12. Rae
RAE
The wrench slipped and my knuckles scraped against the cowling. I swore under my breath and wiped the grease off with a rag, looking at the shallow scrape across my skin. Blood welled up in a thin line. It stung, but not badly. I pressed the rag against it until the bleeding stopped.
It was nearly six and the shop was quiet except for the faint hum of the radio Ruben kept on the workbench and the occasional ping of cooling metal from the engine I had been working on all afternoon.
He had left an hour ago, trusting me to lock up.
I appreciated that he didn't hover. He never had, not even when I was nineteen and still learning which end of a torque wrench to hold.
I went back to the fuel line, checking the connection I had just torqued down.
My hands were steadier now. The work settled me, even when I scraped myself up doing it.
It was simple and true. Either the seal held or it didn't. Either the engine ran or it didn't. There was no guessing, no second meaning underneath the surface, no wondering if you had missed something that mattered.
I liked that about engines. They didn't lie.
The shop door opened behind me and I straightened, turning to tell Ruben I would be done in ten minutes. Maybe fifteen if the fuel pump gave me trouble.
It was Adriana Moreau.
She stood in the doorway, backlit by the late sun, her tailored jacket and heels so out of place in the hangar that for a second I thought I had imagined her.
But no. That was her perfume cutting through the smell of aviation fuel and metal, floral and expensive and unmistakable.
The same scent that had made my throat itch at the gala. My stomach twisted.
"Rae." She stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind her. Her voice was warm, almost friendly, and somehow that was worse than if she had been cold.
I set the wrench down on the workbench and wiped my hands on the rag again, even though they were already clean. "What are you doing here?"
"I wanted to talk to you." She looked around the shop, her gaze sliding over the tools hanging on the pegboard, the ancient calendar tacked to the wall, the oil-stained concrete floor.
Her expression was polite, pleasant even, but I saw the judgment in it.
She thought this place was beneath me. She thought I was beneath her.
My jaw tightened. "We don't have anything to talk about."
"I think we do." She took another step closer, and I fought the urge to back up. I would not let her see that she was getting to me. "You left Nash."
"That's none of your business."
"It is, actually." Her mouth curved into something that might have been a smile if it had reached her eyes. "I'm his vice president of operations. When the CEO's personal life starts affecting the airline, it becomes my concern."
I laughed, short and sharp. "Right. You're here because you're worried about the airline."
"I'm here because I care about Nash," she said, and her voice softened in a way that made my chest tighten. "And I thought you deserved to know the truth."
My pulse kicked up. I crossed my arms, trying to look steadier than I felt. "What truth?"
She tilted her head, studying me like I was a problem she was trying to solve. For a moment I thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she said, "Nash and I have been seeing each other."
The words hung in the air between us. I stared at her, my mind going blank and then racing all at once. No. That was impossible. Nash wouldn't—he had never?—
"You're lying," I said.
"I wish I were." She sounded almost sympathetic, like she felt sorry for me, and God, I wanted to throw her out right then.
I wanted to grab her by the arm and shove her through the door and lock it behind her.
"I didn't want it to happen. Neither of us did.
But we work so closely together, Rae, and you were always so focused on your own projects, your own world out here, and Nash needed someone who understood the pressures he was under. One thing led to another."
The air felt too thin. I wanted to tell her she was full of it, that Nash would never do that, that she was a liar and a schemer and I knew exactly what she was.
But I couldn't get the words out. Because there was a part of me—a small, awful part—that remembered standing in the hallway at the airline on Thursday and watching her straighten the collar of his shirt, her hand resting against his neck while he let her.
I had left by the stairwell and taken my ring off there, my hands shaking so badly I could barely get it over my knuckle.
"Get out," I said.
"Rae—"
"I don't believe you." My voice came out steadier than I expected, which was something. "You show up here with nothing but a story and you expect me to take your word for it. Get out of my shop."
She didn't move. "You want proof."
"Yeah," I said. "I do."
She looked at me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she said, very calmly, "The charcoal grey shirt he wore on Wednesday. There was a mark on the collar."
My heart stopped.
I knew that shirt. I had ironed it myself that morning before Nash put it on, running the iron carefully over the collar and cuffs while he stood at the bathroom mirror shaving, the two of us moving around each other in the easy rhythm we had built over years of sharing the same space.
It had been hanging on the chair by the bedroom window later that day, and I had picked it up when I was packing my things on Thursday evening, intending to fold it and put it in the drawer where it belonged.
But then I had seen the mark. Pale and faint, set into the fabric just under the fold of the collar, barely visible unless you were looking for it.
I had held the shirt up to the light, trying to place it, and I couldn't. It had looked like nothing I recognized. I had left it on the chair.
"What kind of mark?" My voice sounded far away, like it was coming from someone else.
Adriana's smile turned knowing. "Lipstick," she said. "Mine."
