6. Real Distance
Real Distance
Nolan
The front door opened under my hand, and I stepped into the foyer already rehearsing the apology.
Piper would be angry. She had every right to be.
I had missed our anniversary, lied about being stuck in the film room, and let a sponsor dinner stretch far past the hour Dad had promised me.
None of that was ideal, but none of it was unfixable either.
I could explain the CEO situation, apologize for forgetting the date, and tell her the campaign circus would settle down once the launch was locked.
“One hour,” Dad had told me in the parking lot.
I should have known better.
“Piper, I’m home.”
My voice traveled through the foyer and vanished into the rest of the house.
I set my keys and playbook tablet on the entry table, the plastic slapping against the surface harder than I intended.
My throwing shoulder was aching again, the same dull complaint the trainer had warned me about that morning.
I rolled it once, then stopped. The house was too quiet for me to stand there thinking about football.
“Pip? You upstairs?”
No answer came from the hallway.
Usually, even when she was furious with me, there was some sign of her. A cabinet shutting in the kitchen. A television playing somewhere upstairs. Her footsteps crossing the hall because she was too angry to pretend she was asleep.
Tonight there was nothing.
I walked farther into the house, expecting her to appear at the top of the stairs with that look she got when she was trying not to start an argument before I had both feet through the door.
Part of me had already prepared for it. I had the apology ready.
I had the explanation ready. Tomorrow, I would make the bracelet happen and take her somewhere private where Reid couldn’t turn dinner into another press opportunity.
I turned the corner into the kitchen and completely forgot my rehearsed speech.
Dinner remained on the island.
Two plates. The food hadn’t been touched. Whatever sauce she made had congealed across mine, and the candles beside the plates had burned themselves down until wax sagged around the holders.
I stopped near the end of the island.
She had waited.
That bothered me more than walking into an argument would have.
“Piper?”
The refrigerator hummed behind me. Somewhere farther down the hall, the air system kicked on, pushing a breeze through the vents. Nothing else moved.
My attention drifted back to the empty plate set out for me. Piper had spent the afternoon making dinner while I sat across from Sloane and a table full of executives, telling myself the fastest path home was to cooperate. I had even believed it.
The explanation still made sense in my head.
It just didn’t hold up when I looked at her untouched dinner.
“Piper? I know you’re upset about today. I didn’t mean to miss our anniversary.” I took another step into the kitchen and looked toward the hallway. “Please just come out here so I can explain the brand strategy.”
The words sounded ridiculous the moment I said them aloud.
I waited beside the island, staring at the burned-down candles while the house stayed exactly as it was.
Piper still didn’t answer.
The wax around the candleholders had run into uneven ridges across the island. I shifted my attention back to my plate, still trying to decide whether Piper had gone upstairs to make me come find her. A flash beneath the pendant light stopped me.
Her wedding ring sat beside the plate.
For a moment, I stared at it without touching it. Piper never took that ring off. She wore it through showers, workouts, grocery runs, every quiet day we spent hidden from cameras because we had agreed our marriage belonged to us.
“What the hell, Piper?”
I picked it up.
The band rested against my palm, so familiar I knew the tiny nick near the setting without having to look.
I had caused that mark myself two summers ago when I dropped the ring against the bathroom sink after taking it in for cleaning.
Piper had laughed at me for acting as if I had destroyed a priceless artifact.
There was no laughter in the kitchen now.
She had left it beside my dinner on purpose.
My first thought was the footage from McGinnis’s. Sloane holding my hand. Sloane pressing against me outside the bar. That stupid kiss on my cheek while a dozen cameras fired from the sidewalk.
Piper had seen it. Of course she had.
But leaving her ring behind?
That was insane.
She knew what those appearances were. She knew Sloane meant nothing to me. The whole evening had been staged for the campaign, just another piece of the business that paid for this house and every other luxury we had built our lives around.
I closed my fingers around the ring and pulled my phone from my pocket. Piper’s name sat near the top of my recent calls. I pressed it and began pacing along the island while the line rang.
“Come on. Pick up.”
It rang again.
I turned at the far end of the kitchen and headed back toward the untouched dinner. There was still no movement from the hallway, no footsteps overhead, no sign that she was somewhere in the house listening to me lose patience.
