Chapter 17
Ross
The precooked grocery store roast chicken sits between us, untouched. Yet my stomach remains knotted. The fork feels heavy in my hand. Days on his couch have turned hospitality into endurance.
“This beats takeout,” I say in an effort to remain thankful. We trade hollow sentences about the neighborhood and the weather as filler tracks.
Elias carves a slice of breast meat. “Consider it a severance package.”
Then someone knocks on the door.
My fork clatters against the ceramic. “Expecting someone?”
“You’re the only stray I’m feeding.” He gestures vaguely with his knife toward the hall.
My chest tightens. Somehow, I know it’s not Margot. Still, I offer to answer the door.
The short walk to the entryway feels long, the floorboards creaking under my socks.
When I open the door, Tabitha is standing on the porch.
She lingers in the doorway, watching me. Gone is the seduction or the rage I expected; she looks simply drained. The surface polish is still there, but the shine is gone.
“Hello, Ross,” she says. Her breath plumes in the cold air.
“Tabitha.” I remain planted, blocking her from peeking inside. “How did you find me and what do you want?”
She hesitates, her hand tightening on the lapel of her coat. She doesn’t have the confident pitch ready. She looks like she’s bracing for a blow.
“I wanted to talk,” she says, her voice genuinely soft. “About what happened. In your office. I was on my way to your house when I saw your car parked here. I know it’s yours because of the Seattle Mariners bumper sticker right next to your Detroit Tigers one.”
I stiffen. Not at the bumper stickers, though it’s creepy that she remembers. But at the memory of her locking the door, her hand on my chest, my violent reaction.
“I think I made my feelings clear,” I say.
“You did,” she says quickly. “But I need to know… was I crazy?”
She steps a fraction closer, her eyes searching mine with a desperate, brittle intensity.
“For almost five years, we were a team, Ross. We shared everything. And then… you whispered my name. In your sleep. In your bed.” She swallows hard.
“You don’t do that with someone you don’t have feelings for.
That’s why I thought… that’s why I cornered you.
I thought you were afraid to make the first move. ”
There it is the logic she’s been clinging to.
I take a breath, cold air filling my lungs.
“I need to be clear,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I didn’t stay late because of you, Tabitha. I stayed late to avoid my life.”
She freezes.
“You were the deadline,” I say. “You were the pressure. You were the work. When I whispered your name, it wasn’t desire. It was anxiety. You were the symbol of the world I couldn’t put down. You were the panic attack I woke up to.”
She stares at me. I can see the gears turning as she replays five years of partnership, recontextualizing every shared coffee, every late-night strategy session. She realizes she wasn’t the muse; she was the stress fracture.
“You were efficient,” I continue softly. “You made the work easier. But if you had been a sixty-year-old man, I would have spent the same amount of time at that desk.”
All color drains from her face. She darts her eyes to her expensive shoes.
“I feel like a fool,” she whispers.
“Don’t,” I say. “I let you believe it. I let the lines blur because it was easier than fixing what was broken at home. I used our dynamic to hide from my wife. That was wrong. I’m sorry I let it get to the point where you thought… where you thought there was an ‘us’.”
Tabitha pulls her hand from her pocket and brushes a stray hair from her face. “Cornering you was a mistake. Touching you was worse. The lie was that I was saving you from a bad marriage, but in reality, I was breaking into a home that wasn’t mine.”
She sighs, a sound that rattles in the cold air.
“I’m leaving the firm,” she says abruptly.
I blink. “You are?”
“I’m starting something new. Arthur is even worse now that you’re gone.
I can’t handle the partnership under him.
So I’m leaving to start my own firm. The investors are a” She looks at me, a flicker of the old ambition trying to spark, but it’s weak.
“I came here to ask you to be my partner. Strictly business. We speak the same language, Ross. Even if we don’t… even if there’s nothing else.”
“I can’t,” I say immediately.
She nods, a sharp, finalizing motion. “Because of the office?”
“Because of everything.”
“I figured,” she says. “But I had to ask. We did good work, Ross.”
“We did.”
She pulls her collar tight against the chill. She looks past me, into the warm light of the hallway, then back at the dark street.
“She’s lucky,” Tabitha says. “That you’re finally waking up.”
“I hope so.”
“Good luck, Ross.”
She turns and retreats into the dark. I watch her go. There is no anger in her walk, just a heavy resignation. The click of her heels on the pavement fades, followed by the purr of an engine disappearing down the hill.
When she’s completely gone, I close the door. Safe, I lean my forehead against the wood for a second, feeling the adrenaline drain out of me.
“Brutal,” a voice comments.
I turn. Elias is leaning against the kitchen counter, holding his phone.
“It was the truth,” I say.
“Usually is.” He rotates the screen toward me. “Got the whole thing on my security camera.”
I walk over. On the display, a grainy, fisheye reality plays out: Tabitha’s arrival. The confrontation. The explanation. The apology.
“Send it to Margot,” Elias suggests. “It’s proof. Shows you shut it down. Shows you explained the name thing and that she accepted it. That’s the smoking gun, isn’t it?”
I study the footage. It offers such an easy out, a digital witness to my loyalty. See? I told her. I clarified everything.
But as I stare at the send button, I can't bring myself to do it.
“No.” I shake my head.
“Why not?”
“It’s a shortcut,” I say. I turn away from the glowing screen. “I can’t win her back with a video clip. I need to earn it. If I send this, I’m only managing the PR of my marriage. I need to actually show up.”
Elias studies me for a long moment. He nods slowly, then sets the phone face down on the counter. “Fair enough.”
That night, I don’t sleep well. The couch is lumpy, and my mind is loud.
By the time the sun rises, I am already dressed.
I drink a cup of coffee, staring out the window, watching the light hit the trees.
Margot's car sits in the driveway. Soon, I find myself walking there.
As I do, the morning sun blinds me. The air is crisp.
I stop at the bottom of her porch steps.
The wood under my boots feels familiar, I hired someone to sand the porch three years ago.
It’s her humming that grabs my attention. She’s not inside, but out.
And so, I go to her.