Page 114 of Keep Me

I’m soaking his pillow with my tears as my body shudders through the sobs until my bones are sore and my muscles ache. “Are you sure you’re going to be okay?” I whimper.

He swallows, clenches his jaw, and nods. “I promise.”

Part of me wants to ask if I can contact him. If I can come back after the thirty days is up, and the contract is voided. I need to take some sort of promise with me so that I’ll have a line back to Barclay Manor, but deep down, I know he won’t give that to me. That’s the point. We’re supposed to do this on our own.

No matter how much it hurts to think about it.

There’s a honk in the distance, and I squeeze my eyes shut again. Maybe if I just lie in this bed, they won’t make me leave. They’ll have to carry me out if they want me to go.

“Come on, Sylvie. We can do this.”

When I finally peel myself off the bed and stand in front of him, I drink in my last look. The last moment when I will see him as my husband. The last time I will see him as his wife.

After I’ve had my fill, I move toward the door. But first, he scoops me into his arms and holds me tight against him. Even as I wrap my hands around him, I feel half gone.

“I’m gonna miss you, my wee little wife,” he whispers in my hair.

“Please take care of yourself, you brute,” I reply.

But when I finally tear myself away, I don’t look back. I can’t. If I look into his eyes again, I’ll never leave. And right now, he desperately needs me to.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Killian and I got married last year on September 18. The divorce papers showed up just shy of one year later, on the twelfth. They were hand delivered by a notary who had to watch me sign them while I sobbed into the sleeve of my sweater.

And just like that, it was over.

I found a furnished short-term rental in Manhattan, but I spend every night tossing and turning because I forgot how loud it is here. I miss the quiet of the country, the creaks of that old house, and the sound of his footsteps when he would come in from the fields.

I miss his voice, the deep, rasping texture of it when he’d growl into my ear. I miss the feel of his enormous hands in mine. The safety, the comfort, the familiarity.

Almost immediately after leaving Barclay Manor, the loneliness crept in. I’ve typed so many messages to him just to delete them later. If this is what missing someone feels like, I wish I had never fallen in love with him at all.

Killian wasn’t just my husband for a brief, strange period. He was the first person I ever truly cared about. The first person who loved me for me. The first person it hurt to say goodbye to.

Walking down the streets in New York, I try to imagine that it was all just a dream, but then I swear I hear him call my name in the distance or the buzz of a bee, and I’m transported right back to where it all started.

If I could tell him anything right now, I’d tell him that I’m trying. I moved some of my things out of storage. I’ve started working on a new novel. I even made a friend in my building who tells me way too much information every time we strike up a conversation, but he makes me laugh, and someday, I imagine I might tell him about the bougie swinger parties I used to go to with my fake husband in Scotland.

But not yet. Maybe someday I will.

For now, I try to get through each sunrise and each sunset. I bring my laptop to the coffee shop and I watch the people walk by while trying to piece together some sort of story that sounds half as fascinating as ours.

I imagine he’s over my shoulder reading it like he did that day. In my imagination, the couples always start as enemies, more at war with themselves than each other. But then they eventually realize that the only people willing to fight with them are the ones who care about them.

Or at least that’s how this new one is going.

“Sylvie?”

I glance up from my laptop at the sound of a familiar voice. It takes my eyes a moment to recognize the woman glaring at me from a seat near me. Her hair is much shorter, in a pixie cut, and the scowl she often wore when I saw her has relaxed into a soft frown.

“Enid?” I question, trying to remember the last time I spoke to my parents’ right-hand woman.

“I thought you lived in Scotland with your mean husband,” she says in a bitter tone.

In the past, I might have reacted in anger, but now I only laugh. “No, not anymore.”

“Oh,” she replies, swallowing her discomfort. “I’m sorry about that.”

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