Chapter 168

Chapter 168
Mia

The apartment door slammed behind me before I realized I had been running.

I stood in the hallway, breathing hard, my purse still clutched against my chest like a shield. The silence of my empty apartment pressed in from all sides, and for a moment I couldn't remember how I had gotten here—just fragments: Ethan's cold voice, the study door.

A transaction.

The word hit me again, fresh as a wound.

I made it to the couch before my legs gave out. The tears came without warning—ugly, heaving sobs that I couldn't control. I pressed my face into a throw pillow and let myself fall apart completely, the way I hadn't allowed myself to do in months. Maybe years.

You were right to want a divorce. I should have signed the papers months ago.

How could he say that? After New York, after the exhibition, after holding me on that bridge like I was the only thing keeping him anchored to the earth—how could he stand there and call it all a transaction?

I cried until my throat was raw. Until the pillow was soaked and my eyes felt swollen shut. And then I just lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of a world that had tilted off its axis.

The past few months played through my mind like a film I was watching from outside my own body. The cold early months, when Ethan could barely look at me. The slow thaw after Leo's fever, when he had held my hand in the hospital waiting room. The way he had learned my coffee order, my favorite flowers—everything except the delphinium, I thought bitterly. The way he had touched me in New York like he was memorizing every curve.

And now this. A clean severance. A transaction complete.

I wanted to hate him. I wanted to feel nothing but rage and indignation. But underneath the anger was something worse: confusion. The Ethan who had spoken to me tonight didn't match the Ethan from three days ago. The contradiction felt like a splinter lodged beneath my skin, impossible to ignore.

My phone buzzed. Anne.

I'm coming over. Don't argue.

I didn't have the energy to argue.

---

She arrived within the hour, letting herself in with the spare key I had given her. She took one look at me—still curled on the couch in yesterday's clothes, mascara streaked down my cheeks—and went straight to the kitchen. When she returned, she pressed a mug of tea into my hands and sat beside me without speaking.

"He said it was a transaction," I finally managed. "That he got caught up in the moment in New York. That staying together would only bring more pain."

Anne's jaw tightened. "That's bullshit."

"Is it?" I stared at the steam rising from my mug. "Maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see. Maybe I've been doing that for two years."

"Mia." Anne's voice was sharp enough to make me look up. "I saw him at your exhibition. The man could not take his eyes off you. That wasn't an act."

"Then why—"

"I don't know. But something's wrong." She set down her own mug and turned to face me fully. "Think about it. What happened between New York and tonight? What changed?"

I shook my head. "Nothing. Everything was... it was good. Better than good. He was present, he was attentive, he—" I stopped.

Anne waited.

"He was saying goodbye," I said slowly, the realization settling over me like ice water. "On the bridge. The way he held me that last night. Like he was trying to memorize everything."

"Goodbye to what?"

The question hung in the air. I thought about the past week—not the warmth, but the cracks I had chosen to ignore. Ethan pressing his fingers to his temple when he thought I wasn't looking. Rosa's red-rimmed eyes when I came to pick up the twins. The way Ethan had flinched away from his phone during dinner, as if the screen burned him.

And before that—the locked study door. The calls he took in whispers. Marcus appearing at the exhibition with that strained expression, pulling Ethan aside for a conversation that had left both men ashen-faced.

"Something's wrong with him," I said. "Something he's hiding."

"Then go find out what it is."

"He doesn't want to see me. He made that extremely clear."

"Since when do you let Ethan Wentworth dictate what you do?" Anne leaned forward. "You spent two years bending to that family. You fought your way back to yourself. Don't stop now because he's pushing you away—especially if the pushing is the lie."

I wanted to believe her. I wanted to trust my own instincts, which were screaming that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong. But the wound was still too fresh, the rejection too raw.

"I don't know if I can survive being wrong again," I admitted.

Anne reached over and squeezed my hand. "You've survived worse. And you won't know unless you ask."

---

I didn't sleep that night.

Instead, I sat in the dark with my laptop, scrolling through photos from the past months. Ethan with the twins. Ethan at my exhibition, his face half-hidden in the crowd but his eyes unmistakable. Ethan on the Brooklyn Bridge, the city glittering behind him, looking at me like I was the answer to a question he had been asking his whole life.

Why would someone look at you like that and then say it meant nothing?

The question gnawed at me. I thought about all the times I had dismissed my own intuition, told myself I was imagining things, convinced myself that wanting more was unreasonable. I was done doing that.

I started making a list.

Marcus's and Rosa's behavior; Ethan's headaches; the locked study.

Each item alone meant nothing. Together, they formed a pattern I couldn't ignore.

My phone buzzed again. Not Anne this time.

Julian Cross.

I stared at the name for a long moment before opening the message.

We need to talk. It's urgent. Can you meet me tomorrow morning? I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.

Julian had always been careful about boundaries. He had backed off completely after our project ended, respecting the space I needed to navigate my marriage. For him to reach out now, with that specific word—urgent—meant something significant.

Where and when? I typed back.

His response was immediate: The coffee shop on Wells Street. 9am. Come alone.

I set the phone down and looked out the window at the pre-dawn gray creeping over the skyline. Something was very wrong. I could feel it in my bones now, the certainty settling into place alongside the hurt.