I pace the room — four steps to the window, four steps back to the door. The carpet swallows every footstep like it's been trained to keep secrets, and the silence presses in from every wall.
I've been locked in before. Each time I told myself to get a burner phone, hide it in a coat pocket or a makeup bag, somewhere Gary wouldn't think to check.
Each time I didn't, because hope kept whispering it would get better, and I listened the way you listen to a liar you're sleeping next to.
I pound on the door with my palm flat until the sting radiates up to my wrist and stays. "Hello? Can anyone hear me?"
No one answers.
The fire safety card on the door walks me through an evacuation procedure that assumes I have a key card, and I file that away for future review.
Then my eyes land on Gary's humidor sitting on the desk. His cigars. The matchbook beside it.
I strike a match, and the sulfur flares sharp in my nostrils as the flame catches. I light one of his cigars, watch the tip glow orange, and hold it under the smoke detector near the bathroom ceiling.
The alarm tears through the suite. I shove my head under the bathroom faucet and the water hits my scalp, running down my neck and soaking the collar of my dress. I wring my hair just enough to look like a woman interrupted mid-shower.
Two staff members arrive within four minutes with a master key card and concerned faces. I press a towel against my wet hair and give them the embarrassed smile I've perfected over eight years of covering for Gary Pryce.
"I'm so sorry — I think the steam set it off. Please leave the door propped while I dry off, and don't bother my husband downstairs. He'll only worry."
They leave. The door stays open.
I grab my laptop, shove it into the suitcase, and take the service elevator down. When the doors open onto the underground parking level, the fluorescent light buzzes overhead and pushes stale air across my damp skin.
I step out and realize I have no plan.
I came here in Gary's car. My phone is in Gary's pocket. I am a thirty-year-old woman who built four hotels and does not have a single exit strategy.
"I've seen a lot of things in parking garages at midnight, but a woman in a ten-thousand-dollar dress with wet hair and a suitcase is a first."
I spin around. Beckett Morrow is leaning against a black sedan fifteen feet away with his jacket off, his tie gone, and his sleeves pushed up to his forearms in a way that shows the muscle and tendon shifting beneath his skin.
The top two buttons of his shirt are undone.
"Are you following me?" I hear myself ask.
"I'm going home." He doesn't move from the car. "That spectacle upstairs killed whatever appetite I had for small talk."
He doesn't say anything else. He just looks at my face. His gaze moves from my eyes to my swollen cheek, then to the suitcase and stays there long enough that I can feel him putting the pieces together.
I want to explain, to give him the version of this that makes me look less like a woman falling apart, but my mouth won't cooperate.
He pushes off the car. The movement is slow, giving me time to flinch or step back or tell him to leave. I don't do any of those things.
He walks around to the passenger side and opens the door. The hinge doesn't make a sound.
"Get in," he says.
I stare at the open door. The leather inside is dark and clean and the overhead light catches the stitching along the seat.
It would be easy. Sit down, close the door, let someone else drive while I figure out how my life fell apart between the appetizer course and now.
But easy is how Gary got me. Every time I took the easy option, I woke up with less.
"I didn't ask for your help." My chin lifts when I say it, my shoulders square. My voice is level and firm and it's the best performance I've given all night.
"Probably." He doesn't close the door. "Get in or don't. But the cameras down here answer to Gary, and something tells me you're running out of time."
I get in because he's right, and because the leather seat is cool against my bare shoulders, and because staying in this garage means staying on Gary's territory. The door closes and the noise disappears.
"Where am I taking you?" he asks once we're on the street.
I think about Sloan, my best friend who would open her door at midnight without hesitation but would also ask questions, and I don't have answers for them yet.
I think about my grandmother, who would do the same but with a look on her face I cannot afford to see tonight.
My parents died in a car accident when I was three, so that door closed before I was old enough to remember it opening.
And I can't go home, because home is Gary's the way everything is Gary's now.
The silence stretches long enough for the city lights to slide across the dashboard twice before Beckett speaks. "My place then."
I don't answer. I don't say "thank you" or "okay" or "fine." I let the car keep moving.
***
I was expecting marble columns and gold fixtures. Yet, the estate is large but clean-lined, set back from the road behind old trees whose branches brush the roof of the car as we pull through the gate.
Beckett cuts the engine. The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the tick of the cooling motor, and for a moment neither of us moves.
Then he's out of the car and at the trunk before I've undone my seatbelt. I step onto the gravel — my heels sinking into it, unsteady — and reach for my suitcase, but his hand is already on the handle. My fingers close on air where it was a second earlier.
"You don't look like a woman with a husband," he says, carrying it without effort.
I don't answer him, but he's right, and the proof is simple: Gary has never once carried my bag. Not on our honeymoon, not when I was pregnant, not ever.
The guest room is clean and simple and I barely register it before Beckett walks me to the kitchen and sets a covered plate in front of me. His chef left it, and the ceramic is hot against my fingertips when I lift the cover.
I eat because my body tells me to. The fork is heavy in my hand, and the food is good, and somewhere between one bite and the next it occurs to me that a man I've spoken to fewer than ten times has shown more attention to me than my husband has in years.
I push the thought aside because Beckett Morrow is a playboy with a documented talent for making women feel seen. He wants company. Everything else is packaging.
I eat another bite. Beckett leans against the opposite counter and doesn't watch me eat, which I'm grateful for.
My mind drifts while my hands work the fork. I think about the look on Gary's face when I said I wanted a divorce. He's probably already deciding which lawyer to call in the morning.
And what do I have? A suitcase, a laptop, a baby I'm terrified to hope for. And a husband who controls the business I built, the accounts I funded, and the name I lost.
I look at the plate. The food is nearly gone and I don't remember eating most of it.
I look at Beckett. He's been patient, unnervingly patient, and I know patience like his doesn't come free. He's wanted my company for years.
I set my fork down. The ceramic clicks against the counter.
"You said you wanted my business." I meet his eyes across the kitchen. "I think I can give it to you."