Maybe we were just two scared people who didn’t know how to stay.
And now I'm lying on Luna's guest bed, staring at the ceiling, wondering if I'll ever get the chance to fix it.
Or if I've already made my choice by leaving, and now I just have to live with the consequences.
And I don’t know if I left because he couldn’t love me —
or because loving him meant letting go of my own fear.
Chapter thirty-four
Seamus
The penthouse has never felt this quiet. I've lived here for five years, and for most of that time I preferred the silence—the ordered calm of expensive square footage unmarred by the mess of other people's presence.
But now the silence feels wrong, like something vital has been removed and I'm only just noticing the absence.
Her sketchbooks aren't on the coffee table where she always left them, corners dog-eared and pages marked with sticky notes in her looping handwriting.
The bright blue cardigan that usually draped over the couch is gone. The tea collection that took up an entire shelf in the kitchen—bergamot and chamomile and that weird lavender blend she loved—cleared out like it was never there.
Even the art supplies in the studio next to my office have been removed, leaving behind only faint graphite smudges on the desk and a few stray pencil shavings in the corner.
I walk through the rooms cataloging the absences, and it's like watching color drain from a photograph.
The penthouse is returning to what it was before Rosanna—pristine, controlled, perfectly curated.
The space looks exactly how I designed it to look, and I've never hated it more.
I end up in her studio—my studio now, I guess, though I can't imagine what I'd use it for. The corkboard still has a few sketches pinned to it, ones she must have forgotten in her hurry to leave. I walk over and look at them: preliminary drawings for her garden story, Mira planting seeds in concrete, hope taking root in impossible places. The images feel like an accusation.
When she asked me to fund the advocacy group, she wasn't trying to use me.
She was asking her husband to support something she cared about.
"I didn't ask you because you're rich, I asked because you're my husband."
She was trying to stand for her values. That's all she was ever doing. Fighting to preserve community heritage, protecting beautiful things from being destroyed in the name of progress, believing that care and history matter more than profit margins.
And I interpreted it as a threat. Because if she cared that much about the storefront, maybe she was just using our marriage to get what she wanted.
And I threw it in her face.
Pushed her away because I was too damaged to recognize love when it was asking me to be brave enough to trust it.
My phone rings. It's Tessa from ERS.
"Seamus, I wanted to speak with you before any formal steps are initiated. Rosanna has requested space. That doesn’t automatically mean an annulment. But it does mean we need clarity on where you stand."
The word "annulment" hits like a physical blow. I knew this was coming—Rosanna made it clear she was done when shewalked out—but hearing it stated so clinically makes it real in a way it hasn't been before.
"I don't want an annulment." The words come out before I can think them through. "I want to fix this. I want her to come back."
There's a pause on the other end of the line.
"I understand," Tessa says evenly. "But what matters is whether you both still want the marriage."
"She loved me." I hear the desperation in my own voice and hate it.