The floor felt unsteady under my feet. I wanted to tell her she was lying, that she couldn't possibly know about the shirt or the mark, but she did know. She had just described something I had seen with my own eyes, something I had left behind without understanding what it was.
"That doesn't prove anything," I said, but even I could hear how thin it sounded.
"Doesn't it?" She took a step closer, and I caught the scent of her perfume again, stronger now, wrapping around me. "I was there, Rae. I was in your bedroom. And if you don't believe me, you can ask Nash yourself. Though I imagine he'll deny it. Men usually do."
I clenched my jaw, trying to hold on to the anger instead of the sick, creeping doubt that was curling through my chest. She was lying.
She had to be. Nash wouldn't do this. He wouldn't sleep with Adriana Moreau and then come to Enid's house three nights ago with the jet fuelling on the tarmac and offer me the Maldives like nothing had happened. That wasn't who he was.
But how did she know about the shirt? How did she know about the mark on the collar?
Because she was there on Wednesday, a voice in my head whispered. She and Elias were at the penthouse for hours, working at the dining table. She could have seen the shirt hanging on the chair. She could have?—
Could have what? Walked into the bedroom and put her mouth on Nash's collar while I was in the next room making coffee? That was insane. That was?—
But the mark had been there. I had seen it. And I hadn't been able to place it.
"I think you should go," I said. My hands were shaking and I shoved them into my pockets so she wouldn't see. "Right now."
"I'm sorry," Adriana said, and she sounded like she meant it, which made me want to scream. "I know this isn't easy. But you deserve to know what kind of man you married. You deserve better than someone who would do this to you."
"Get out," I said.
She held my gaze for another second, and then she nodded, like I was being unreasonable but she was willing to indulge me anyway.
"All right. But Rae—" She paused at the door, looking back at me.
"He's not who you think he is. And the sooner you accept that, the easier this will be. For both of us."
Then she was gone.
The shop felt too quiet. I stood there, staring at the place where she had been, my pulse hammering in my ears.
I wanted to convince myself that she was lying, that the whole thing was some twisted game she was playing to get under my skin.
And maybe it was. Adriana Moreau was a liar and a manipulator and a schemer, and I had known that from the first time I met her.
She had never liked me. She had never wanted me anywhere near Nash or the airline or the life he had built.
But she had known about the shirt. She had known about the mark.
How?
Because she put it there, the awful voice in my head said. Because she's telling the truth.
No. I didn't believe that. I wouldn't.
My hand went to my left ring finger, touching the bare skin there out of habit. The ring was gone. I had left it on the kitchen counter at the penthouse. He must have found it. I didn't know if he had kept it or thrown it away. I hadn't asked.
What was the point of any of this?
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and stared at the screen.
I could call him. I could ask him about the shirt, about the mark, about whether Adriana Moreau had been anywhere near our bedroom on Wednesday.
And he would tell me no. He would say she was lying, that she was making it up, that she was trying to ruin what we had. And I would want to believe him.
But I wouldn't. Not unless I saw his face when he said it. Not unless I could look him in the eye and know for certain that he was telling me the truth.
I grabbed my jacket off the hook by the door and turned off the lights, my hands moving on autopilot.
The shop went dark except for the red glow of the exit sign over the door.
I locked up behind me, checking the deadbolt twice even though I knew it had caught the first time.
The sun was setting, streaking the sky orange and pink over the runway.
My truck was parked by the fence and I climbed in, tossing my jacket onto the passenger seat.
The perfume was still in the air. I could smell it on my clothes, faint and clinging, the same scent that had been all over Adriana. Rich and floral, cloying. It made my stomach turn.
I started the engine and sat there for a minute, gripping the wheel, trying to steady my breathing. My chest felt tight and my throat ached and I couldn't stop thinking about the shirt, about the mark on the collar, barely visible and already set into the fabric like a stain that wouldn't lift.
Lipstick, Adriana had said. Mine.
I put the truck in gear and pulled out onto the access road, heading for the highway.
Cibolo Heights to Austin was forty minutes if the traffic was light.
I pressed the accelerator down and watched the shop disappear in the rearview mirror, the last of the sunlight catching on the metal roof and turning it gold.
I didn't know what I was going to say to Nash when I got there.
I didn't know if I was going to believe him when he told me Adriana was lying.
But I couldn't sit here and do nothing. I couldn't let her words burrow into my head and stay there, poisoning everything, without at least trying to find out the truth.
Even if the truth was the last thing I wanted to hear.
The highway stretched out in front of me, the lines blurring together in the fading light.
My hands were tight on the wheel and my spine felt like a live wire and I couldn't stop running through it in my head—the shirt, the mark, the way Adriana had smiled when she said it was hers.
Like she knew I couldn't prove her wrong.
Like she knew I would have to ask Nash and he would deny it and I would never be sure.
She was right about that part. I hated that she was right.
The penthouse was forty-three floors up and I didn't know if Nash would even be there. He could be at the airline. He could be anywhere. But I had to try. I had to know.
The perfume clung to me all the way to Austin.