19. Nash
NASH
The boxes didn't care what I'd lost.
I stood in the storage unit in the middle of July, surrounded by what used to be our life, and sorted through the things I'd hauled out of the first house.
My phone sat on an overturned crate, screen lighting up every few minutes with calls I wasn't answering.
The airline needed something. Lyle needed approval on a contract.
A supplier in California wanted confirmation I'd seen the revised terms. I let them wait.
The divorce had been final for a month. I knew it, and so did the lawyers, and so did the court. What I didn't know was whether any of this mattered.
I picked up a lamp I'd bought her for the living room and set it in the truck bed.
Then another box. Then a side table we'd assembled together one Saturday when I'd actually been home.
I was sweating through my shirt even though the sun hadn't cleared the building yet, and I'd stopped checking my phone three hours ago.
It rang again. I glanced at it and kept working.
The sound of tires on gravel made me turn around.
Rae's car pulled up to the storage unit and stopped ten feet from where I stood. My chest tightened before I could stop it. I wiped my hands on my jeans and stayed where I was, letting her decide whether to get out or drive away again.
She got out.
God, she looked tired. The kind of tired that sleeping didn't fix. She had her arms crossed and her left hand was bare, the same way it had been the last time I saw her. I didn't let myself look at it for long.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
She didn't come closer. Just stood there by the car door, watching me like she was trying to figure out what I was doing and whether it mattered that she'd shown up. I set the box I was holding into the truck and turned to face her fully.
"I didn't know you'd be here," she said.
"I'm here most mornings."
Her gaze moved past me to the open storage unit, the stacks of boxes and furniture, the pieces of our old life I'd been hauling back to the house for weeks.
She looked at it all and then back at me, and I watched the realization settle in her expression — that I'd been doing this the whole time, that I wasn't stopping, that none of it had been for show.
"You're still working on the house," she said.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
The question landed hard, but I knew why she was asking it.
The last time we'd talked, she'd told me she was afraid the change wouldn't last. That she couldn't survive it if I went back to who I'd been.
I'd told her I wasn't asking her for anything, and I'd meant it.
But I also knew words didn't mean much when I'd already broken every promise I'd made her.
"Because it's what you wanted," I said.
She looked at me for a long moment, her jaw tight, and I could see the argument forming behind her eyes — that what she wanted didn't matter now, that we were divorced, that I didn't owe her anything.
But she didn't say it. She just stood there, and the silence stretched out between us until my phone started ringing again.
I didn't move.
It rang four times, loud enough that we both heard it, and then went to voicemail. Rae's eyes flicked to the phone and then back to me, and something shifted in her face. Confusion, maybe. Or disbelief. I didn't pick it up. I didn't even look at it.
"You're not going to answer that?" she asked.
"No."
Her hand found her left ring finger, thumb circling the bare skin the way it always did when she was working through something she didn't want to say out loud. I hated that I'd put that habit in her. That the empty space was because of me.
"Nash—"
"You came here to say something," I said. "I'm listening."
She opened her mouth and then closed it again, and I could see her trying to pull the words together. When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter than it had been a minute ago.
"I'm scared it won't last."
I knew what she meant. The work on the house. The calls I wasn't taking. The fact that I was standing here instead of in a conference room in Austin or on a plane to somewhere that mattered more than she did. She'd told me this two weeks ago, and it was still true, and I didn't blame her for it.
"Okay," I said.
She blinked. "That's it?"
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know." Her arms tightened across her chest. "That I'm wrong. That you've changed and I should believe it."
"I'm not going to tell you what to believe."
The words came out rougher than I meant them to, but I didn't take them back.
I'd spent seven years trying to convince her I'd be different, that the next trip would be the last one, that I'd make it home for the thing I'd promised to be there for, and I'd been lying the whole time.
Not on purpose. But it didn't matter what I'd meant.
What mattered was that I'd chosen the airline every single time, and she'd lived alone in a marriage I was supposed to be part of.
She stared at me, and I watched her throat work like she was trying to swallow something sharp.
"I hate this," she said.
"I know."
"I hate that I don't know if you mean it. I hate that I want to believe you and I can't."
"I know," I said again.
My phone buzzed with a text, then another. I left it where it was.
Rae's gaze dropped to the phone and then came back up to my face, and I saw the exact moment she made the decision to ask the thing she'd come here to ask.
Her shoulders went tight and her jaw set, and when she spoke her voice was steady in a way that told me she'd been holding this question for a long time.
"What happened with Adriana?"
Everything in me went still.
I'd known this was coming. I'd known it since the divorce papers landed on my desk and I saw her name written there next to the word adultery. But knowing it and hearing Rae say it out loud were two different things, and for a second I couldn't make myself answer.
"She's gone," I said finally.
"That's not what I asked."
"I know."
Rae took a step closer, and then another, and I realized she wasn't going to let me dodge this. Not now. Not after three months of believing something that wasn't true.
