"So, you're still going through with it." My words sound hollow, even to my own ears. "All of it. The debt acquisition, the advertising pull. Everything."
"Yes."
"Even though the article is down. Even though I asked you not to."
"This isn't about one article. It's about making sure no one else ever—"
"Nothing I said mattered." The realization hits me like a physical blow, stealing the air from my lungs. "Nothing I felt. None of it made any difference to you at all."
"That's not—"
"Is that where we are now?" I'm shaking, something hot and uncontrollable building in my chest, too big for my body to hold. The exhaustion is crushing, the emotions churning again, and I don't understand why I feel so volatile, so unmoored. "You decide, and I fall in line? Is that the marriage I'm signing up for?"
He slams his glass down on the bar.
The sound cracks through the room—sharp, violent, a detonation.
"Everything I do is for you!"
I flinch.
My whole body jerks backward, shoulders curling in, and for one terrible moment I'm somewhere else—sixteen years old, small and trapped, terrified of what’s going to come next. The reaction is involuntary, visceral, written into my bones by years I've spent trying to heal.
The silence that follows is worse than the shouting.
Nick's face goes white. I watch the rage drain out of him, replaced by something that looks like horror. His mouth opens for a moment, but no sound comes out.
We stand there, frozen, the echo of his voice still ringing off the walls.
He's never raised his voice at me like that. In all our disagreements, through all of the secrets that should have torn us apart forever—through all the painful rebuilding—he's never once made me flinch.
Until now.
My heart pounds so hard I feel it in my throat, my temples, the tips of my fingers. But I don't run. I don't retreat. I force myself to straighten, to lift my chin, even though my legs are trembling beneath me.
"No, Nick." My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "Not this time."
He hasn't moved. Hasn't breathed, it seems like.
"You're not doing this for me." The words scrape past the ache in my chest. "You're acting like they ran that article about you. Like you're the one the press is trying to destroy."
His hands clench at his sides. His scarred right hand, the one I've kissed in the dark, the one I've traced with my fingers while he slept. The knuckles go white.
"Whatever you're doing right now—" I have to push the words out, past the knot of emotion lodged in my throat. "It's for yourself. Not me."
I watch his face go carefully blank, the way it does when something has cut too close to the bone. I don't know what nerve I've struck. I don't know what wound I've found with my desperate, blind swing. But I've drawn blood. I can see it in the stillness of him, the way he's holding himself like any movement might shatter something.
The silence stretches. Thick. Airless.
I want him to deny it. Want him to cross the distance and pull me close and tell me I'm wrong, that he hears me, that we can find our way through this together. Want him to fight for us the way he's fighting against everyone else.
His phone buzzes.
The sound cuts through the silence. He glances down at the screen. For one heartbeat, he looks at me. I wait, silent. Hoping for an apology, an explanation, anything. Some bridge across the distance that's opened between us.
But he doesn't speak.
He turns and walks toward his study, already lifting the phone to his ear. “Yeah, Beck. Where are things at?”
