15. Nash
NASH
The truck felt heavier than it had in years.
I drove south out of Austin with both hands on the wheel and a toolbox rattling in the bed.
The highway stretched ahead of me, familiar and strange at once.
Forty minutes to Cibolo Heights. Forty minutes I'd been promising Rae for years and never delivering.
Maybe next week. If I can clear the schedule.
God, I was an idiot. I'd said that in our kitchen while she stood there with hope still in her eyes, and I'd meant it as a real answer.
Like next week was ever going to be different.
Like I'd ever cleared the damn schedule.
The road blurred for a second and I blinked hard, tightening my grip.
I wasn't going there to see her. That wasn't the point.
She was staying at Enid's, probably working at Ruben's shop on the field by now, and I didn't have the right to walk up and ask for her time.
Not after the papers she'd been served. Not after I'd spent seven years teaching her that my word didn't mean shit.
The little house had been sitting empty since I bought it back.
I'd told myself I was waiting for the right moment to surprise her, but that was smoke and mirrors.
The truth was I'd been too busy building an empire to remember why I'd wanted one in the first place.
Too busy chasing the next contract, the next expansion, the next fucking milestone that never seemed to matter once I hit it.
My phone buzzed in the cupholder and I ignored it.
Trees thickened on either side of the highway as I got closer, the land going soft and green the way it did out here.
Rae loved this drive. She used to rest her hand on my thigh and look out the window at nothing in particular, content in a way I never understood until it was gone.
I used to think she was easy to please. Turned out I'd just been easy to disappoint.
The highway hummed under the tires, steady and monotonous.
I passed the turnoff to the airport where we'd first started the airline in a hangar barely big enough for two planes.
She'd been with me then, sitting cross-legged on the concrete floor with a spreadsheet in her lap and grease on her jeans.
We're going to do this, she'd said, and I'd believed her because she'd never lied to me. Not once.
I took the exit into Cibolo Heights and slowed, the truck's engine settling into an idle rumble.
The streets here were older, narrow and tree-lined, with houses that had been standing since before I was born.
Enid's place was up ahead on the left. The little house was three blocks past it, same street.
My chest tightened and I eased off the gas, rolling slow enough that a sedan behind me honked and swerved around.
Then I saw her.
She was two blocks up, standing at the curb in front of a house with yellow shutters.
The sun caught her hair and I knew the shape of her even from this distance, the way she held herself, one hand shading her eyes as she looked at something in the yard.
She wore jeans and a loose shirt and she looked small in a way that hit me like whiplash.
I'd spent seven years thinking of Rae as a fixture, solid and unshakable, the one thing I could count on.
Seeing her alone on a street that used to be ours, I realized how badly I'd fucked that up.
My foot found the brake without me telling it to.
She bent to pick something up — a stray piece of wood, maybe, or a tool someone had left out.
I watched her turn it over in her hands, inspecting it the way she inspected everything, careful and thorough.
She didn't look toward the street. Didn't see me sitting there like a damn stalker fifty yards out.
I should go to her. I should get out of the truck and walk over and say something, anything, to start fixing this.
My hand went to the door handle.
But Elias's question sat in my gut like a stone.
When's the last time you kept a promise to her?
I couldn't name one. And showing up now, unannounced, uninvited, expecting her to drop whatever she was doing just because I'd finally decided to show up — that was the same shit I'd been pulling for years. Different verse, same song.
She deserved better than that.
She deserved space. Time. The chance to breathe without me crowding her, making demands, offering things she'd never asked for.
I'd given her seven years of my presence on my terms, in my time, when it was convenient for me.
The least I could do now was give her the one thing I'd never managed before: room to exist without me taking up all the air.
I eased my foot off the brake and let the truck roll forward.
She still didn't look up. I passed her at a crawl, keeping my eyes on the road ahead even though every instinct I had screamed at me to stop. To turn around. To do something instead of sitting here like a coward.
But doing something was what had gotten me into this mess. Doing something had meant throwing money at the problem, booking a jet to the Maldives, handing her everything except the one thing she'd actually wanted.
What the hell had she wanted?
The question followed me as I turned the corner and drove the last three blocks. The little house came into view and I pulled up to the curb, killed the engine, and sat there staring at it through the windshield.
It looked smaller than I remembered.
The paint was faded, the porch sagging slightly on one side. The yard was overgrown, weeds choking out what used to be Rae's flower beds. The windows were dark and the whole place had the hollow look of something that had been waiting too long. Like it had given up on anyone coming back.
I climbed out of the truck and stood on the cracked sidewalk, my hands in my pockets.
This was the house where I'd asked her to marry me.
Right there on that porch, on a Saturday morning in June with the wood creaking under my knees and her laughing so hard she could barely get the word yes out.
She'd pulled me up and kissed me and told me she'd been waiting for me to ask since the day we met.
I'd believed her. Hell, I'd believed myself when I promised her everything.
Seven years. We'd been married seven years and I couldn't remember the last time I'd made her laugh like that.
I walked up the path to the porch and stopped at the bottom step, my boot resting on the old wood.
It creaked, the same sound it had made back then.
The paint on the door was peeling and the windows were filthy, but the bones of the place were still good.
