"I know," Audrey pleaded, her fingers curling tightly into the fabric of her jeans. "I know exactly what he did. But Nate... I had to say yes. For Lily, to spare her the crossfire of a trial. And for my own absolute certainty. I have to know that I exhausted every single avenue before I bury a ten-year marriage. If I don't look this in the eye, I will carry the ghost of it for the rest of my life."
Nate exhaled, a long, ragged sound that scraped directly against her bleeding heart. He understood the logic. He possessed a brilliant mind, and he could see the undeniable, pragmatic math of her decision. But the emotional reality was devastating.
"Why are you telling me this over the phone, Audie?" he asked softly, the frustration giving way to a profound, wounded ache. "I'm ten minutes away."
A single tear spilled over, tracking hot and fast down her cheek. "Because if I saw you... if I looked at you, I wouldn't have the strength to say the words. You have been my oxygen, Nate. You pulled me out of the dark. And looking you in the eye to tell you that I'm walking back into a room with the man who broke me... it would destroy me."
"It's destroying me to hear it," Nate admitted, the brutal, unvarnished honesty tearing through the line. "I want to protect you from him. I want to pull you out of the wreckage, Audrey, not watch you voluntarily walk back into the fire."
"I am so sorry," she wept quietly into the receiver, entirely consumed by the guilt of hurting the one person who had offered her a sanctuary. "I don't expect you to wait for me in limbo. It’s too much to ask. It’s unfair to you."
"Don't do that," Nate commanded, his voice suddenly fierce, entirely rejecting her attempt to push him away. "Don't write the end of the equation for me. I am a grown man. I knew exactly what I was walking into when I pulled you into my house."
Audrey’s breath hitched. She swiped fiercely at her damp cheek. "But what about you, Nate? We never even talk about your divorce. We have been so entirely consumed by my crisis, by my ruins, that I haven't even asked what your timeline looks like. You're bleeding, too."
"My divorce is just a war of attrition, Audrey," he dismissed smoothly, though a subtle, weary tension edged his tone. "It’s lawyers arguing over property lines and bank accounts. It’s math. It’s nothing like the emotional hell you are navigating. Do not worry about me."
"How can I not worry about you?" she whispered.
"Because I am not going anywhere," Nate stated, his voice a steady, uncompromising anchor in the dark. The sheer magnitude of his devotion was staggering. "You have to do this. You have to go sit in that room and burn away every last doubt so you can finally be free. I hate it. I hate that he gets ninety more days of your time. But I am not going to abandon you because the logistics are messy. You can always count on me, Audie. I will always be here."
Audrey squeezed her eyes shut, her heart physically aching under the weight of his grace. It was a devastatingly beautiful promise, but as she hung up the phone a few minutes later, the silence of the house returned to swallow her whole.
She was tethered to a man who promised to wait in the wings, but tomorrow, she had to face the man who still owned the center stage.
Chapter 23
Audrey
Dr. Elias Thorne’s office was specifically engineered for comfort. It was a study in soft, neutral tones, bathed in the warm, ambient glow of amber floor lamps. A plush, cream-colored rug absorbed the sound of footsteps, and a discreet white noise machine hummed a gentle rhythm in the corner. It was entirely the opposite of the freezing, cavernous conference room at the law firm.
For Audrey, it felt infinitely more dangerous.
She sat rigidly in a winged armchair, her trench coat folded neatly across her lap like a physical shield. Directly across from her, sitting on the edge of a deep velvet sofa, was Simon. He wasn't looking at her. His gaze was fixed on his own hands, his fingers woven together so tightly his knuckles were bone-white.
Dr. Thorne sat between them in a low leather chair, a legal pad resting on his knee. He was a man in his late fifties, with a calm, grounding presence and sharp, perceptive eyes that seemed entirely capable of seeing straight through the polished armor they both wore.
"Let’s establish the baseline," Dr. Thorne began, his voice steady and devoid of judgment. He didn't look at his notes. He looked directly at Simon. "You are here under a ninety-day stipulation. The legal shields have been left at the door. In this room, there are no attorneys to negotiate your feelings, and there is no corporate jargon to soften the blow. We deal only in the absolute, unvarnished truth."
Simon nodded slowly, a tight, jerky movement.
"Simon," Dr. Thorne said, his tone gentle but completely unyielding. "I want you to articulate exactly why we are sitting in this room today. And I want you to say it looking at your wife."
The air in the room suddenly grew unbearably thin.
Simon lifted his head. He looked at Audrey, his dark eyes instantly swimming with the heavy, suffocating gravity of the moment. He opened his mouth, but for a long second, the words refused to materialize. He had confessed to her on the driveway, he had admitted it in the heat of an argument, but stating the clinical facts aloud in this quiet, deliberate space required a different kind of amputation.
"We are here," Simon started, his voice a jagged, ruined rasp, "because I destroyed my marriage."
"Be specific, Simon," Dr. Thorne interrupted smoothly. "Vague language protects the ego. It provides a place to hide. If you are going to dismantle the man who caused this pain, you have to look directly at what he did."
Simon flinched, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second as he swallowed hard. When he opened them, the tears were threatening to spill.
"We are here," Simon said, forcing the words out through a tight, agonizing throat, "because I allowed a profound emotional affair to develop with a twenty-four-year-old woman at my agency. Her name is Emily. I manipulated my scheduleto spend time with her under the guise of work—late nights at the office, long lunches, texting her when I was supposed to be present with my family. I let my ego feed entirely on her validation."
He paused, a tremor violently shaking his shoulders before he forced himself to finish the agonizing equation.
"And then, two months ago, I took it across the final line. I slept with her in a hotel room. It was only once, but I brought that betrayal back into our home. I looked Audrey in the eye for weeks afterward and lied by omission, protecting my own cowardice and shattering the trust of the only woman I have ever loved."