The call rolled over.
“The number you have dialed is currently unavailable. Please leave a message after the tone.”
The tone sounded.
“Piper, pick up the phone right now. I just walked in and saw the ring on the table, and this isn’t funny.”
I stopped near the candles and looked down at the ring in my hand.
The accusation sounded harsher than I wanted, but she had to know what this looked like. We had spent years protecting our marriage from Reid and the press. Leaving the ring behind over one awful sponsor dinner wasn’t a conversation. It was a threat.
I walked away from the island again, phone still at my ear.
“I know you saw the photos. I know how they looked.” I looked down at the plate she had made for me, and my voice faltered. “Sloane kissed my cheek because the cameras were there. That’s all it was. I should’ve told you where I was going, and I should’ve remembered the date. I know that.”
Hearing my own excuses felt worse than I expected.
Still, none of it explained the ring.
“Please just call me back. I will explain everything that happened at the bar, but you are blowing this completely out of proportion.”
The voicemail kept recording while I stood there with my hand closed around her ring.
I finally pulled the phone away from my ear, ended the call, and stared at Piper’s name on the screen, waiting for some sign that she was calling back before I admitted she wasn’t going to.
I kept my fist tightly closed.
Calling her again would get me nowhere. If she wanted to punish me with silence, fine, but I needed to know where she was. Driving around alone this late because of a sponsor dinner was reckless, and sitting in the kitchen waiting for her to decide when I deserved information wasn’t an option.
I opened the banking contact and called the twenty-four-hour security line.
“Elite account security. How can I assist you tonight?”
“My name is Nolan Callahan. I need the location of the most recent transaction on my wife’s card.”
The representative asked me to verify my identity. I answered the questions, pacing the kitchen while he worked through whatever he needed on his end. I pressed the ring into my palm each time I turned.
“Thank you, Mr. Callahan. Give me a moment while I check the most recent authorization.”
“I only need the latest one. She left the house tonight.”
“Understood. One moment, please.”
A muted stretch of hold music replaced his voice.
I walked back toward her untouched plate. The candles had burned out hours ago, and the food still sat where Piper had left it. Maybe she had gone to one of the hotels downtown. Maybe she had checked into some ridiculous suite for the night because she wanted me to understand how angry she was.
That I could deal with.
A hotel meant she was close.
The representative returned to the line.
“Mr. Callahan, I can confirm there was a point-of-sale transaction approved twenty minutes ago at a major highway truck stop off I-95, heading south.”
I stopped beside the island.
“Heading south on the interstate? Are you sure that wasn’t a fraudulent charge? My wife is supposed to be here in the city.”
“I can verify the authorization again for you, sir.”
“Please do.”
Keys clicked faintly through the connection while I waited. I looked toward the hallway, as if Piper might walk through it and make the whole conversation unnecessary.
She didn’t.
“The charge was authorized using the physical chip on the card, sir. It is highly unlikely to be fraud.”
I squeezed the ring against my palm.
Piper hadn’t gone downtown. She hadn’t checked into a hotel ten minutes away so she could make me sweat for a night. She had gotten onto the interstate and kept driving long enough to stop for gas.
“You’re certain it was the physical card?”
“Yes, sir. The transaction record confirms chip authorization.”
I turned my back on the island and walked to the other end of the room.
This was beyond cooling off after a fight. She was putting real distance between us in the middle of the night, and she hadn’t even bothered to tell me where she was going.
Piper was already somewhere south of the city.
The call with the bank ended, but I kept the phone in my hand as I turned back toward the island. Piper’s ring was still pressed into my other palm.
The front door opened before I could decide what to do next.
Voices carried in from the foyer, followed by approaching footsteps.
“We need to lock your departure window tonight,” the PR handler said as he came around the corner. “The travel office is waiting on the final head count, and Seattle wants confirmation before—”
“Not now.”
He stopped near the kitchen entrance.
Dad came in behind him, took one look at me, and frowned.
“What happened?”
“Look at the table.”
He looked from the abandoned plates to the burned candles, and finally to the ring in my hand.
“She left that?”
“And she’s gone.”