CHAPTER 3
Aiden waited twenty minutes before following Lorraine home.
He told himself that was restraint. He told himself he was giving her time to cool down, time to gather herself, time to realize that walking out of their anniversary party had only made the scene worse.
He stayed long enough to reassure guests, to tell Claire to have housekeeping handle the glass, to accept murmured sympathies from people who pretended not to be hungry for details.
He stayed long enough to make sure the room didn’t turn into a spectacle. Only later would he understand that the spectacle had already happened. He had simply chosen the wrong one to manage.
Brittany kept apologizing.
“I should go,” she said, standing near the service entrance with mascara smudged perfectly beneath one eye. “I’m making this worse.”
“You’re not making anything worse,” Aiden said automatically.
The words tasted wrong the second they left his mouth.
Brittany hugged herself. “She hates me.”
“Lorraine doesn’t hate you.”
“She looked at me like I was trying to steal something from her.”
Aiden rubbed a hand over his jaw. “She’s upset.”
“I didn’t mean the toast that way.”
“I know.”
Did he know? He was tired. Angry. Embarrassed. The night had cracked down the middle, and every instinct he had told him to contain the damage before it spread.
Brittany looked up at him. “You should go to her.”
“I will.”
“I don’t want to cause problems between you.”
Aiden didn’t answer because the sentence was absurd enough to irritate him, though he couldn’t say why.
By the time he left the Grand Meridian, rain had started in earnest. His driver pulled up beneath the awning, and Aiden slid into the back seat with his bow tie undone.
His phone held twelve missed calls from Lorraine’s closest friend, three texts from Claire, two from his operations director, and none from his wife.
That bothered him more than the missed calls.
He typed, I’m on my way home.
No response.
He tried calling.
Voicemail.
Aiden stared at the dark phone screen and felt something sharp in his chest. Fear, maybe or anger borrowing fear’s clothes.
“She’ll be home?” his driver asked gently, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.
Aiden looked out at the rain sliding over the window. “Of course.”
The penthouse was lit when he arrived. Lorraine always left lights on when she was angry. She said darkness made a room feel abandoned, and she refused to let a home sulk just because the people inside it were too stubborn to speak.
He found her in their bedroom.
She had changed out of the ivory dress and into a black jumpsuit.
Her hair was down now, falling over one shoulder in soft waves.
She stood near the vanity, removing one pearl earring.
The other lay on the tray beside her perfume, lipstick, and the small silver frame that held a photo from their wedding.
She didn’t turn when he entered.
Aiden closed the door behind him. “Lorraine.”
She removed the second earring and placed it next to the first.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
“Now you want to?”
His jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
She looked at him through the mirror. “You’ve said that twice today.”
“Because you keep saying things designed to make me the villain.”
Her reflection changed in a way that made him suddenly nervous.
“I don’t have to design anything, Aiden.”
He exhaled, trying to control his tone. “Tonight got out of hand.”
“No. Tonight became clear.”
“Brittany was crying in a hallway with broken glass everywhere.”
“And I was your wife.”
“You were angry.”
“I had a right to be.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t.” He took a step closer. “But there were guests. Staff. Investors. You know how people talk.”
Lorraine turned then.
Her face was calm in a way he didn’t like. Anger he knew how to handle. Tears, he could comfort. This quiet was unfamiliar ground.
“You were worried about how people would talk?”
“I was worried about you making a scene you’d regret.”
She stared at him for a second, then gave a small nod, as if he had answered a question she hadn’t asked aloud.
“I see.”
Aiden hated those two words. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like I’m proving your point when I’m trying to explain.”
“Are you trying to explain?” Her voice stayed even. “Or are you trying to convince me the problem is how I reacted to being humiliated, not the fact that you humiliated me?”
“I didn’t humiliate you.”
The denial came too fast.
Lorraine’s eyes sharpened.
Aiden dragged a hand through his hair. “That’s not what I meant.”
“It’s what you said.”
“I meant I didn’t intend to humiliate you.”
“And yet.”
He looked away.
The bedroom was too beautiful. Lorraine had made it that way.
The soft gray walls, the tailored drapes, the fresh flowers on the dresser, the lamps that threw warm light instead of the harsh overhead glare he would have tolerated if left alone.
Their bed was turned down. His watch lay on the valet tray she had bought him for his thirty-third birthday.
His life, ordered and softened by her hands.
He could not understand how a room could look so much like marriage while feeling this close to empty.
“Nothing happened with Brittany,” he said.
Lorraine’s mouth curved, but there was no humor in it. “There it is.”
“What?”
“The defense you think saves you.”
“Because it matters.”
“It matters to you.”
“It should matter to you.”
“Why?” she asked. “Because if you didn’t sleep with her, I’m supposed to be grateful?”
Aiden’s temper flickered. “That’s not what I said.”
“It is what you keep offering me.”
“Lorraine, I have never touched that woman.”
