough that the whole thing rattled in its track.
My hands were shaking. I pressed my palms flat against the counter and took a breath, staring at the espresso machine and the marble backsplash and the pendant lights hanging over the island like they belonged in a magazine spread.
We'd been married seven years. We didn't own a single thing that felt like ours.
We used to, though.
We used to have the little house in Cibolo Heights with the porch that creaked and the kitchen window that stuck every time it rained.
We used to have a drawer full of mismatched silverware and a couch we'd bought at an estate sale for sixty dollars.
We used to sit on that couch and talk about what we'd do when Nash got the airline off the ground, all the places we'd go, all the time we'd finally have.
My throat ached. I turned away from the counter and walked into the second bedroom.
The boxes were stacked against the wall, three high in some places, all of them labeled in my handwriting from the last move.
Tools. Manuals. Personal. I'd packed them two years ago, right after Nash started expanding the airline into new regions, and we'd spent the next eight months living out of suitcases in extended-stay hotels while he worked with managers in Seattle and Denver and Charlotte.
I'd gone with him because that's what you did when you were married—you followed your husband, and you smiled when people asked how you were liking the travel, and you pretended you weren't slowly losing your mind in a parade of identical hotel rooms with bad coffee and fluorescent lighting.
I hadn't unpacked these boxes in the apartment before this one, either. There'd been no point. We'd only stayed there nine months before Nash came home and said we were moving again, this time to the penthouse, because Adriana thought it would be better for his image to live downtown.
I stared at the boxes and thought about the little house in Cibolo Heights. The one with the second bedroom I'd painted yellow.
We'd lost the baby in a hotel in Denver.
I'd woken up cramping on a Tuesday morning, and by that afternoon I knew something was wrong, and by that night it was over.
Nash had been in back-to-back meetings all day.
I'd called him twice and texted him three times and he hadn't answered any of them, and when he finally got back to the room at nine-thirty I was curled up on the bathroom floor with my arms around my knees and my forehead pressed to the tile.
He'd asked if I needed to go to the hospital.
I'd said no, because what was the point—it was already done.
He'd sat on the edge of the tub with his hand on my back and asked if I was okay, and I'd said yes because I didn't know what else to say and I didn't want to cry in front of him when he was already looking at me like I was something fragile that might break.
We'd never talked about it after that night. Not once.
And we'd never gone back to the little house to try again, even though the house was still there.
Nash had sold it years ago to get the startup capital for the airline, and then he'd bought it back at some point without telling me, but we'd never once talked about moving into it.
It just sat there in Cibolo Heights, empty and waiting, while we kept moving from one apartment to another, chasing his work.
The yellow bedroom was still yellow. The porch still creaked. And we lived in penthouses.
There was nowhere to try from now. Just boxes in a second bedroom that would never be a nursery, in an apartment I didn't want, in a marriage that felt like it was held together with packing tape and the pretense that everything was fine.
I turned away from the boxes. My eyes stung and my chest hurt and I needed to get out of here before I did something stupid like sit down on the floor and cry.
I went back to the bedroom and got dressed—jeans, a tank top, my old work boots that were still stained with engine grease. I grabbed my keys off the hook by the door and my wallet from the counter and headed out without looking back.
I needed to move. I needed to do something with my hands. I needed to be somewhere that wasn't this empty pristine box with my husband's cold coffee and the skyline view I'd never asked for.
Ruben Cruz's shop was at the edge of the airfield in Cibolo Heights, tucked between two hangars and a taxiway that hadn't seen regular traffic in years.
He'd been letting me use his back workspace since I was nineteen, back when I was still trying to figure out if I wanted to get my A&P license or just keep tinkering with engines in my spare time.
He'd never asked why I kept showing up, and he'd never charged me for the space.
I needed that today—a place that didn't ask questions, where I could tear down a fuel pump or rebuild a magneto and pretend for a few hours that I still knew how to fix things.
I took the elevator down to the parking garage and got in my truck, cranking the engine and pulling out onto the street.
The highway south was nearly empty this early on a Thursday.
I merged on and let the city fall away behind me, the skyline shrinking in the rearview mirror until it was just a hazy line of glass and steel on the horizon.
The marriage was broken. I didn't know how to fix it, and Nash didn't even seem to notice it was falling apart.