Chapter 7: The Bedroom He Never Changed

I let myself into Hartwell House with the old key I'd carried for years, the brass archive key tucked safely inside my coat pocket.

I hadn't been back since before the gala. I expected it to feel different now, colder, like a house that belonged to someone else's marriage. Instead the small table by the door, the one Roman always said was too cheap for a house like this, was exactly where I'd left it. The reading lamp beside my old chair still sat at the angle I liked. A tiny scratch on the banister, the one I'd made moving a bookshelf three years ago, was still there, never sanded down, never fixed.

This still felt like home.

I hated that it did.

I told myself I wasn't going upstairs, that the basement archive was the only thing that mattered tonight. My feet carried me to the master bedroom door anyway.

I told myself not to open it. I opened it anyway.

I expected Camille's things, her perfume on the dresser, her clothes crowding the wardrobe. Instead the room looked almost exactly like I'd left it. My side of the bed hadn't been touched. Roman's clothes filled his half of the wardrobe, but my side sat strangely, deliberately empty, like a space someone was keeping open.

On his bedside table sat a small jar of hand cream, nearly empty, the label worn soft from years of use. The one I used to buy, the one he always complained smelled too sweet, the one he stole from my side of the bathroom more nights than he'd ever admit.

I picked it up. My hands weren't steady.

Camille might carry the title. She had apparently never occupied this room.

"You shouldn't be here."

I turned. Roman stood in the doorway, not angry, just still, his face carrying something closer to devastation than command.

"Apparently neither should you," I said. "Your wife isn't here."

He knew exactly which wife I meant. He said nothing.

"Does Camille sleep here?"

"No."

One word. It landed harder than a paragraph would have.

"Where does she sleep?"

"She has her own rooms. Another wing."

I set the hand cream down slowly, understanding settling over me like cold water. Whatever they had in public, they weren't living like husband and wife in private.

His eyes dropped to the jar in my hand. "You always left it open."

"You always used it anyway."

"I liked how it smelled." A pause, longer than it needed to be. "On you."

The room changed temperature. Seven years of marriage sat between us in that small space, and my body remembered him before my mind gave it permission to. He stepped closer. I didn't step back.

Close enough now that either of us could reach the other. His eyes dropped briefly to my mouth, and I hated that I noticed, hated that some old, stubborn part of me still wanted him to.

"If you wanted me erased so badly," I said, "why didn't you erase me from here?"

He didn't answer.

"Why leave my chair downstairs? Why leave my side of the closet empty? Why keep a photograph hidden in your watch? Why pay my rent? Why keep protecting me?"

"Stop."

"No." My voice cracked, but I kept going. "You don't get to keep loving me in private and humiliating me in public."

Roman went completely still. Then he stepped closer, his hand rising toward my face, stopping just short of touching me. I didn't move away.

"Tell me to leave," I whispered.

He didn't.

"Tell me you don't want me here."

His hand finally touched my cheek, brief, familiar, devastating in how easily it still fit.

"Wanting you was never the problem."

My heart reacted before my anger could stop it. "Then what was?"

He pulled his hand back like it had been burned, and the wall came down over his face again, fast and final.

"That's the question that gets you hurt."

His gaze dropped, and I saw the moment he noticed the brass key catching the light where it sat in my open coat pocket.

"Tessa." His voice changed completely.

I stepped back from him, and something shifted between us, the balance of the room tilting toward me for the first time all night.

"You had seven years to tell me the truth," I said.

"And I spent seven years keeping you alive."

I froze.

He froze too, a half second too late, like the words had left him before he could stop them.

"Keeping me alive from whom?"

He didn't answer. I turned and walked past him, toward the stairs, toward the basement, toward the key and the label and whatever truth was waiting under this house.

His hand caught my wrist. Not hard. Instinctive, the way you catch something falling before you think about it.

I looked down at his hand. Then up at him.

He let go immediately.

"If you open that archive," he said, and his voice had gone almost desperate, "I won't be able to protect you anymore."

"You already chose everyone else over me once."

His expression changed, something raw moving behind his eyes.

"No, Tessa. Everything I did was because I chose you."