Jackson
I catch her before she hits the floor. It's like her body simply shuts off, every light in the house going out at once, and I get my arms under her before her head can touch the marble.
"Get him off the premises," I tell security. "Call the police and have him trespassed if he won't leave on his own."
"Rosie?"
His voice.
Saying her name.
And the worst part, the part that will live in me forever, is how he says it. Almost reverent. Adoring, even. Like she's a memory he's fond of instead of a woman whose life he split open and walked away from.
My grip tightens around what is mine to protect.
"You don't ever utter her name again, old man. You forget that name ever fucking existed before you let it grace your tongue again, or I'll cut it out of your fucking mouth myself."
There are gasps behind me at the vitriol, the friendly CFO snarling threats in the middle of the lobby with an unconscious woman in his arms, and I can’t bring myself to care about a single fucking one of them.
Rose is limp against my chest, half the lobby has their phones out, and whatever version of my reputation survives the next hour can fend for itself.
I need to get her home.
Then I need to get ahead of the shitstorm coming for us before one of those recordings reaches the press.
Emily is suddenly at my elbow. I hadn't even registered that she followed me down, but she's gathered Rose's phone, her bag, everything that spilled across the marble, all of it collected without being asked.
I'm giving that woman a raise.
Emily calls the elevator while I pace with Rose in my arms, and the war in my chest immediately picks its battlefield. Part of me is screaming hospital. Call an ambulance. Get a doctor. Do the responsible thing.
But the part of me that knows Rose, knows exactly what a hospital would mean right now. Fluorescent lights. Strangers touching her. Questions coming from every direction while she's still trying to figure out what year she's in.
She needs her own bed. Familiar walls. Quiet. A cold towel on the back of her neck and enough space to come back to herself without an audience.
The only thing I don't know is whether she'll want me there when she does.
When Rose opens her eyes, I might be the last face on earth she can stand to look at.
Maybe I deserve that. Maybe I deserve it a hundred times over.
I will leave the second she tells me to leave, but until she can tell me what she wants, I'm not abandoning her unconscious in an apartment and calling that respect.
The elevator ride is silent except for the small sounds she starts making as she surfaces, soft groans against my chest that put another crack through me every time I hear one. Emily digs the key card out of Rose's bag and gets the apartment open ahead of us.
"Get a towel and wet it with cold water, please."
I carry Rose straight to her bedroom and lower her carefully onto the mattress. Within minutes, Emily is setting a glass of water and the cold towel on the nightstand, then she gives my shoulder one gentle squeeze before leaving.
I don't deserve that either.
I lay the towel across Rose's forehead.
Her eyes flutter open and find me.
Her bottom lip starts to quiver.
And suddenly I can't make myself say a fucking word.
I'm standing in a version of hell I built with my own hands, and I already know there isn't a door out of it.
"You knew?"
I've never heard her voice that small. That broken.
I close my eyes and nod my shame. "I figured it out in New York."
"You were protecting him?"
My eyes fly open. "Baby, no. That's not it at all. I'm having him arrested tomorrow, for all of it, everything. I'm dissolving the marriage. He's going to prison, Rose. I've already set it in motion."
"Why tomorrow?"
Her voice doesn't rise and somehow that's worse.
"Why not today? Why not the moment you found out? It's been days, Jackson."
And she's absolutely right. The question guts me because there isn't an answer that survives it. Why did I give him an ounce of consideration when he gave her none?
"I..." My eyes start to burn. "I gave him time to get his affairs in order. I had security on him the whole time so he couldn't run. I thought..."
I thought I was handling it. That's the ugliest truth of it.
I thought I could package the whole nightmare neatly enough to spare her the chaos, deliver Wesley to the police once I had everything in place and somehow make that a kindness.
I was so busy trying to protect her from what came next that I never stopped to ask whether I had any fucking right to decide what came next at all.
I made decisions about her trauma without her.
After everything she told me.
She stays quiet for a long moment.
What happens next scares me more than the screaming did.
Rose sits up slowly, ramrod straight. She reaches for the glass of water and drinks the whole thing without stopping, then sets it down and stands. Two efficient tugs straighten her clothes, one smoothing her shirt, the other fixing the waistband, and I watch her face close.
