11. Nash
NASH
The penthouse felt too big without her in it.
I sat on the edge of the sofa with Rae's wedding ring in my hand, turning it over and over between my thumb and forefinger.
The gold caught the light from the window and threw it back at me, a small bright circle that made my eyes ache.
I'd found it on the kitchen counter Thursday night when I'd come home to silence and empty spaces, and I'd carried it with me ever since.
My pocket. My palm. My goddamn chest when I tried to sleep and couldn't.
The boxes were still stacked against the wall in the second bedroom, half unpacked from three months ago when we'd moved in.
Now some of them sat half-empty where she'd taken her things Thursday before I'd even known she was leaving.
Her toolbox was gone from the closet. The Wednesday shirt I'd left on the chair had a mark on it I still couldn't place, something pale near the collar, and I'd stared at it for twenty minutes last night trying to figure out what the hell it meant.
Two unanswered calls. One trip to Cibolo Heights where Enid had blocked the door and stood between me and my wife like I was the enemy.
One offer of the Maldives with the jet already fuelling on the tarmac, and Rae had said no twice without explaining why.
One question she'd asked me — what does she want more than anything else — and I'd answered wrong.
I'd known I was wrong the second the words left my mouth, but I didn't know how to fix it.
I closed my fist around the ring. The metal bit into my palm, sharp and real and small.
The knock at the door came at eight-thirty.
I figured it was Elias, maybe, coming to tell me I looked like hell and needed to pull myself together before the board meeting Monday.
The FAA inspection had wrapped Thursday, the compliance deadline was today, and I'd barely said a word to anyone since I'd walked out of Enid's house and driven back here alone.
Or maybe it was nobody. Maybe I was hearing things because I'd barely slept since Thursday morning and my brain was starting to give out.
I got up and opened the door.
Adriana stood in the hallway, one hand braced against the frame, her head tilted just slightly to the side.
She wore a dark blue dress that looked like it cost more than most people's rent, fitted and sleek, and her perfume hit me before she said a word.
Heavy and floral, expensive enough to announce itself, the kind that followed her everywhere she went and left a trail in the air when she moved.
"Nash," she said. Her voice was warm, a little concerned, softer than I'd heard it before. "I wanted to check on you."
I didn't move out of the doorway. "This isn't a good time."
"I know." She stepped forward anyway, close enough that I had to either block her or let her in, and her eyes tracked over my face like she was cataloging every line and shadow. "That's why I came."
I should've held the door. Should've told her to leave and meant it, should've shut the door in her face and gone back to sitting in the dark with my wife's ring in my hand.
But I was tired, bone-deep and wrecked, and Rae had just told me to get out of her life, and I didn't have it in me to fight Adriana off the threshold.
I stepped back.
She walked past me into the living room, and I shut the door behind her. The sound echoed louder than it should've.
She stopped in the middle of the floor and looked around, slow and deliberate, like she was taking inventory.
Her gaze went straight to the boxes stacked against the wall, then to the empty spaces where Rae's things used to be.
The picture frame that had sat on the shelf by the kitchen, the one with Rae's grandmother and her mother standing in front of a house I'd never seen.
The blanket she kept folded over the back of the sofa, soft and gray and worn from years of use.
The coffee mug with the chipped handle that she'd refused to throw away because her grandmother had given it to her, and I'd told her we could afford new mugs, and she'd looked at me like I'd missed the entire point.
Adriana turned back to me, and her expression was careful, sympathetic in a way that made my jaw tighten. "She left."
It wasn't a question. I felt something cold settle in my chest, low and sharp, because Adriana knew, and I hadn't told her a goddamn thing. "That's not your business."
"You've been impossible to reach since Thursday," she said, taking a step closer.
Her heels clicked on the hardwood, sharp little sounds that made the room feel smaller.
"The FAA inspection, the compliance deadline — you've barely said a word to anyone.
Elias is worried about you. He called me this morning and asked if I'd heard from you. "
"Elias can ask me himself."
"He did." Another step. She was close enough now that I could see the way her eyes tracked over my face, searching for something I wasn't going to give her. "You didn't answer."
I hadn't. I'd ignored his calls the same way I'd ignored everyone else's, because the only person I wanted to hear from was Rae, and she wasn't calling.
She'd told me to leave, and I'd left, and she hadn't called me back.
I crossed my arms and stayed where I was, my back against the kitchen counter. "What do you want, Adriana?"
She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. It was a careful smile, practiced, the kind she gave investors when she was about to close a deal. "I want to help."
"I don't need help."
"You look exhausted, Nash." She moved closer again, slow and deliberate, until she was standing right in front of me.
Too close. Close enough that her perfume wrapped around me and made it hard to breathe, thick and cloying in the back of my throat.
"You're running yourself into the ground.
You can't keep going like this, not with the board meeting Monday and everything else you've got on your plate. "
I stepped to the side, putting space between us. She followed, matching me step for step.
"I know what you're going through," she said quietly.
Her hand came up and rested on my arm, her fingers curling around my elbow like she had every right to touch me.
The contact was light, almost tentative, but it felt like a brand.
