“I’m also your husband.”
“On paper.” She finally looks at me, and I see the walls going back up. Brick by brick, she’s rebuilding every barrier I just broke through. “Only on paper. That’s what we agreed.”
I want to argue, to remind her that she kissed me back with just as much hunger. And that our agreement went out the window the moment she gasped my name.
But something in her face stops me. She’s not just flustered. She’s upset. Genuinely upset.
“Kirsten—”
“I need to go home.” She grabs her jacket from the chair and her bag from the desk. “I’ll take a cab.”
“Let me at least—”
“No. I need… I need some space.”
She’s out the door before I can respond, leaving me alone in the office with mussed hair, an open shirt, and a growing sense that I’ve made a terrible mistake.
I replay the last few days in my head. The fight about Derek. The way I dragged her out of the break room like a jealous idiot. The cold silence that followed.
She’s not just reacting to the kiss. She’s reacting to everything. My possessiveness, my control, my inability to treat her like an equal partner instead of a problem to be managed.
I scrub a hand over my face and button my shirt.
I need to fix this.
The next morning, I send flowers to her desk. A massive arrangement of white roses and peonies, elegant and understated. The card reads simply: I’m sorry.
She glances at them when she arrives, reads the card, and sets it aside without comment. We work in silence all day.
Day two, I try jewelry. A delicate gold bracelet with a small diamond charm. I leave it on her desk before she arrives.
She opens the box, looks at it for a long moment, then closes it and puts it in her drawer. Still no comment. Still no thaw.
Day three, I send chocolate from a boutique shop downtown. The good stuff, hand-selected truffles in an elegant box.
She doesn’t even open it.
By day four, I’m running out of ideas. Flowers, jewelry, chocolate—the traditional apology trifecta has failed spectacularly. She accepts each gift with the same detachedpoliteness and continues treating me like a stranger who happens to share her office.
I’m staring at my computer, trying to focus on quarterly projections, when her voice cuts through the silence.
“You can’t buy your way out of everything, you know.”
I look up. She’s standing in front of my desk with her arms crossed and the unopened chocolate box dangling in her hand.
“I’m not trying to buy my way out of anything.”
“Then what are you trying to do?” She sets the box on my desk with a thud. “Flowers. Jewelry. Chocolate. It’s like you’re following some kind of apology checklist.”
“I was attempting to show you that I’m sorry.”
“For what, exactly?”
I know the answer. I’ve known it since she walked out of the office that night. But admitting it out loud means facing just how badly I’ve behaved.
“For… the other night. The kiss.”
“Is that all?” she scoffs.
