I can see why his board is losing faith.
What I can't see — and this is the thing that's been sitting sideways in my brain since yesterday — is anything before ten years ago. Nothing. No early career coverage, no high school glory days mentions, no hometown profile pieces, no digital footprint of any kind before Sullivan & Associates filed its first incorporation documents. For a man this visible, this loud in the press, the absence of a past is deafening.
I'm good at what I do. The fact that I can't find anything means someone worked to make sure I wouldn't. I add it to the list of things to ask him Thursday and close my laptop.
The loft is beautiful. Genuinely, obscenely beautiful — high ceilings, floor to ceiling windows, a kitchen that belongs in a magazine.
I have lived off the expansive minibar, a bottle of Sancerre I found in the wine fridge. I have slept approximately eleven hours across three days, and I look exactly like that sounds.
I wish I'd kept my original reservations that came with a chef, because that menu had a butternut squash ravioli that I am now thinking about with genuine longing.
The Colt call didn't help.
It came in yesterday at six PM — right when I'd finally hit a productive rhythm with the Sullivan research, right when the wine was good and the city outside the windows was doing that thing LA does at dusk where everything goes gold and almost convinces you the world is fine.
My laptop FaceTime lit up with his name, and I answered it because I am still, apparently, a person who answers when Colt Monroe calls, which is its own diagnosis.
I thought changing my phone number would keep him away. I forgot about my email.
"You left Houston in the middle of our divorce." No greeting. Just that — flat, with an edge underneath it I know better than I know my own heartbeat. "What games are you playing at?"
His hair is wet, freshly showered. He's standing in our bedroom — his bedroom now, since I live in a rental studio under a fake name. Having shady friends comes in handy in a pinch. He's looking at me through the screen with that particular kind of scrutiny that has always made me feel like he's touching me without touching me, and I rub my hands over my thighs without meaning to.
Old habits.
"I'm working on a case, Colton." I kept my voice even. I've had years of practice keeping my voice even. "And in case you've forgotten, what I do and where I do it is none of your business anymore."
"You'll always be my business, Blaire." The edge softened into something that sounded like concern, and wasn't. "Where are you staying? I want you somewhere safe. Los Angeles can be dangerous."
Safe.
Like a puzzle piece clicking into place, it occurs to me. He's performing. This is what he does in front of people: the warm voice, the reasonable concern, the husband who just wants his wife home safe. I've watched him do it at dinner parties and charity events, and in hospital waiting rooms for the entirety of our marriage.
"Are you alone?" I ask. "Or do we have an audience?"
His eyes shift just above the screen for a fraction of a second.
That answers that.
"That's what I figured." I scoff. "Again — not your concern, Colton."
He let out a long, heavy sigh. The specific sigh I used to mistake for genuine feeling. "Didn't I give you a good life? When did I become the enemy in our marriage, Blaire? When did it get to this?"
Something hot moved through my chest.
The wine helped. Two glasses in, the part of me that has spent years carefully managing my responses, measuring my tone, watching my words, calculating the cost of each syllable before it left my mouth — that part stepped back. And what was underneath it stepped forward.
"How about the first time you slapped me?" My voice came out quiet, but steady at least. "Or the tenth. Or the night you choked me hard enough that I wore a turtleneck for a week in July and told everyone I was cold-natured." I picked up my wine glass. "I'm pretty certain that qualifies as enemy status, Colt. So, what is it you actually want? I'm busy."
Silence.
"You make it sound so ugly," he said finally. Quiet. Almost wounded. "We had hard times, Blaire. Every marriage does. I was in pain. My career was gone, and I was drowning, and I needed you, and instead you're standing in front of some judge trying to take everything I've built—"
"I want what's mine," I said. "What I built while you were too drunk to notice I was building it. That's all I want, Colt. Not everything. Just mine."
"There's no yours and mine. That's not how marriage works."
"It's how divorce works." I set the glass down. "I'm hanging up now."
