"If that's it," Audrey said, her voice dropping to a terrifying, deadly calm, "then unlock your phone."
Simon froze. The silence rushed back into the car, ringing in Audrey's ears.
"What?" he breathed.
"If it was just takeout. If she's just a young, overeager colleague. If I am just being a paranoid, analytical wife," Audrey said, holding her hand out across the center console, palm up. "Give me your phone, Simon. Right now."
Simon looked at her outstretched hand as if she were holding a live grenade. He didn't reach for his pocket. He didn't move. He just stared at her, the last of the color draining from his face, his silence providing the most damning data point of all.
For a terrifying second, Audrey thought the silence would stretch until the sun came up over the driveway.
Then, Simon exhaled, a long, ragged sound that seemed to carry the weight of their entire decade together. He didn't reach for his phone. Instead, he reached out and took her hand in both of his.
His grip was warm, solid, and incredibly familiar.
"Audrey, stop," he said softly, his thumbs tracing the knuckles of the hand she had demanded the phone with. His voice was suddenly drained of the defensive anger from minutes ago, replaced by a deep, aching exhaustion. "Just... stop for a second."
Audrey tried to pull her hand away, but he held on. Not forcefully, but with a desperate kind of grounding.
"Look at me," Simon pleaded.
She didn't want to. She wanted to keep her eyes on the dashboard, on the dark shape of their house, anywhere but him. But she looked.
"I love you," Simon said, his eyes locking onto hers in the dim light of the streetlamp filtering through the windshield. "Audrey, you are my wife. You are the mother of my child. I have spent the last ten years trying to build a life for us. I kill myself at that firm so we can afford this house, so you can focus on your research without worrying about the mortgage. And you’re sitting here in our driveway, treating me like a hostile witness because some twenty-four-year-old associate with no boundaries made a stupid comment at a party?"
The raw hurt in his voice hit Audrey squarely in the chest. It wasn't the slick, defensive maneuvering she had expected. It sounded like genuine pain.
"She touched you," Audrey pointed out, though her voice had lost some of its sharp edge. "She called you Si. You lied about where you were."
"I told you why I lied about the warehouse," Simon said quickly, his thumbs still moving over her skin, a calming, rhythmic motion. "And yes, she’s overly familiar. I should have set firmer boundaries earlier. I admit that. I was too tired, too focused on just getting the event done, and I let it slide. That’s on me. But Audrey..."
He leaned closer over the center console, the scent of his cologne mixing with the smell of leather and the cool night air.
"Do you really think so little of me?" Simon asked, his voice dropping to a whisper that felt incredibly intimate. "Do you really think, after everything we’ve built, that I would risk my family for a cliché? For an associate who doesn't even know how to use the firm's scheduling software properly?"
Audrey felt a sudden, heavy wave of guilt wash over her. It tasted like ash.
She looked at the dark circles under Simon’s eyes, the deep lines of stress etched around his mouth. He looked exhausted. He looked like a man who was running on empty, trying to hold his career and his family together with sheer willpower. And here she was, demanding to search his phone like a jealous teenager because of a misread interaction at a party.
She was a scientist. She dealt in facts. But marriages weren't algorithms. They were built on trust, on the leaps of faith you took when the data was incomplete.
"I don't think little of you," Audrey said, her voice finally softening. She looked down at their joined hands. "But Simon... it’s not just tonight. We’ve been... off. For a long time. You're always working. I'm always at the lab. We barely talk unless it's about Lily's schedule."
Simon nodded slowly, a profound sadness settling over his features. "I know. I know we have. And I hate it. I hate thatI’m so burnt out I can barely keep my eyes open when I get home. But that event tonight? That was the last major hurdle for the quarter. I’m taking a week off next month. Just us and Lily. We’ll go to the cabin. We'll reset."
He lifted her hand and pressed a gentle kiss to her knuckles.
"I'm not perfect, Audrey," Simon whispered against her skin. "I’m a workaholic, and I’m a terrible communicator when I’m stressed. But I am yours. Only yours."
The knot of tension in Audrey's chest loosened, replaced by a profound, hollow exhaustion. She felt terrible. She had let her analytical mind run away with her, turning a stressful week and a flirtatious coworker into a full-blown conspiracy.
"Okay," Audrey finally said, gently pulling her hand back. She felt drained, the adrenaline leaving her body in a rush. "Okay. I'm sorry. It's been a long night."
Simon gave her a small, relieved smile. "Let's just go inside. Let's check on Lily, and go to sleep."
He opened his door, the interior light flooding the car, effectively ending the conversation. Audrey watched him walk around the hood of the car, his shoulders slumped but the immediate crisis averted.
She grabbed her clutch and followed him inside, the crushing weight of guilt settling firmly on her shoulders. She had almost blown up her marriage over a misunderstanding. She needed to trust her husband. She needed to stop looking for problems where there were none.
