Zachary’s POV
The conference exists in a different timezone, and I use the disorientation as an excuse for the numbness I'm carrying.
Chicago is two hours behind Manhattan, which shouldn't matter but somehow does—every glance at my phone requires mental math, every moment of wondering if she's seen my message complicated by the question of what time it is in her world versus mine.
The jet lag I don't actually have becomes a convenient explanation for the fog I'm moving through, the disconnection that makes every conversation feel like it's happening underwater.
Meetings blur into dinners blur into networking events where I compete with the particular automation of someone who's done this enough times that muscle memory handles the details.
I shake hands and exchange cards and make observations about market trends that sound intelligent because I've made them before, in other rooms, to other strangers who won't remember me any more than I'll remember them.
My mind stays fixed on a message I sent and a response that never came.
I check my phone obsessively for the first two days—between sessions, during bathroom breaks, in the moments before sleep refuses to arrive. Every notification that isn't her name feels like confirmation of something I already knew but kept hoping I was wrong about.
On the third morning, I force myself to stop.
Violet doesn't owe me acknowledgment. Doesn't owe me anything. The message was a gift—space without conditions, freedom without strings—and expecting gratitude defeats the entire purpose of giving it. I told her I was stepping back so she could breathe, not so she could feel obligated to thank me for finally doing what she'd been asking for all along.
I leave my phone in the hotel room when I go to the afternoon panels, and the absence of it in my pocket feels like an amputation.
By evening, the need to hear a familiar voice overwhelms the pride that's been keeping me isolated. I call Adison under the pretense of business updates, pulling up quarterly projections on my laptop so I have something concrete to discuss, something that justifies the call beyond the pathetic truth of just needing connection.
"Zachary." Her voice carries something careful that tells me she already knows. Not the details, maybe, but enough. "How's the conference?"
"Productive." The lie comes easily. "I wanted to update you on the Henderson expansion timeline. We're ahead of schedule on the integration metrics."
"That's good news."
I walk her through the numbers with the practiced efficiency of someone who's delivered this information a hundred times, and she listens with attention that feels more like patience than engagement. She's waiting for something. I can hear it in the spaces between her responses, the way she's not interrupting with the sharp questions she usually deploys when I'm being too thorough.
When the business portion ends, the silence stretches long enough to become uncomfortable.
"How are you actually doing?" she asks, and the gentleness in her voice breaks something open I've been holding shut since I boarded the plane.
"I sent her a message before I left." The confession spills out before I can construct a more dignified version. "Told her I was giving her space. That wanting her while watching her choose someone else was destroying something I needed to survive."
"I know."
The two words land like a punch I didn't see coming. "You know?"
"She called me this morning." Adison's voice stays careful, navigating terrain she clearly recognizes as dangerous. "Asked if she could visit this weekend. Didn't explain why, but her voice carried the weight of someone who's been through something they need to process out loud."
I sit down on the hotel bed because my legs have stopped cooperating with standing. "She called you."
"She did."
"Did she mention—" I stop myself, because the question I want to ask is too desperate to voice. Did she mention me. Did she read my message. Did any of it matter at all.
"She didn't give details." Adison seems to understand what I'm not asking. "But something happened. Something significant enough that she needs to talk it through with someone who knows her history."
I don't know what to do with this information. Don't know if Violet reaching for Adison means anything about me at all, or if I'm just a footnote in whatever larger crisis she's navigating. The message I sent might have been the catalyst, or it might have been irrelevant—one more piece of noise in a life I'm no longer close enough to understand.
"I told her I'd step back," I say, more to myself than to Adison. "I meant it. Whatever she's going through, it's not my place to insert myself into it."
"That's probably wise."
"But?"
"But nothing." Adison's voice carries the particular patience of someone who's learned that some problems don't have solutions, only shapes you learn to live around. "You made a choice. Now you live with it. That's how choices work."
"That's not comforting."
"It's not supposed to be comforting. It's supposed to be true."
I laugh despite myself, the sound harsh in the empty hotel room. "When did you get so philosophical?"
"Somewhere between my father's death and my son's first word. Perspective arrives whether you want it or not." She pauses, and I hear Elijah babbling in the background, the mundane sounds of a life that's moving forward while mine feels stuck.
"Zachary, I'm not going to tell you what Violet's thinking. I don't know, and even if I did, it wouldn't be my place. But I can tell you this: she's not okay. Whatever happened, she's carrying something heavy. And knowing that doesn't solve anything for you, but it might make the silence feel less like rejection."
The words settle into my chest with a strange comfort I'm not proud of needing.
She's not okay.
It's a terrible thing to find reassuring—the knowledge that the woman I love is struggling, that my absence has coincided with something painful enough to send her reaching for support. I should want her to be happy. Should want the space I gave her to feel like freedom rather than loss.
Instead, I'm sitting in a Chicago hotel room feeling marginally less destroyed because at least she's not thriving without me.
"I should go," I tell Adison. "There's a dinner I'm supposed to attend."
"Will you actually attend it?"
"Probably not."
"At least you're honest." I hear her shifting, settling Elijah on her hip from the sound of it. "Call me when you're back in Manhattan. We'll have lunch. Talk about something other than quarterly projections."
"I'd like that."
"And Zachary?" She waits until I make a sound of acknowledgment. "Whatever happens with Violet, it's not over until it's over. But you have to let her figure out what she wants. Pushing won't get you anywhere except further away."
"I know."
"Do you?"
The question hangs in the air after she hangs up, and I don't have an answer that sounds convincing even inside my own head.
I skipped dinner. Order room service I don't eat. Stare at a phone that stays silent until the silence stops feeling like waiting and starts feeling like something I might eventually learn to live with.
The pieces don't form a picture I can interpret—Violet calling Adison, asking to visit, carrying something heavy enough to need processing out loud. None of it tells me what happens next, or whether I factor into whatever she's working through.
But for the first time since I sent that message, I feel something other than the endless freefall of not knowing. A small, solid ledge of information I can stand on while I figure out how to keep breathing.
I turn off the lamp and let the Chicago skyline fill the room with borrowed light, and the silence feels less like punishment than it did an hour ago.