"Lily, grab your backpack! The bus is at the corner!" Audrey called out.
She walked Lily down the driveway in the crisp morning air, waiting until her daughter climbed safely onto the yellow school bus. Audrey waved as Lily took her seat by the window, the heavy knot in her chest loosening just a fraction as the bus rumbled down the street and turned the corner.
She turned around, ready to head back inside to grab her briefcase and keys for work.
But as she stepped back onto the driveway, she froze.
Standing near the edge of her pristine lawn, his shoulders hunched against the morning chill, his face a landscape of absolute, shattered devastation, was Simon.
He looked up at her, his dark eyes hollowed out by grief and a terrifying, feral desperation.
"Audrey," Simon rasped.
Chapter 19
Audrey
The heavy, diesel rumble of the yellow school bus faded down the wet asphalt, taking the last protective shield Audrey possessed with it.
She stood on the concrete walkway, her hand gripping the strap of her briefcase. Slowly, she turned to face the man who had once been the absolute center of her gravity.
Simon looked entirely hollowed out. The man who had spent a decade meticulously curating his bespoke suits, his charming smile, and his effortless corporate dominance was completely gone. In his place stood a ruin. The dark, bruised circles under his eyes spoke of weeks without sleep. His jaw was heavily shadowed with stubble, and his hands, stuffed deeply into the pockets of a jacket he hadn't bothered to zip against the cold, were visibly shaking.
He was a monument to a collapsed empire, standing on the edge of the lawn of the home he was no longer allowed to enter.
He took a hesitant, desperate step forward, the damp gravel crunching beneath his shoes.
"I got the papers yesterday," Simon rasped. His voice was a jagged, ruined thing, scraping against the quiet morning air. "Audrey, please. I started therapy. I went to a doctor, and I am finally doing the work. I know why I did it now. I was a coward, I was terrified of failing you—"
"Stop."
Audrey’s voice wasn't a cold, detached sheet of ice. It was a live wire, sparking with a raw, bleeding fury that she could no longer contain. She closed the distance between them, stopping just at the edge of the porch steps, her eyes blazing with the agonizing, unadulterated pain of a woman whose world had been slaughtered.
"Do you honestly think I care about your epiphanies, Simon?" she demanded, her voice shaking with the sheer force of her heartbreak. "Do you think a breakthrough in a therapist's chair erases what you did to me?"
Simon flinched as if she had struck him across the face, his shoulders curling inward.
"I am in agony," Audrey choked out, the tears she refused to shed burning the back of her throat like acid. "I can barely breathe in my own house. I look at our daughter and my heart physically rips in half because you decided that your ego, your exhaustion, or whatever pathetic excuse you're clinging to today was more important than our family. You chose to lie to me. Every single day for two weeks, you looked me in the eye and you lied."
"Audrey, I'm so sorry, I swear to God I'll spend the rest of my life—"
"You let that girl take a picture of you in her bed!" Audrey shouted, the pure, visceral devastation finally tearing out of her chest. "You bought me diamonds with the same hands you used to touch her! You didn't make a mistake, Simon. You made ahundred deliberate, selfish choices that destroyed me. I am so angry I can't see straight, and I am in so much pain I feel like I am bleeding to death. I don't want your apologies. I don't want your rebuilt character. I just want you to leave me alone."
Simon stood frozen on the walkway. He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out. He closed it, his dark eyes wide and swimming with helpless, suffocating tears. He opened his mouth again, a pathetic, silent gasp for air in the wreckage he had caused.
Audrey didn't wait for him to find the words. She turned her back on him, walked up the porch steps, and slammed the heavy oak door directly in his face.
The deadbolt clicked with the finality of a gunshot.
Audrey dropped her briefcase on the entryway floor. Her legs immediately gave out. She stumbled into the living room and slumped heavily onto the sofa, pulling her knees tightly to her chest. Her entire body was shaking, violent tremors wracking her frame as the adrenaline crashed, leaving behind a vast, echoing emptiness.
She reached blindly into her trench coat pocket and pulled out her phone. Her thumb hit the speed dial before her analytical mind could even process the action.
He answered on the second ring.
"Audrey?" Nate’s voice was a low, immediate anchor, instantly detecting the ragged, uneven sound of her breathing. "What's wrong? Where are you?"
"I'm at home," Audrey gasped, pressing the heel of her free hand against her forehead, trying to ground herself. "He was here, Nate. He was standing in the driveway. And it just... it hurts so much. I needed to hear the voice of someone who actually understands."
