Page 13 of The Vows He Buried
“How did you get up here?” I asked, my voice surprisingly steady.
“I told the concierge it was a medical emergency,” he said, his voice raw, hoarse. “He believed me.” Of course he did. Maddox Vale could make anyone believe anything.
He took a hesitant step out of the elevator, into my home. My space. He looked around at the minimalist design, the modern art, the vast, empty spaces. He looked like a caged lion, out of place and dangerous.
“This is your place,” he stated, as if just realizing it.
“It always was,” I replied.
A long, heavy silence stretched between us, punctuated only by the drumming of the rain against the glass and the distant rumble of thunder. He didn’t move closer. He just stood there, dripping on my floor, his gaze fixed on me.
I should have felt a surge of triumph, of satisfaction at seeing him so undone. But I didn’t. I felt a strange, hollow ache. A ghost of the love I once had for him stirred, a phantom limb I thought had been amputated. I saw the man I had once fallen in love with, the broken man hiding beneath the layers of power and arrogance.
My resolve didn't waver, but a flicker of compassion, an emotion I thought had been burned out of me, sparked to life. I would destroy him in the courtroom. I would dismantle his mother’s empire. But in this moment, in my home, he was just a man standing in a storm.
“You’re getting water everywhere,” I said, my voice flat. I turned and walked to a hall closet, retrieving a thick, white towel. I walked back and held it out to him.
He stared at it as if he didn’t know what it was. Then, slowly, he took it, his cold, wet fingers brushing against mine. The brief contact sent a jolt through me, a familiar, unwelcome current.
He didn’t use the towel to dry his hair or face. He just stood there, holding it, his shoulders slumped. “They served me the papers today, Savannah,” he whispered. “At the office. In front of everyone.”
“I know,” I said.
“Annulment,” he said, the word tasting like poison in his mouth. “Fraud. They’re saying… they’re saying we were never married.” He looked at me, his eyes pleading, desperate for an answer. “Is it true?”
I held his gaze. “Yes.”
He seemed to crumple from the inside out. The last bit of fight went out of him. He ran a hand through his wet hair, a gesture of profound defeat. “My mother…” he began, but his voice broke.
I didn't offer comfort. I didn't offer absolution. I just stood there, a silent witness to his unraveling.
He had left his wet suit jacket on, and he was starting to shiver. A part of me, the part that had been conditioned for three years to take care of him, wanted to tell him to take it off.
He must have seen the flicker of conflict in my eyes. A tiny, desperate spark of hope ignited in his. He took a step closer. “Vannah…”
“Don’t,” I said, my voice sharp, stopping him in his tracks.
He looked down at the wet shirt clinging to his chest. As if in a daze, he began to unbutton it, his fingers clumsy. He shrugged out of the soaked suit jacket, letting it fall to the floor in a heap. Then he pulled off the wet, white dress shirt. He was left standing in my living room, bare-chested, the lean, powerful muscles of his torso slick with rain. He dropped the wet shirt on top of the jacket.
He looked at me, his eyes stripped bare of all pretense. They were filled with a regret so vast it was like looking into an abyss. His gaze held a silent, desperate plea.Don’t give up on me yet.
He didn’t say it aloud. He didn’t have to.
He stood there for another long, silent moment, then turned and walked back to the elevator without another word. The steel doors slid shut, leaving me alone with the storm, the puddle of water on my floor, and his discarded clothes—a sodden, intimate heap of him in the middle of my clean, empty life.
I stared at the clothes, at the ghost of his presence. His silent plea echoed in the room.Don’t give up on me yet.
I walked to the window, looking out at the rain-streaked city lights. The storm was raging, but inside me, there was a profound calm. The hollow ache was gone, replaced by the cold, hard certainty of my path.
I whispered the truth to his ghost, to the storm, to the city sleeping below.
“I already did.”
Chapter 10: The Red Line
The morning after the storm was unnaturally bright, the city scrubbed clean and gleaming under a pale autumn sun. I stood in the center of my living room, staring at the small, pathetic heap of Maddox’s discarded clothes. The expensive fabric of his suit jacket was wrinkled and stiff, the white shirt a sad, crumpled mess. They were an intimate violation, a piece of him left behind in my sanctuary.
With the detached efficiency of a crime scene cleaner, I used a pair of kitchen tongs to pick up the clothes, holding them away from my body as if they were contaminated. I dropped them into a black trash bag, tied it shut, and left it by the service elevator door. Out of sight. Out of my life.
