Chapter 2: The Proposal

I don't sleep.

At 6 AM I'm showered, dressed, and sitting at our kitchen island like I'm waiting for a job interview. Or an execution. I've made coffee in our fifteen hundred dollar espresso machine, the one Julian bought because it's what they use at his favorite café. My hands are steady as I pour. I've had four hours to get steady.

Four hours to decide who I'm going to be when he walks through that door.

The sun rises over our penthouse balcony, painting everything gold. It's objectively beautiful. I spent three years perfecting this space, this view, this life. Choosing the right shade of white for the walls. The right texture of linen for the curtains. Everything calibrated to reflect success, taste, arrival.

I want to burn it all down.

At 6:47, Julian appears. He's already dressed for work, charcoal suit, light blue shirt, no tie yet. He looks perfect. He always looks perfect. That's part of his power, I think. Looking like someone who couldn't possibly be doing anything wrong.

"Good morning." He kisses my cheek like he does every morning, his lips cool and brief against my skin.

I don't flinch. I'm proud of that.

"Morning."

He pours himself coffee, adds the precise amount of cream he always adds, leans against the counter across from me. The marble island between us might as well be the Grand Canyon.

"You look tired," he says.

"I didn't sleep."

"Neither did I." He sips his coffee, watching me over the rim. "You really upset me last night, Sera."

The audacity of it winds me. He's playing offense. Of course he is.

"I upset you."

"Going through my phone like that. It's a violation of trust."

I almost laugh. The sound gets stuck somewhere in my throat, comes out like a cough instead.

"Are you alright?" He sets down his cup, frowning with what might look like concern to someone who doesn't know better.

"Fine."

"You don't seem fine."

"Julian." I fold my hands on the counter, the diamond on my ring finger catching the light. Two carats. Platinum band. He proposed in Paris because he said I deserved a romantic story to tell at dinner parties. "Who is V?"

He sighs, like I'm a child who won't let go of a teddy bear. "I think we need to have a larger conversation."

"Okay."

"About us. About our marriage." He pulls out the bar stool across from me, sits, assumes the posture of someone about to have a reasonable discussion. "I've been thinking about this for a while. I think we could benefit from couples therapy."

Of all the things I expected, this wasn't on the list. "Therapy."

"Yes. I think we've grown apart. I think we need help reconnecting." He reaches across the counter, takes my hand. His palm is warm, familiar. I want to rip mine away. I don't. "I love you, Sera. I want this to work."

Something in his voice is off. Too smooth. Too rehearsed.

"What does therapy have to do with the woman texting you at 2 AM?"

"I think therapy would help us discuss these issues in a productive way."

"What issues?"

Julian withdraws his hand, picks up his coffee again. "The fact is, I've been unhappy for a while."

The words land like stones. "Unhappy."

"Not with you. With the structure of our relationship." He says it so casually, like he's critiquing a restaurant. "I think traditional marriage is limiting. I think we've both been trying to fit into roles that don't serve us anymore."

My pulse pounds in my ears. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying I've been seeing someone. Vivian." He watches my face, clinical, detached. "And I think, if we're going to make this marriage work, we need to evolve beyond conventional expectations."

The kitchen tilts. I grip the edge of the counter.

"You want an open marriage."

"I want an honest marriage. One where we can both pursue connections that fulfill us while maintaining our partnership." He sounds so reasonable. So calm. Like he's proposing a business merger. "Plenty of evolved couples do this, Sera. It doesn't mean I love you less."

My coffee cup is in my hand. I don't remember picking it up. I watch, detached, as it leaves my fingers, as it arcs through the air, as it shatters against the marble floor in an explosion of ceramic and coffee.

The sound is spectacular.

Julian jumps back. "Jesus Christ!"

"Get out."

"You need to calm down."

"Get. Out."

"This is exactly why we need therapy. This irrational, emotional—"

"You've been fucking someone else." My voice doesn't sound like mine. It's too low, too steady, too cold. "For months. And your solution is that I should be okay with it. That we should formalize it. Make it civilized."

"You're twisting my words."

"Am I?"

He stands, brushes imaginary dust from his suit. "I was trying to be honest with you. Trying to include you in a decision about our future. But clearly you're too upset to have an adult conversation."

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long have you been sleeping with her?"

Julian checks his watch. The gesture is so dismissive, so perfectly Julian, that I feel something crack in my chest. Not my heart. Something deeper. Something structural.

"I don't think that matters right now."

"How. Long."

"Eight months." He says it like an afterthought. "But we only got serious recently."

Eight months. Eight months of "I love you" and "You look beautiful tonight" and "How was your day, darling?" Eight months of lies while I planned our anniversary trip, while I reorganized his closet the way he liked it, while I smiled at his business dinners and played the perfect wife.

"There are others, aren't there." It's not a question.

He has the decency to look uncomfortable. "I think we should table this conversation until—"

"Aren't there."

A pause. Then: "Yes."

The word drops into the silence like blood in water.

"How many?"

"Seraphina—"

"How many women have you fucked while telling me you're working late?"

"I don't appreciate your tone."

I laugh. It comes out broken, jagged, wrong. "You don't appreciate my tone. You want to open our marriage, you've been cheating for eight months, there are multiple women, but you don't appreciate my tone."

"I didn't cheat. We weren't in an open relationship yet, but I was being true to my needs—"

"Get out of my sight."

Julian straightens his cuffs. "I have a meeting at eight. Can you call Maria to clean this up? I don't want to come home to a mess."

Maria. Our housekeeper. He wants me to call the housekeeper to clean up the mess of our marriage shattering.

"I'll call her," I hear myself say.

"Thank you." He picks up his briefcase, heads toward the door. Pauses. "I meant what I said about therapy, Sera. I think it could really help us. I'll text you some names of specialists who deal with alternative relationship structures."

He leaves.

The door clicks shut with the same quiet finality as every other morning when he leaves for work.

I sit in the wreckage of my coffee cup, in the wreckage of my marriage, in the wreckage of the life I built on the foundation of a man who just asked permission to keep betraying me with a smile.

My phone buzzes. Maribel.

Coffee today? Need to see your face.

I stare at the message for a long time. Then I type: Can you come here? And bring wine.

It's 7 AM.

I know.

On my way.

I end the call and look around our perfect kitchen, our perfect home, our perfect lie. Coffee seeps into the grout between the marble tiles. I should clean it up. I should call Maria. I should do what Julian asked.

Instead, I walk to his office. Open his desk drawer. Find what I knew would be there.

A second phone. Older model. Locked with a different passcode.

I don't try to open it. I just hold it, this evidence of his secret life, and something inside me that's been asleep for six years finally wakes up.

If he can have his secrets, so can I.