I watched him go, my pulse pounding harder than it had during any race.
I’d heard people say it before.Your wife.In passing. In paperwork. In meetings.
But this was different.
This wasn’t a checkbox or a contract. This was me claiming it out loud, instinctively, without thinking about who might hear.
Roxie turned to me slowly, color high on her cheeks. “You didn’t have to be rude.”
I shrugged, aiming for nonchalance even though something inside me was still vibrating. “Didn’t think I was.”
“You basically marked me as your territory.”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “Seemed efficient.”
She crossed her arms, giving me a haughty look, but her lips twitched despite herself. “You’re impossible.”
I gave her a cocky grin, the one I knew she despised. “Yet somehow you married me.”
That earned me a look—half warning, half something warmer—that I pretended not to see.
She studied me for a beat, then shook her head. “You swam really well.”
The way she said it, quiet and genuine, cut deeper than any cheer from the stands.
“Thanks,” I said. “For coming.”
“Appearances,” she reminded me.
“Right.”
I didn’t tell her that I’d looked for her in the stands every lap. That knowing she was there had steadied me in a way I hadn’t anticipated. That hearing it fromher—not a coach, not a teammate, not a stranger yelling my name—felt different.
I told myself it didn’t matter. That this was just part of the arrangement. She’d shown up because she was supposed to, said the right thing because that’s what wives did.
But the warmth in my chest didn’t listen to logic. It spread anyway, unwelcome and persistent, making it harder to keep everything neatly contained.
As we walked out together, I told myself the jealousy had been nothing. A reflex. A performance.
But the truth pressed in, undeniable and unsettling.
The armor was cracking.
And I wasn’t sure I wanted to fix it.
CHAPTER 12
ROXIE
The apartment felt smaller than usual when we got back from the swim meet.
Not physically—it was still the same one-bedroom box with its too-short couch and mismatched kitchen chairs—but emotionally. Like the air had thickened, heavy with everything that hadn’t yet been said.
Ledger dropped his swim bag by the door and kicked off his shoes, hair still wet from the post-meet shower, shoulders loose in a way I hadn’t seen before. He looked good. Relaxed. Confident. Like the version of him that existed before the world had started threatening to take everything away.
I hated that I noticed.
I hated that part of me replayed the way he’d saidmy wifein my head, like my brain was testing the words, turning them over, pressing on their edges to see if they bent or broke.
