"There was a car in the driveway," Simon continued, the words scraping out of him like broken glass. He forced himself to look at his mother, needing someone, anyone, to carry the weight of the nightmare with him. "She was in the backseat. With a man. The guy she dated in college. Nathaniel. I watched him... I watched her..."
He couldn't finish the sentence. The visceral memory of Audrey’s breathless laughter and the tangled limbs in the dark car choked the air entirely out of his lungs.
"I pulled him out of the car," Simon whispered, staring blankly at the granite countertop. "I hit him. He hit me back. Audrey had to turn the garden hose on us to make it stop."
He waited for the gasp. He waited for his mother to express outrage on his behalf, to validate the feral, territorial agony tearing his chest apart.
Instead, a profound, heavy silence descended upon the kitchen.
When Simon finally looked up, Kathryn wasn't looking at him with pity. She was looking at him with a deep, tragic sorrow that terrified him far more than anger would have.
"You expected her to be a widow to a marriage you killed, Simon," Kathryn said. Her voice was incredibly gentle, but the words were a lethal, absolute truth.
"She is my wife!" Simon shouted, the pathetic, broken defense rearing its head one last time. "We were in therapy two hours ago! How can she just let another man touch her?"
"Because you taught her that vows are flexible," Kathryn replied, refusing to look away from his bruised face. "You cannot detonate a bomb in your living room and then be outraged when your wife finds shelter in another house."
"I made a mistake!" Simon pleaded, slamming his hand down on the counter. "I am trying to fix it! I gave her everything in that agreement just to get ninety days to prove I can be better."
"Simon, listen to me," Kathryn commanded, reaching across the island to grip his shaking hands. Her sharp eyes bored directly into his soul, stripping away the very last illusion he possessed. "The ninety days wasn't a promise of a second chance. It was a concession. She didn't agree to it because she wants you back; she agreed to it so she can walk away with a clear conscience."
Simon’s breath hitched. The blood drained entirely from his face.
"Audrey is an incredibly pragmatic woman," Kathryn continued softly, delivering the brutal, necessary blow. "She is hurting, yes. But she is also surviving. And tonight, you didn't just see her with another man. You saw the reality that you are no longer the center of her universe. You saw that she can rebuild her life without you."
"Mom, I can't lose her," Simon wept, dropping his head onto the cold marble counter, completely destroyed. "I can't let him have her."
"You already lost her, Simon," Kathryn whispered, her voice breaking slightly as she watched her son shatter into a million pieces. She reached out, gently stroking his damp hair. "The moment you walked into that hotel room with Emily, you handed Audrey the keys to her freedom. What she does with that freedom now is entirely out of your control."
Simon closed his eyes, the absolute, crushing weight of his mother's words pinning him to the stool. There was no corporate strategy to fix this. There was no check he could write, no argument he could win.
He was sitting in his mother’s kitchen, battered, soaked, and entirely alone, finally forced to accept the terrifying truth: the ninety-day clock wasn't counting down to his salvation. It was counting down to his execution.
Chapter 28
Audrey
Audrey rested her forehead against the cool, solid oak of the front door. The adrenaline that had kept her spine rigidly straight on the damp asphalt suddenly evaporated, leaving her trembling so violently her knees threatened to buckle. She slid slowly down the wood until she was sitting on the entryway floor, her trench coat pooling around her.
Her hands shook as she dug into her purse and pulled out her phone. She didn't hesitate. She pressed Nathaniel’s name.
He answered on the first ring.
"Audrey," Nate breathed, his voice rough and laced with a tight, simmering anxiety. "Did he hurt you? Are you safe?"
"I'm safe. He's gone," Audrey whispered, squeezing her eyes shut as a single, exhausted tear slipped down her cheek. "Are you okay? Your jaw..."
"I'll live. It's just a bruise," Nate dismissed instantly, though the slight wince in his voice betrayed the pain of the punch. "Audie, I am so sorry. I never intended to turn your driveway into a war zone. If I had known he was following you—"
"You didn't do anything wrong, Nate," Audrey interrupted gently, her mind finally clearing enough to see the absolute wreckage of the evening. "But it proved exactly why we can't keep doing this."
A heavy, static-filled silence stretched over the cellular line. Nate didn't speak. He was perceptive enough to see the exact trajectory of her thoughts before she even voiced them.
"We can't do this," Audrey choked out, the words burning her throat. "Not right now. Not while we are both bleeding."
Nate let out a slow, ragged exhale. "Audrey..."
"It isn't fair, Nate," Audrey explained, her voice gaining a desperate, unyielding clarity. "It isn't fair for me to use you as a painkiller while I face the end of my marriage. And it isn't fair to you, either. You are fighting a brutal war with your own divorce. We are both carrying too much wreckage right now to build anything real. We're just finding desperate relief in each other."