Solid. The kind of house you could build a life in if you gave a damn about building anything besides a business.
Inside, the second bedroom was painted yellow.
Rae had done that herself, spent a whole weekend with a roller and a ladder while I was off at some conference I couldn't even remember now.
She'd sent me a picture of the finished room, bright and clean and full of light, and I'd texted back Looks great without asking why yellow.
Without asking what she'd been planning for that room.
God, what an asshole.
I sank down onto the porch step and scrubbed a hand over my face.
She'd wanted something from me. Not the Maldives. Not the penthouse or the cars or the promises I'd made standing in Enid's doorway with a jet fueling on the tarmac. I'd told her she wanted to know I could take care of her and she'd looked at me like I'd missed the point entirely.
What did you want? I'd asked.
More than anything?
And I'd answered wrong.
I sat there trying to piece it together, pulling up fragments of the years we'd spent in this house before the airline took off.
The way she used to wake up early and make coffee for both of us, standing at the counter in one of my T-shirts.
The way she'd curled into my side on the couch and talked about the future like it was something we were building together, brick by brick.
The way she'd looked at that yellow room and smiled at something I hadn't understood.
She'd ask me about my day and actually listen to the answer. She'd drag me out to the porch in the evenings to watch the fireflies and tell me about the garden she wanted to plant. She'd fall asleep with her head on my chest and I'd lie there thinking I was the luckiest bastard alive.
When had I stopped paying attention?
When had I started thinking of her as something settled, handled, a box checked off so I could focus on the work that actually needed me?
It hovered just out of reach, the answer to what she'd wanted. Close enough I could feel the shape of it but not close enough to name. Something about the yellow room. Something about the way she used to look at me in the mornings, hopeful and patient, like she was waiting for me to catch up.
I pulled my phone out and stared at the screen.
Three missed calls from the airline. Two from Elias. One from my lawyer.
I called the lawyer back.
"Nash." His voice was clipped, professional. "We need to talk about the response."
"What response?"
"To the divorce petition. We have thirty days to file, but I'd rather get ahead of it.
I've drafted a counter-petition citing irreconcilable differences instead of adultery, which keeps this cleaner for both of you.
If we move fast we can challenge the grounds, protect your reputation, and shift the narrative before this gets messy.
The adultery claim is damaging and frankly unsupportable given what you've told me. We can?—"
"No."
Silence on the other end.
"No?" he repeated.
"Don't file anything."
"Nash, if you don't respond, the court takes that as acceptance of her terms. Adultery as grounds, the division of assets she's outlined, everything. You're handing her the win."
"She already won," I said. My voice came out flat, exhausted. "She asked me for a divorce and I gave her every reason to want one. I'm not going to fight her on it."
"You're sure about this? Because once the court accepts her petition without a response, it's final. There's no walking it back."
"Yeah." I looked up at the little house, the peeling paint and the sagging porch and the windows that needed washing. "Let it go through."
He tried to argue. Told me I was making a mistake, that I'd regret letting her frame the narrative, that I had options I wasn't considering. I let him talk himself out and then told him I'd call him back if I changed my mind. We both knew I wouldn't.
I hung up and sat there with the phone in my hand, the weight of it suddenly unbearable.
Rae was filing for divorce. In a few weeks, maybe a month, it would be final. The marriage would be over and I'd be legally free to move on, find someone else, pretend the last seven years had been a learning experience instead of the single biggest failure of my life.
Except I didn't want to move on.
I wanted to be the man she'd said yes to on this porch. The one who'd promised her everything and meant it, who'd stood in this yard and imagined a future that wasn't about board meetings and profit margins. That man had known what mattered. He'd kept his promises. He'd shown up.
I didn't know if I could get back to him. Didn't know if it was even possible after seven years of becoming someone else.
But sitting here, staring at the house we'd lost, I realized I had to try.
Not because I thought it would win her back. Not because I had some grand plan to prove myself and erase the damage I'd done. I didn't know if she'd ever forgive me. Didn't know if I deserved it even if she did.
I had to try because the alternative was spending the rest of my life as the man I'd become, and I couldn't stomach that anymore.
The airline could survive without me. Elias could step up, take over, run it better than I ever had. The whole damn empire could crumble for all I cared. What mattered was here, in this house, in the work I'd never made time for and the life I'd traded away without even noticing.
I stood up, pocketed my phone, and walked back to the truck.
The toolbox was still rattling in the bed.
I pulled it out, grabbed the work gloves from the passenger seat, and carried them both up to the porch.
The door was locked but I had the key on my ring, buried under the key to the penthouse and the spare for the office.
It stuck in the lock and I had to jiggle it twice before it turned.
The door swung open and I stepped inside.
Dust covered everything. The air smelled stale, like the house had been holding its breath.
I set the toolbox down in the hallway and looked around, taking inventory.
The floors needed refinishing. The walls needed paint.
The yellow room needed — God, I didn't even know what it needed, but I'd figure it out.
I had time now.
The divorce was going through and Rae didn't know I was here and maybe she never would. Maybe this was just me, alone in an empty house, trying to become someone I should've been all along.
But that was enough.
I pulled on the gloves and got to work.