Chapter 40
Simon
The heavy silence returned to Dr. Thorne’s office, but this time, it wasn't suffocating. It felt like the calm after a brutal, earth-shattering storm.
Simon kept his eyes locked on Audrey. The ninety-day deadline they had set three months ago was officially expiring tomorrow. This was it. The precipice. He braced himself, his heart hammering against his ribs, absolutely terrified that the audio file had been the final weight that broke the ice.
Audrey looked down at her hands, tracing the faint impression on her ring finger where her wedding band used to sit.
"Hearing that audio file that day... it broke something in me all over again," Audrey admitted, her voice quiet and fragile. "It dragged me right back to day one. The disgust, the panic, the absolute terror of realizing I didn't know the man I married. When I asked you to leave my car, I was entirely prepared to call Victoria Harrington on Monday morning and tell her to finalize the divorce."
Simon stopped breathing. The blood rushed in his ears, a loud, panicked roar.
"But then the weekend happened," Audrey continued, looking up to meet his terrified gaze. "And you didn't show up at the house."
Simon swallowed hard. "You told me to stay away."
"I did," Audrey nodded, a faint, sad smile touching her lips. "But the man you became in recent months—the man you were over the last year—wouldn't have listened. He would have knocked the front door down trying to explain himself. He would have bombarded my phone with texts, trying to manage the situation and fix it on his own timeline. But you didn't. You sat in the silence, and you let me have the space I begged you for, even though I know it must have been agonizing for you."
"It was," Simon whispered, his voice cracking. "But it wasn't about what I needed."
"I know," Audrey said softly. "And realizing that... realizing that you actually put my boundaries above your own panic... it made me see that you really are trying to be a different man. The work we've done in this room isn't just an act to win me back. You are actually changing."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, her dark eyes filling with fresh tears.
"I don't want to hold onto the anger anymore, Simon. It is entirely too heavy," Audrey wept softly, the raw, beautiful honesty shining in her eyes. "I haven't forgiven you yet. The pain is still there. But... I want to. I want to try."
Simon let out a sharp, wrecked gasp. He bent forward, covering his mouth with his hand as a profound, overwhelming wave of relief crashed through his chest. He hadn't expected to be absolved completely, and he knew he didn't deserve to be. But hearing her say she actually wanted to try—that she was willingto give him the chance to earn that forgiveness—felt like a literal lifeline pulling him out of the dark.
"Thank you," Simon sobbed, his shoulders shaking as he looked at her with pure reverence. "God, Rey, thank you."
"But," Audrey cautioned gently, the firmness returning to her voice.
Simon instantly straightened up, wiping his wet face, completely attentive. "Anything. Name it."
"Trying doesn't mean I am ready to go back to the way things were," Audrey explained, her tone clear and resolute. "That audio recording was a massive wake-up call for me. It made me realize that while I want to see if we can save us, the trauma is still incredibly fresh. If you moved back into the house tomorrow, I would be constantly looking over my shoulder. I would be living in fear of the next email, the next lie, the next trigger. I can't wake up next to you every day and wonder if I'm safe."
Simon nodded slowly, absorbing the reality of her words. The desperate hope in his chest tempered into something grounded and realistic. "Okay. I understand."
"I want to give this a real try, Simon," Audrey said, holding his gaze with absolute sincerity. "I want to see if we can continue this marriage. But we can't build a new house on top of a rotten foundation. So, I am asking that we keep living apart for now."
Dr. Thorne nodded approvingly, making a quiet note on his pad.
"I want my house to remain my safe space," Audrey continued. "I want you to stay at the guest house. We don't go back to sharing a bed, or managing a household together, or pretending everything is completely normal for the sake of appearances. I want us to start entirely from scratch."
"From scratch," Simon repeated, his voice thick with emotion but completely devoid of hesitation.
"If we are going to figure out who we are now, we have to actually learn who we are now," Audrey said. "I want us to date. I want you to ask me out for coffee. I want us to meet for dinners where we don't just talk about Lily's schedule or therapy homework. I want us to try and actually fall in love with the people we are becoming."
She paused, looking over at the therapist before looking back at Simon. "And more importantly, I want us to continue to come to therapy. Even though the ninety days are over. I feel that we are not yet ready to move forward on our own. We still need this space."
Simon stared at the incredible, resilient woman sitting across from him. She had been through absolute hell, dragged through the mud of his own reckless ego, and yet she was still sitting here, offering him a blank page. Offering him a chance to earn her all over again, with the safety net they both so desperately needed.
"I will take you on a thousand first dates, Audrey," Simon promised, the tears streaming freely down his face, a genuine, beautiful smile breaking through the devastation. "I will live in that guest house for as long as you need me to. I will sit in this office with you every single week for the next ten years if that's what it takes. I will court you for the rest of my life to prove that you are the only woman in the world for me."
Audrey smiled back, a genuine, tired, but incredibly hopeful smile. The heavy, oppressive weight that had crushed them for three months was finally lifting.
"Then I guess we have a plan," Audrey whispered.
