“That’s the problem.” Her voice cracked. “That’s exactly the problem.”
She turned back to the laptop. Conversation over.
I stood there for another ten seconds, looking at the back of her head, feeling something I didn’t have a name for fracture behind my ribs.
Then I left.
Dex was waitingin my cabin. Present in the way Dex was always present when things were falling apart.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I don’t want to sit down.”
“Sit down, Graham.”
I sat. He pulled the desk chair around to face me, close enough that I couldn’t avoid his eyes.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he said.
“Don’t.”
“You can’t and you know it.” His voice was steady. Not unkind, just factual. The voice he used when emotions would only make things worse. “Every day we’re here, more photographers show up. Every day more bookings cancel. Rose’s crisis gets worse by the hour and your fame is a gasoline truck parked next to her burning house.”
“I’m trying to help her.”
“You can’t help her from inside the blast radius.” Dex leaned forward. “Graham, listen to me. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But Rose needs space. I’m telling you, as clearly as I know how, that your presence is costing her what’s left.”
“And Denise? I’m supposed to just leave her with Denise?”
Dex was quiet for a beat. “Olivia told me. About TKM, the shell companies, the timeline, all of it. She came to me yesterday because she needed a second opinion on the incorporation request, and frankly, because she thought I should know what you two have been doing behind my back.”
“I asked her to keep it between us.”
“And she did, until it mattered.” He didn’t sound angry about it. Dex understood operational decisions. “You can do this investigation from Scotland as easily as you can do it from Colorado. And in Scotland, you’re not generating tabloid headlines that make Rose’s life harder.”
I stared at the floor. The cabin was quiet. Outside, I could hear Brutus in the paddock, the heavy shuffle of hooves on packed earth.
“She called me a distraction.” The word tasted like ash.
“She called you a distraction because she’s terrified of losing everything. That’s not rejection. That’s a woman in survival mode making impossible choices.” Dex’s voice softened. “You love her? Prove it. Give her what she needs, not what you need. She needs space to fight. Give her the space.”
“And if she loses?”
“Then you catch her. But from a distance. Where your presence doesn’t make the fall worse.”
I wanted to argue. Wanted to find the flaw in his logic, the loophole that let me stay.
There wasn’t one.
“When?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning. I’ll have Jamie and Olivia pack tonight.”
I nodded. Felt the full weight of it settle onto my shoulders, the weight of walking away from the only person I’d ever wanted to walk toward.
“I need to talk to her first,” I said quietly.
“I know.”