"You don't have to do this alone. You don't have to carry all of this by yourself. "
"Adriana—"
"You deserve better than this, Nash." Her voice dropped, softer now, and her other hand came up to my chest. She pressed her palm flat against my shirt, right over my heart, and I felt the heat of her skin through the fabric.
My pulse kicked up, sharp and wrong, and I wanted her hand off me.
"You deserve someone who understands the life you've built.
Someone who knows what it takes to stay at the top, who won't ask you to come down, who won't make you choose between the airline and anything else. "
I grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from my chest. "Stop."
She didn't. She leaned in instead, close enough that I could feel her breath on my jaw, warm and deliberate, and her fingers trailed down from where I'd pushed them, sliding lower.
"She doesn't belong in your world, Nash.
You know that. You've always known it. She's sweet, she's lovely, but she doesn't understand what you need. She doesn't understand you."
I stepped back hard enough that I hit the edge of the sofa, and my heart was pounding now, hard and fast and furious. "Get out."
"You don't have to settle for someone who walks away the second things get difficult.
" Her hand slid lower, deliberate and unmistakable, and I caught it again and shoved it away harder this time.
She looked up at me, and something in her expression shifted — something raw and desperate and hungry that I'd never seen before.
"You could have everything you want, Nash.
We could have everything. A life that never stops, that never settles, that stays exactly where you are now.
No compromises. No coming down. Just us and the sky and everything we've built. "
"I said stop."
"Nash, listen to me?—"
"I don't want that." The words came out harder than I'd meant them to, sharp enough to cut, but I didn't take them back. I met her eyes and made damn sure she heard me. "I don't want you."
The silence that followed felt like a punch to the gut.
Adriana went completely still, her face blank, and for a second I thought she might walk away on her own.
Then something flickered across her expression — hurt, maybe, or anger, or something uglier than both.
Her mouth tightened. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, and her breathing went shallow and fast.
"You're making a mistake," she said. Her voice was thin now, sharp-edged and brittle.
"I'm not."
"She left you, Nash." The words came fast, almost frantic, like she was trying to convince herself as much as me.
"She packed her things and walked out and left, and you're standing here defending her like she's coming back, like she didn't just throw everything you built together back in your face. "
"You need to leave."
"You don't owe her anything," she said, stepping forward again and reaching for me. "Not after what she's done to you. Not after she left without even telling you why, without giving you a chance to fix it. She doesn't deserve your loyalty, Nash. She doesn't deserve you."
I caught her wrist before she could touch me again. My grip was tight enough that she flinched, and I let go immediately, stepped back, put the sofa between us. "You need to leave. Now."
She stared at me for a long moment, her chest rising and falling too fast, her eyes bright and furious and wet. Something in her face crumpled, just for a second, and then she pulled it back together and lifted her chin. "Fine."
She turned and walked to the door, her heels sharp and angry against the floor.
She stopped with her hand on the knob and looked back at me over her shoulder, and her expression was cold now, distant, nothing like the warmth she'd walked in with.
"You'll regret this, Nash. You'll regret it, and when you do, don't come looking for me. "
I didn't answer. She yanked the door open and left, slamming it hard enough that the sound echoed through the empty penthouse and made the windows rattle.
I stood there for a while, staring at the door, my heart pounding in my chest and my hands shaking. The ring was still in my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at it, the gold dull in the low light, and tried to remember the last time I'd seen Rae smile at me like she meant it.
I couldn't.
I sat back down on the sofa and turned off the lamp.
The room went dark except for the glow from the city outside, forty-three floors down, a thousand lights spread out like stars against the night.
I closed my fist around the ring and tried not to think about the fact that my wife was gone and I didn't know how to get her back.
The perfume lingered in the air, heavy and cloying, and it made my stomach turn.
I got up and opened the window, let the night air in, cold and sharp and clean.
It didn't help. The smell was already in the fabric of the sofa, in the carpet, in everything Adriana had touched.
It would be there tomorrow when I woke up, and the day after that, and Rae would walk in here eventually and smell it and know.
I thought about Thursday night at Enid's door.
The way Rae had looked at me when I'd offered her the Maldives, like I'd missed the point so badly it wasn't even worth explaining.
The way she'd asked me what she wanted more than anything, and I'd answered that she wanted to know I could take care of her, that she'd always have what she needed, a home of her own and a life that was stable.
I'd been so sure. And I'd been wrong.
She'd asked me how I was going to fix it, and I'd told her about the jet, and she'd said no. Twice. And then she'd told me to leave, and I had, because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know what she wanted from me. I didn't know how to give her something I couldn't even name.
God, what was I even doing?
I set the ring on the coffee table and stared at it. The gold gleamed faintly in the dark, small and fragile and impossibly far away. Like Rae. Like everything I'd lost without understanding how.
My phone buzzed on the table. I picked it up and checked the screen, hoping against hope that it was her.
It wasn't. Just Elias again, asking if I was okay.
I put the phone down and leaned back against the sofa. The city stretched out below me, endless and indifferent, and I sat there alone and tried to figure out where the hell I'd gone wrong.
I picked up the ring again and held it tight, the metal warming in my palm, and I stayed there in the dark until the night bled into morning and the light outside turned gray.
The perfume faded but it didn't disappear, and neither did the cold hollow feeling in my chest that told me I'd lost something I didn't know how to get back.
She didn't call.