Not collapse. Close.
Every light goes out again, only this time she's doing it herself. Room by room. Lock by lock, and I have never been more afraid of her than I am of this stillness.
"I'd like you to leave, please."
She doesn't look at me when she says it. She's already picking up the towel and empty glass, tidying the scene of us like they're simply objects left out after company.
Please don't.
Please, Rose.
"Okay." My voice comes out wrecked. "When will I see you again?"
She stops in the middle of the room, turns, and looks at me with absolutely nothing in her face. I know what she's going to say before the words leave her mouth, the way you know the ground is coming after you've already jumped.
"You won't."
Then she turns away and carries the glass into the kitchen, setting it gently into the sink like it matters, like it's the only thing left in this room she can put down without breaking it.
I stand there for another second, long enough for every instinct I have to start screaming at me to follow her, explain again, beg, do something.
Instead, I walk out of her apartment without another word because the last thing I will ever do to Rosalie Bennett is refuse to leave when she asks me to.
The walk down the hallway might as well be miles.
I don't feel my feet hitting the carpet or hear anything outside the rush of blood in my ears.
My heart feels like it's calcifying inside my chest, going to stone one chamber at a time, and by the time the elevator finally chimes, I'm not entirely sure there's anything left in there worth saving.
The doors slide open, and Bennet steps out.
He's still wearing his suit from the office, tie yanked loose, and the look on his face tells me he's seen something. Maybe one of the recordings. Maybe somebody called him. Half the goddamn lobby was either filming or watching live, so it was only a matter of time.
His eyes go from me to Rose's door and back again.
"How long?" He steps directly into my space. "How long have you been fucking around with my sister, Jackson?"
There it is.
"Ben—"
"Don't." His jaw works hard enough that I can see the muscle jump. "I'm going to ask you one more time. How long?"
And here's the thing he can't see, I have nothing left to protect for myself.
She's already gone.
The worst thing that could happen to me happened two minutes ago when Rose looked at me like I was something she needed removed from her life. Whatever Bennet does to me in this hallway is weather after the house has already burned down.
But Rose's secrets aren't mine.
They were never mine.
Learning that lesson just cost me everything I have, and I'm not going to fail it twice in the same fucking day.
"Since New York," I say. "Before that, eight years, give or take, if you're counting what I felt instead of what I did. She's the woman from Fresno."
His fist closes in my collar so fast my back hits the wall before I register him moving, hard enough to rattle the door of the apartment beside us.
I let it happen. I don't lift a hand.
"Fresno, Jackson? The random woman you fucked in a hotel room was Rose?" His voice is low and shaking. "You're married, Marcus. You had her sneaking around with a married man. My sister. And now she's... I saw a video. I saw her face. What did you do to her?"
"I can't tell you."
"The fuck you can't—"
"I can't tell you because it's not mine to tell."
I hold his eyes and let him see whatever the fuck is left of me.
"You want to put me through this wall, do it. I'll help you. But what happened in that lobby is Rose's to explain, and if you love her, you will not hear it from me. Ask her when she's ready. Don't ask her before."
Something flickers in his expression.
Because he knows his sister.
He knows there are rooms inside Rose that he has never been invited into, secrets she built walls around long before either of us understood they were there. And whatever he saw in that lobby, some part of him recognizes now that he's standing outside one of those rooms.
His grip loosens by a degree.
"Your marriage," he says. "Elyse."
"Over. Papers went out this week. It was never..." I stop because that thread pulls the whole fucking thing behind it. "It's over."
He lets go of my collar and steps back.
Then he really looks at me.
I don't know what he sees. The split knuckles. The gauze. The fact that I'm not defending myself. Maybe just whatever a man looks like when the lights have gone out behind him too.
"She just ended it," he says slowly. "Whatever it was. That's why you look like that."
"She ended everything, Bennet." My voice comes out scraped raw. "You're about to find that out. Go be with your sister."
I step past him and into the elevator. And the last thing I see before the doors close is my best friend standing in the hallway between his sister's door and me, forced to choose.
He turns toward Rose.
Good.
That's the only choice I'd respect him for right now.