“She touched you tonight.”
He looked at her.
“In the hallway before the party,” Lorraine said. “She fixed your bow tie.”
“It was crooked.”
“She put her hands on you in a hallway at our anniversary party, and you let her.”
Aiden closed his eyes for one second. “It was nothing.”
Lorraine laughed once, quietly. The sound hurt more than shouting would have.
“Of course it was nothing. Every call was nothing. Every late-night text was nothing. Every private lunch was nothing. Every time she looked at me like I was standing in her way, it was nothing. Every time I told you she was crossing a line and you made me feel small for noticing, it was nothing.”
He had no immediate answer.
She stepped closer. “Do you know what nothing becomes when you stack enough of it together?”
Aiden’s voice lowered. “Lorraine.”
“It becomes a marriage I don’t recognize.”
His chest tightened. “You’re hurt. I get that.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do.”
“No.” Her composure cracked at the edge, not into tears, but into something sharper. “You understand that I’m angry. You understand that tonight was embarrassing. You understand that I’m not behaving the way you expected me to. But you don’t understand what you did.”
“I defended someone who was crying.”
“You chose her.”
“That’s not it.”
“You chose her tears over my truth. You chose her performance over my dignity. You chose keeping the room comfortable over standing beside your wife.”
Aiden’s mind flashed to the corridor. Brittany’s wet eyes. Lorraine’s rigid face. The guests watching.
Lorraine, stop. You’re embarrassing yourself.
He felt the sentence now with the first edge of discomfort.
“You were escalating,” he said, because defensiveness was easier than shame.
Lorraine stepped back as if the words had placed distance between them.
“I was telling the truth.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You didn’t ask.”
Aiden looked at her, and for the first time that night, the room seemed to tilt under him.
Lorraine turned to the vanity. For one irrational second, he thought she was reaching for a tissue or a glass of water or some familiar object that would keep them inside the borders of a fight they knew how to survive.
Instead, she touched her wedding ring.
The diamond flashed under the lamp, the stone he had chosen after three private appointments and one phone call to her sister because he wanted something classic but not predictable.
Lorraine had cried when he proposed. Not loudly.
Not dramatically. Just one hand over her mouth, tears sliding down her face as if joy had startled her.
Now she twisted the ring once.
Aiden went cold.
“Don’t,” he said.
She paused.
The word had come out too raw. Too late.
Lorraine looked down at her hand. “Betrayal does not need a bed to become real, Aiden.”
His throat tightened.
“It can happen in a hallway,” she continued. “In a text you hide by turning your phone over. In a toast you let another woman give at your wife’s table. In the second you decide her tears matter more because mine would inconvenience you.”
“I didn’t hide texts.”
“You made me feel foolish for seeing them.”
“That isn’t the same.”
“It is to me.”
She pulled the ring from her finger.
Aiden crossed the room. “Lorraine.”
She placed the ring on his nightstand.
The small sound it made against the wood was almost nothing.
Aiden felt it everywhere.
“You’re not leaving,” he said.
Her eyes lifted to his. “I am.”
“Where?”
“A hotel.”
“This is ridiculous.”
The word changed her face. Not dramatically. Not visibly to anyone who didn’t know her. But he knew. He watched something final move behind her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean ridiculous.”
“Yes, you did.”
“No, I meant we shouldn’t make decisions tonight.”
“I’m not making a decision about our whole marriage tonight.” She walked to the closet and pulled out a small overnight bag. “I’m making a decision about where I sleep.”
“In our bed.”
“No.”
“Lorraine, stop.”
She froze.
Aiden hated himself for the echo before he understood why.
She looked over her shoulder. “You keep saying that to me.”
He swallowed. “I’m trying to keep this from getting worse.”
“I know.” She folded a sweater into the bag. “That’s the problem.”
He stood there while she packed with terrifying efficiency. Pajamas. Toiletries. Phone charger. The cream cashmere wrap she used on planes. She didn’t take much. Somehow that frightened him more. It suggested she was not running in drama. She was leaving in control.
“Please,” he said, quieter now.
That stopped her.
Lorraine zipped the bag and turned. For a second, he saw the woman beneath the grace. Hurt. Exhausted. So deeply wounded he could barely stand to look at it.
“You had all night to say please,” she said.
Aiden reached for her hand.
She stepped back.
The air left his lungs.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he said.
“If I want to talk, I’ll answer.”
“You’re my wife.”
Her eyes dropped to the ring on his nightstand.
“Tonight,” she said, “you remembered that too late.”
She walked past him.
Aiden didn’t follow her to the elevator. He told himself she needed space. He told himself if he followed, she would feel crowded. He told himself the worst thing he could do was make another scene.
The truth was uglier.
He didn’t know what to say.
So he stood in the bedroom his wife had made beautiful and listened to the private elevator doors close.
Only then did he pick up her ring.
It was warm from her hand.