Chapter 5: A Despicable Man

After work, Claire met up with Sophie Bennett, her closest friend, for dinner.

They hadn't seen each other in half a month, and there was plenty to catch up on.

"So you're really going through with the divorce?"

Sophie had known Claire since childhood. There was nothing about her life Sophie didn't already know.

"Diana and her son have moved into the house. If I don't divorce him, what exactly am I supposed to be to them?"

Sophie scoffed. "His honorary sister-in-law?"

Seeing the look on Claire's face, she backed off fast.

"Good you should've divorced him years ago. What kind of 'decent man' stays celibate five years into a marriage?"

"The couple next door just had their second kid. And your husband's over there playing the picture of restraint for what, Diana's honor?"

Claire stayed quiet, choosing not to mention that Nathan had already spent a night in Diana's room.

Saying it out loud felt too humiliating.

"Let it go. I can't forgive him for it anyway."

In her heart, Nathan wasn't pure anymore. And if the body wasn't clean, the rest of him wasn't either.

She wanted nothing to do with anything unclean.

Sophie relaxed visibly. "There's the Claire I know. So he's agreed to the divorce, then?"

"He hasn't."

Crack.

Sophie set her glass down on the table hard enough to rattle it lucky it was wood, not glass.

"Is your husband some kind of pervert? Stuck in the wrong century?"

Claire grabbed a napkin, wiped the water off her face, then off the table.

"Sophie. Keep it down. This isn't something to announce to the whole restaurant."

Watching Claire calmly mop up the mess only made Sophie angrier.

"He walks all over you because he knows you'll always fall in line."

Claire turned the ring on her finger. "I made a promise to his grandmother."

The ring had come from Grandma Wade's own dowry, a priceless heirloom passed to Claire five years ago.

To Claire, it had always been a keepsake of the woman who raised her, nothing to do with the marriage itself.

Sophie sighed, her frustration softening into something more like helplessness.

Seventeen years ago, in the dead of winter, a young Claire had been left out on the street by relatives who didn't want her, nearly frozen through, when Grandma Wade found her and took her home.

Grandma Wade had given her the best of everything education, comfort, love.

And on her deathbed, she had knelt and begged. Under those circumstances, Claire hadn't had a choice.

It was never that she couldn't let Nathan go. It was that she couldn't break a promise made to a dying woman.

"What's kept me here was never Nathan," Claire said quietly. "It was my own conscience. And what I owed her."

Beyond the marriage, Nathan had also been her almost-brother Grandma Wade's most beloved grandson.

Five years ago, she'd learned exactly what it felt like to have no control over her own life.

Nothing about today felt any harder than that.

The moment Diana came back into the picture, something in Claire had loosened. She might still owe Grandma Wade her word but she no longer owed Nathan her loyalty.

Sophie swirled the water in her glass, a trace of regret in her eyes.

"Remember senior year you had that bad fever, got hospitalized? Nathan was overseas for some big competition, and he flew back overnight just to sit by your bed and tell you bad jokes. You kept telling him to shut up, and he wouldn't stop, because he was scared if he did, you'd fall asleep and not wake up."

Claire's grip tightened around her chopsticks. She hummed softly in agreement.

She remembered all of it. She couldn't pretend Nathan had never been kind to her.

"He really did care about you like a sister, back then. I'll admit I had a small crush on him myself. He was so warm, so easy to be around. Genuinely wonderful."

Sophie's mouth pressed into a thin line. "Who could've guessed he'd turn into this. Stubborn. Blind to his own mess."

Claire didn't answer. She picked up the last piece of vegetable from her bowl, ate it, wiped her mouth with a napkin.

"It's all in the past now," she said, smiling.

The small, warm memories had been real. So was the suffocating resentment sitting in her chest now. Both true at once.

They talked until there was nothing left to say, and by the time Claire got home, it was past eleven.

Nathan, who was usually asleep by now, sat alone in the living room with a book.

Dressed in black loungewear, a thin blanket over his knees, his profile cut an elegant, distant shape under the soft light.

He held the book with both hands but hadn't turned a page in a long while just sat there, eyes lowered, a faint shadow of melancholy over his brow.

Since the accident, something in him had shifted permanently, turned unreadable.

Claire often thought of him as something more like a shadow than a man thin, quiet as a crescent moon reflected on water, the kind of thing that would shatter if you touched it wrong.

"Where were you?"

His voice was low, eyes still fixed on the book.

"Dinner with Sophie."

She slipped off her heels and pulled on soft slippers. She hadn't worn heels in years, a full day in them had left her feet aching.

"Do you need help getting upstairs?"

She asked it on her way out of the room, almost as an afterthought.

Nathan closed the book. That, apparently, counted as a yes.

"Did the two of you figure out how I'm supposed to grant this divorce?"

He said it lightly, almost teasing, out of nowhere.

Claire wheeled him toward the elevator, her expression unreadable. "You already know talking won't fix anything. Unless you"

"Don't finish that sentence," Nathan cut in, cold.

"We've known each other for seventeen years. You know better than anyone I don't let go of things easily."

She did know. Even as a boy, he'd had that same immovable streak.

When they first met, it had frightened her a little.

Since the accident, that streak had only sharpened into something closer to obsession.

"I'm a person," she said evenly. "Not a thing."

More than that she belonged to no one but herself.

The elevator rose smoothly. In the glass wall's reflection, Claire watched their two figures one seated, one standing looking like strangers who happened to share the same space.

The doors opened to find Oliver waiting outside. Without a word, she wheeled Nathan toward him and turned to leave.

Diana's careful vigilance was wasted effort. Nothing had happened between Claire and Nathan in five years of marriage. Nothing was about to start now.

Nathan watched her walk back to her room, then rubbed at his temples.

"Oliver, go find your mother. I have work to finish."

He rode the elevator to the top floor, his caretaker Marcus following silently behind.

The top floor opened into a wide, quiet hall, a few telescopes, two rows of bookshelves, some tables and a sofa scattered through the space. Two of the walls were solid glass, letting moonlight and the city's glow pour in together.

Nathan rose from the wheelchair unassisted and crossed to stand at the glass, looking down at the glittering skyline stretched beneath him.

The noise of traffic below dissolved into silence up here.

Marcus stood back in the dim light, glancing toward the door every so often, wary.

Framed against the window, Nathan's tall, dark silhouette stood straight and unbowed a man carved, not broken.

His legs held him perfectly steady. No trace of disability in sight.

"You probably think I'm a coward. Cheating on two women at once."

"I owe Diana and her son more than I can repay. If I hadn't kept up this act, they wouldn't have ended up in this position."

"As for Claire..."

He paused, lit a cigarette, turned it slowly between his fingers.

"We have a lifetime ahead of us. She'll understand, eventually, why I've done what I've done."

Outside the door, Claire, who'd come up hoping to look at the stars, unable to sleep, froze with her hand still on the handle, the words hitting her like a physical blow.