Cracks in the wall

*Alexandria's POV*

His hand was still flat against the door.

I could feel the heat of him behind me, too close, the way he always positioned himself when he wanted to remind me how much bigger he was. How much more certain. I kept my eyes forward, staring at the wood grain of the door an inch from my nose, and tried to remember how to breathe normally.

"Move your hand, Jamie."

He didn't.

"I said—"

"I heard you." His voice was rough in a way that confused me. Not angry-rough. Something else. Something I didn't have a name for because he had never used it on me before. "Just— give me a second."

A second. He wanted a second. I almost asked him if he knew how many seconds I had given him over the last ten years but the math was too depressing to do out loud.

I turned around slowly because I refused to stand there facing a door like a cornered animal. When I looked at him, I wished I hadn't. He was close. Closer than he had been in months, and he was looking at me with that cracked expression again — the one that had no business being on the face of a man who had called me a liability less than twenty-four hours ago.

"You planned this," he said. Not accusing. Almost like he was figuring it out in real time. "The cold replies. Refusing my orders. You've been planning to leave."

I didn't answer. The answer was obvious.

"How long?"

"Long enough."

His jaw tightened. He stepped back, just slightly, and dragged a hand through his hair. I had seen Jamie Grayson in boardrooms, in courtrooms, on magazine covers. I had never seen him look like he didn't know what to do with his hands.

"Come back inside," he said.

"No."

"Alexandria." The way he said my name then — all four syllables, weighted and careful — made something stupid happen in my chest. I pressed my hand against the door behind me to steady myself. "Come back inside so we can talk about this like adults."

I stared at him. "You want to talk."

"Yes."

"You. Jamie Grayson. You want to sit down and talk."

Something flickered in his eyes. Irritation maybe, or embarrassment, or both. "Don't make it sound absurd."

"It is absurd. You haven't asked me a single genuine question in five years. You don't know the name of the book I'm currently reading. You don't know what I eat for lunch when you're not home. You don't know any of it because you never asked." My voice was getting away from me and I pulled it back. "And now you want to talk."

He didn't deny any of it. That was the thing about Jamie — he was too precise to deny things he knew were true. He just absorbed it, filed it somewhere behind those blue eyes, and kept looking at me.

"Sit down with me," he said. "One hour. Give me one hour."

"Why? So you can talk me out by of it? So you can list all the reasons I should be grateful and reframe my feelings until I don't trust them anymore?" I shook my head. "I know how you argue, Jamie. I've watched you dismantle people in meetings. I'm not doing that today."

He flinched. Actually flinched. Small, barely there, but I saw it.

I picked up my suitcase again.

"There's a car outside," he said suddenly.

I paused.

"I called it before I came inside." He crossed his arms, and just like that, the crack sealed itself back up and he was marble again. "I had a huge feeling you'd try something today. I cancelled it."

I stared at him. "You cancelled my car."

"I cancelled your car."

The audacity of it genuinely knocked the words out of me for a moment. I just stood there, blinking, my suitcase in my hand, while the reality of it settled in. He had known. He had walked in here already knowing and he'd still played the whole thing out — the coffee, the dinner instructions, the fake surprise at the suitcase.

"You were testing me," I said.

"No. I was buying time."

"That's the same thing."

"It isn't." He uncrossed his arms and sat down on the bottom stair, which surprised me enough that I didn't move. Jamie didn't sit on stairs. Jamie sat in leather chairs at the heads of tables. He looked up at me from there and he looked — I don't know. Tired. Human. "I've been watching you pull away for weeks, Alexandria. Did you think I wouldn't notice?"

"Honestly? Yes. I thought you wouldn't notice."

He looked like that landed somewhere it hurt. Good.

"I noticed," he said quietly.

I set the suitcase down, not because I was staying, but because my arm was tired and my stomach was aching again and I was pregnant and exhausted and twenty-six years old and I had been standing in a foyer having a standoff with my husband at six in the morning and my body had simply had enough.

I sat on the bottom stair too. Not beside him. A few feet away, my back against the banister.

We sat in silence for a while. Outside, the Las Vegas morning was just starting to exist — the particular flat grey light before the sun came fully up and turned everything gold and dishonest.

"I saw Elaine's missed calls last night," he said. "After the gala. When Sarah gave my phone back."

I didn't say anything.

"I called the hospital. They said a woman matching your description had been discharged." He paused. "They wouldn't tell me more because I apparently wasn't listed as your emergency contact anymore."

I had changed that three months ago. I had put Kendrick's number instead. Jamie didn't need to know that part.

"You were okay," he said. It came out strange, like he was still convincing himself.

"I was fine," I said flatly.

He nodded slowly. His hands were clasped between his knees and he was staring at the floor tiles like they had answers in them. I had seen him look at quarterly reports with more emotion.

But then he said, low and almost to himself, "I don't know how to do this, Alexandria."

I turned to look at him.

He didn't look back. His jaw was tight and his eyes were still fixed on the floor and he looked like those words had cost him something significant.

I wanted to ask what he meant. I wanted to push on it until it opened up into something real.

Instead I said, "Neither do I anymore."

And for once, neither of us had a response.

The house sat quiet around us. My suitcase was still by the door. His coffee was going cold in the kitchen.

Nothing was resolved.

But something had shifted.

I just didn't know yet if it was too late.