Chapter Fourteen
Clementine
Iwent back to work the very next morning, because Second Door genuinely didn’t stop needing me just because my own marriage suddenly had, and because Marisol had a real, important job interview scheduled that particular day that I wasn’t about to miss for anyone, over a single damaging headline, however painful it felt personally.
Reporters had already found the building by nine that morning, three of them camped out patiently across the street with cameras trained directly on our main entrance, and Aria met me right at the door with an expression that told me she’d already handled part of the developing situation before I’d even arrived myself.
“Gabriel arranged for one of his trusted security contacts to walk residents in and out through the side entrance instead, starting today,” she said, falling into step quickly beside me as we moved together through the building’s lobby.
“Nobody’s identity gets compromised because of any of this mess.
I already personally checked everything carefully with him this morning before you got here. ”
“Thank you,” I said, and genuinely meant it far more than those two simple words alone could adequately carry. “Byron offered to send over his own private security team this morning, first thing. I told him no, absolutely not.”
“Good,” Aria said simply, and I appreciated deeply that she didn’t press me further to explain my reasoning, because I honestly wasn’t entirely certain I could have explained it clearly myself in that moment, beyond the simple, stubborn underlying fact that accepting his protection right now felt uncomfortably like tacitly accepting the premise that I still fully belonged to his particular world instead of standing firmly, independently in my own.
James called midmorning, his voice noticeably careful and measured. “I drafted a possible statement if you’d like to review it before anything goes out publicly. Short, entirely factual, doesn’t attack anyone by name directly.”
I read through it carefully twice and made exactly one small change, cutting a single line that mentioned Gareth’s ongoing health specifically, because whatever had genuinely happened between Byron and me, I had absolutely no interest whatsoever in dragging a still-recovering man unnecessarily into the middle of any of it.
The final version went out publicly at noon: Clementine Ashworth confirms that she and Prince Byron have separated.
She asks for privacy for herself and for the women served by Second Door during this difficult time, and will not be commenting further on any royal family matters going forward.
It was entirely accurate, every single word of it.
It was also, I noticed reading it back one final time before it went out, the very first time in six full years I’d released any kind of public statement without a single royal handler reviewing or carefully editing it first, and something in that particular fact steadied me considerably more than I had honestly expected it to in the moment.
Byron came to Second Door that same afternoon, entirely alone, no security detail trailing anywhere behind him, standing outside our glass front doors in a rumpled coat that looked distinctly like he’d slept in it the night before.
Aria started immediately toward the door, fully ready to send him away without ceremony, but I told her it was genuinely fine, and stepped outside myself instead, because whatever this particular conversation was about to become, I didn’t want it happening inside a hallway full of vulnerable women who’d already had more than enough other people’s personal chaos spill unwanted into their own already difficult lives that year.
“Clem.” His voice cracked audibly on my name.
“I have real proof now. Violet sent me actual, documented proof. Eric leaked your entire file directly to reporters. Amy staged that photograph deliberately, entirely on purpose. It wasn’t paranoia on your part, and it wasn’t some innocent misunderstanding on mine either, they genuinely did all of it deliberately, and I let it happen because I was too distracted by Gareth’s crisis to properly see any of it unfolding in real time around me. ”
“I believe every single word of that,” I said, and I truly did believe it, completely, because I had genuinely never once doubted that his family was fully capable of exactly that kind of calculated, deliberate cruelty aimed directly at me.
“That’s honestly not actually the real point here, though, Byron. ”
“What do you possibly mean, that’s not the point? They deliberately destroyed your entire reputation, they erased you completely from the gala, they leaked your private history to complete strangers—”
“They didn’t end our marriage,” I said quietly, cutting him off mid-sentence.
“You did, Byron, when you decided, over and over again, week after week, that their ongoing crisis mattered more to you than your specific promise to me, small choice by small individual choice, until there was genuinely nothing left of me remaining in our shared life for anyone to properly protect anymore. Your family’s cruelty is entirely real, and I am not defending a single second of it, not one moment.
But you are the one who kept a hand firmly on that door the entire time, Byron, and you kept letting it close a little further every single week, telling yourself each time that it was only temporary, that it was purely for Gareth’s sake, that you would properly fix it later.
Later stopped genuinely existing the moment you went on live television and let the entire watching country believe our marriage was quietly ending, without ever once warning me directly first.”
He stood there in the cold afternoon air outside, the proof of his family’s calculated betrayal folded uselessly in his rumpled coat pocket, and I watched him finally understand, completely and for the very first time, that the evidence he’d brought me wasn’t going to be nearly enough on its own, because it thoroughly explained his family’s cruelty in exhaustive detail without ever once touching the much simpler, considerably harder fact of his own repeated, personal choices throughout all of it.
He didn’t leave right away, standing there in the cold a moment longer, and I found myself, despite everything, not entirely able to simply walk back inside and leave him standing on the sidewalk alone.
“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I don’t actually doubt that you’re sorry. I’ve never doubted that part. I just need you to understand that sorry isn’t the same thing as different, and right now all I have is the sorry version.”
“What would different look like, to you?”
“I genuinely don’t know yet. I haven’t had time to figure that out, between the leak and the lawyer and trying to keep Second Door’s donors from panicking.
” I wrapped my arms around myself against the cold, aware suddenly of how tired I actually was, down in my bones.
“I think different would mean you doing something that costs you something real, without needing me to witness it or approve of it first. Something you do because it’s right, not because it might win me back. ”
He nodded slowly, absorbing that, and for a moment I saw something shift in his face, some recalibration happening behind his eyes. “Okay,” he said simply. “I hear you.”
“I need to go back inside,” I said. “I have women in that building who need me more reliably than I currently need this conversation.”
“I understand.” He didn’t reach for me, didn’t ask for anything further, just stood there a moment longer before turning to go, and I watched him walk away down the block with the particular ache of loving someone and genuinely not knowing yet whether love alone was going to be enough to fix what had actually broken between us.