Reaching for a ceramic mug, my fingers twitch, not just from caffeine withdrawal, but from the neurological fallout of total collapse. I grab the handle of the glass carafe instead. The glass is hot against my palm, a shocking contrast to the cold sweat slicking my skin.
I tip the carafe, but my hand betrays me.
The stream misses the mug by half an inch, hitting the white laminate counter. It forms a dark, steaming puddle that spreads with terrifying speed, threatening to drip onto the floor. I watch it expand, paralyzed, an inkblot test I’m failing in real time.
“You’re off your axis, Ross,” Chan says, his tone professional, detached.
I set the carafe down with a hard clatter that echoes too loudly in the small room. “Axis is gone, Chan. The whole site is crumbling.”
“Sit.”
I collapse into the chair across from him, lacking the energy to hold the posture of a senior architect. My shoulders slump, head hanging heavy, the granite table cold against my forearms.
Chan finally looks at me. His eyes are dark, analytical, stripping away the layers of my exhaustion until he sees the raw, jagged nerves beneath. He knows the difference between professional burnout and personal annihilation.
“You look like you’ve been living in a car,” he observes.
I love the man, but damn, what an asshole.
“Might as well have been.” I rub my face with both hands, the stubble rasping like sandpaper against my palms. “I destroyed it, Chan. On Valentine’s I went home. I tried. I turned off the phone, almost ate the damn lamb. Thought I was fixing us.”
Chan stops stirring.Tap. Tap.The wooden stick hits the rim of his mug, a metronome counting down my time. “Then what happened?”
“We went to bed.” I laugh, a short, ugly sound that scrapes my throat. “I was there. Present. I stared at her, and I felt that connection we used to have before I became Arthur’s favorite tool. I thought I’d brought us back.”
I pause. The memory of Margot’s face in the dark, the way her eyes had softened, twists like a knife in my gut.
“But while falling asleep, I called her the wrong name.”
Chan’s eyes narrow.
“I called her Tabitha.”
A squeak from the hallway. For a moment, I worry that someone overheard at the worst possible moment, but no one comes in. The silence that follows is a vacuum, sucking the oxygen out of the room.
So I continue, “In bed. On Valentine’s Day.”
Chan sets his mug down. He doesn’t look shocked, which is almost worse. “Muscle memory.”
“That’s what I told her!” I lean forward, gripping the table edges until they dig into my flesh. “I told her it was the project. That I’ve spent fourteen hours a day with Tabitha for three weeks. I told her the name is on every memo, every draft, every goddamn pixel of the Dubai model.”
“Doesn’t make it okay,” Chan rightfully says.
“I know! I’ve let this firm take up so much space in my head that there’s no room left for the person who actually loves me.”
My voice rises, cracking under the strain. I can’t stop the flood.
“Tabitha is everywhere. She’s the one who brings me the specs, stays until 3 a.m., understands the glass-to-steel ratio. I’ve built my life around Tabitha’s presence and Margot’s absence. I didn’t just say the wrong name. I revealed the wrong reality.”
“You didn’t say the wrong name, though. You proved to your wife that you aren’t present,” he continues, his voice a low, measured hum. “You proved that when you close your eyes, you aren’t in your bedroom. You’re in your office. At your drafting table. You’re thinking about the load-bearing capacity of a project that doesn’t love you back.”
“I thought if I secured the partnership, I was securing our future. I thought it was a necessary sacrifice.”
“You didn’t sacrifice for the marriage, Ross,” Chan says, his voice flat. “You sacrificed the marriage.”
I flinch. The truth hits like a physical blow to the chest.
“What am I supposed to do? I can’t un-say it. I can’t erase the last three weeks. I can’t stop being the man Arthur Keane built me to be.”
