Zayden's POV
Jocelyn is sitting in the dark when I get home at 7:23 PM.
No lights in the living room, just her silhouette against the window, phone screen illuminating her face in blue-white glow.
Mia's at Helena's for the night—a prearranged sleepover that now feels less like convenience and more like preparation for a conversation she knew would be ugly.
"You've been ignoring my calls," I say from the doorway.
"I've been thinking." Her voice is flat, emptied of everything.
"About what?"
She turns the phone toward me.
Vivienne's interview paused on screen—one of the long-form pieces where she sits in soft lighting and delivers fabricated trauma with the polish of someone who's rehearsed every syllable. The timestamp shows Jocelyn's watched at least half of it.
My stomach drops. "Jocelyn…"
"Were there other women?" She asks it quietly, clinically. A doctor requesting test results she already suspects are bad. "During your relationship with Vivienne. Before me. People you didn't mention when you compiled your timeline."
"No." The answer is immediate, absolute. "There was no one else. The relationship ended, I was single for two years, then I met you at the gala. That's the truth."
"That's your version."
The distinction hits like a blade between my ribs.
"My version is the truth. Documented, verified, supported by evidence I've shown you repeatedly."
"Evidence you compiled." She stands, moving away from the window. "Evidence you selected. Information filtered through your narrative about what happened."
"Jesus Christ." Frustration bleeds through before I can contain it. "We've been over this. Multiple times. The timeline is airtight."
"According to the documentation you provided."
She faces me fully now, and I can see what the darkness was hiding—red-rimmed eyes, the blotchy skin of someone who's been crying for hours before I walked in.
"But Vivienne says there were others. She confronted you about infidelity before the pregnancy. You're telling me she's completely fabricating that?"
"Yes. She's fabricating all of it. The pregnancy never existed, the violence never happened. The other women are fiction designed to make you doubt me."
"Then prove it." Her voice rises slightly. "Show me evidence that disproves the cheating allegations. Not evidence supporting your timeline—evidence proving she's lying about multiple women."
I pull out my phone, already opening the files Landon and I spent the afternoon reviewing. "I have travel records showing I was out of the country for six weeks during the period she claims…"
"Stop." Her hand comes up. "Just stop."
"What?"
"I don't want to see more documentation." Her voice cracks, and the sound of it—the raw fracture beneath her composure—makes something in my chest constrict. "I want to just believe you. To hear you say it didn't happen and know it's true without needing evidence folders and spreadsheets."
"Then believe me." I move closer, desperate. "Jocelyn, I'm telling you the truth. There were no other women."
"But I can't just believe you anymore." Tears spill. "Because Aiden planted doubt exactly where it would do maximum damage. And Vivienne keeps adding details that sound disturbingly specific. And you keep getting defensive instead of understanding why I need reassurance."
"I'm not defensive, I'm exhausted."
The frustration transforms into something closer to pain, rawer than anger, harder to control.
"I've provided every piece of evidence, answered every question, been completely transparent. And you're still standing here asking if I'm hiding other women, like I'm on trial."
"You're not on trial, but our entire life is under attack and I don't know what's real anymore."
"I'm real." I reach for her hands. She steps back. "This marriage is real."
"Then why can't I shake the feeling that there's something you're not telling me?" The question comes out broken. "Why does every explanation feel like you're managing my perception instead of just being honest?"
"Because I've spent weeks protecting you from attacks you shouldn't have to process. Filtering messages, compiling evidence, handling legal warfare so you can focus on growing our baby instead of drowning in the same stress that's drowning me."
My voice rises despite every effort. "That's not managing perception, that's being your husband."
"Or it's controlling information flow the same way you control everything else."
She's crying openly now.
"You control what I see. What evidence gets compiled. What's 'necessary' versus what's 'filtered for my protection.' And maybe that's exactly what Vivienne experienced. Maybe she asked for honesty and got managed information instead."
"You're comparing me to the man Vivienne invented? The abuser who caused a miscarriage through violence?" My hands clench at my sides. "You actually think I'm capable of that?"
"I don't know what you're capable of anymore."
She wraps her arms around herself, and the distance between us, four feet of living room carpet, feels like a continent.
"I have your version with evidence you selected. I have Vivienne's version with details that sound specific. And I have Aiden planting doubt exactly where it fractures us."
"So you're letting him win."
"He's not fracturing us—we're fracturing ourselves." Her voice breaks completely. "By fighting instead of communicating. By you getting defensive instead of understanding why I need reassurance. By me doubting you when I should believe you but can't seem to anymore."
Silence fills the space between us. Outside, the city hums its indifferent rhythm. Inside our living room, our marriage splinters under pressure neither of us knows how to relieve.
"I need tonight," she says finally. "To not fix or explain or document. Just space to sit with this."
"You want me to leave?"
"I want you to give me the guest room." She won't look at me. "Just tonight."
The dismissal stings worse than her accusations. Anger, I can fight. Pain, I can absorb.
But being asked to leave the room where we sleep together, where we whisper plans for the baby, where her body fits against mine in the dark—that's a wound I don't know how to dress.
"Okay." I move toward the stairs. "But Jocelyn—tomorrow morning, I'm releasing the full timeline. Everything, publicly. Because even if you can't trust my word right now, documented proof that Vivienne is lying needs to exist."
"Do whatever you need to do." Her voice is hollow. "But don't expect it to fix what's breaking between us."
I climb the stairs to the guest room.
Sit on a bed that smells like detergent and absence. Stare at a ceiling I've never studied before and don't want to learn.
Downstairs, through the floorboards that were never designed to contain this kind of damage, I hear Jocelyn crying. Soft, broken sounds that carry through walls and wood and the growing distance between two people who swore they'd face everything together.
This is what Aiden wanted. What Vivienne orchestrated. Not just to destroy our foundation or our reputations—but to fracture us from the inside.
To make us turn on each other when we should be unified. To weaponize the very intimacy that makes us strong and use it as the blade that cuts us apart.
My phone shows a text from Landon: Timeline ready for release. Just say when.
But what's the point of proving innocence to the world when my own wife is crying alone one floor below me because she can't trust the man sleeping above her?
I set the phone face-down on the nightstand.
The guest room is dark. The sheets are cold. And somewhere beneath me, the woman I love is learning what Aiden already knows—that the most devastating weapon isn't a lie told to the public.
It's a doubt planted in the only person whose belief actually matters.