"Did you sleep with her?" she asked.
"No."
The word came out flat and immediate, and I watched Rae's face for some sign that she believed me. I didn't see one.
"She told me you did," Rae said. "She came to Ruben's shop and told me you'd been seeing each other, and when I asked for proof she told me about the shirt — the charcoal one you wore on the Wednesday. She said the mark on the collar was her lipstick."
I remembered that shirt. I remembered the day. I remembered coming home and Rae asking me if Adriana had been in the penthouse, and me saying yes, because she had been. I just hadn't known why Rae was asking.
"There was never an affair," I said.
Rae's breath hitched, just barely, and her hand went back to her ring finger. She was looking at me like she was trying to see through me, like if she looked hard enough she'd know whether I was telling the truth or just saying what I thought she wanted to hear.
"Then why did she say there was?"
"Because I fired her."
The words hung there between us, heavy and final. Rae didn't say anything, so I kept going.
"She came to the penthouse that night and made it clear what she wanted.
I told her no, and I told her to leave, and she didn't take it well.
The next day I fired her for cause, stripped her contract and her stake, and made sure every airline in the industry knew why.
She lied to you because she wanted to hurt me, and she knew the fastest way to do that was through you. "
Rae was staring at me, her face pale, and I could see her working backward through everything she'd believed for the last three months.
The shirt. The perfume in the penthouse.
The way I'd admitted to every other thing she'd accused me of that night, because all of it had been true.
I had put the airline first. I had chosen it over her, again and again, for seven years.
Adriana had just added one more lie to a foundation that was already cracked all the way through.
"She lied," Rae said, and it wasn't a question.
"Yeah."
"And you fired her."
"Yeah."
"And you didn't tell me."
That one landed like a fist to the sternum, because she was right.
I hadn't told her. I'd let her believe it, let her walk away thinking I'd betrayed her in one more way than I actually had, because by the time I found out what Adriana had said the papers were already filed and Rae wouldn't take my calls.
"I didn't know what she told you until I saw the divorce papers," I said.
"You never said the word affair to me. You asked for the divorce and you were gone, and I thought — " I stopped.
Started again. "I thought you were done because of everything I actually did.
And you should've been. I gave you every reason. "
Rae's eyes were shining now, bright and furious and hurt in a way that made my chest feel like it was caving in.
She looked at me for a long time, and I made myself hold still and let her look.
I wasn't going to justify myself. I wasn't going to tell her what she should feel about any of this. I'd already taken enough from her.
"I have to go," she said.
"Okay."
She turned and walked back to her car, her steps quick and unsteady, and I watched her go. She didn't look back. Didn't slow down. Just got in the car and pulled away, gravel crunching under the tires, and then she was gone.
I stood there for a while, staring at the empty space where her car had been, and then I pulled out my phone.
Elias answered on the second ring. "Where the hell have you been? Lyle's been calling me for an hour trying to find you."
"I need you to take over in Austin," I said.
Silence.
"What?"
"The airline. Austin. All of it. I'm handing it to you."
"Nash—"
"You've been running it better than I have for the last three months anyway. Make it official."
"Are you serious?"
I looked at the storage unit, at the boxes I'd been hauling back to a house I'd barely lived in, at the life I'd built with Rae and then dismantled piece by piece because I couldn't let go of the thing that mattered less.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm serious."
Elias didn't argue. He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, "Okay. I'll take care of it."
"I know you will."
I hung up and stood there in the heat, the phone still in my hand, and felt the weight of what I'd just done settle in my chest. The airline was gone. The thing I'd chosen over her, every single time, for seven years — I'd just handed it to my brother like it was nothing.
And it was nothing. Not compared to her.
I turned back to the storage unit and picked up the next box.
My hands were shaking, just a little, and I realized I didn't care.
Rae was gone. She'd driven away without looking back, and I didn't know if she'd ever believe me, didn't know if the truth about Adriana mattered now that the divorce was final and the damage was done.
But I wanted her to know. I wanted her to know I hadn't slept with Adriana, that I'd fired her, that the one thing she thought I'd done I hadn't actually done.
It wouldn't fix the seven years. It wouldn't undo the neglect or the loneliness or the promises I'd broken. But at least she'd know the truth.
I set the box in the truck and went back for another.
The sun was up now, brutal and bright, and I was sweating through my shirt again. My phone was quiet. The airline would keep running without me, the way it always had, and Elias would do a better job than I ever did.
And Rae was gone, and I was standing in a storage unit full of the pieces of a life I'd already lost.
I wanted her back. God, I wanted her back. But wanting wasn't enough, and I'd already proven that a hundred times over. So I kept working. I loaded another box, and then another, and tried not to think about the way she'd looked at me when I told her Adriana had lied.
Like maybe, for the first time in three months, she didn't know what to believe anymore.
It wasn't hope. But it was something.