Zane stood in the doorway of my office, breathing hard like he’d run here.
He was wearing jeans and a wrinkled t-shirt under his open coat.
He looked completely out of place against the clean glass and sharp lines of my workspace.
My first feeling was a hot flash of violation.
This was my space.
My new ground.
He didn’t belong here.
“We need to talk,” he said again.
He shut the door behind him, the click too loud.
I didn’t stand up.
I leaned back in my chair, making space between us.
“How did you get up here?” My voice was calm.
Cold.
“I told the woman at the front desk I was your husband. That it was a family emergency.” He ran a hand through his hair, making it messier.
“Nerissa, it’s Jovi.”
Of course it was.
My stomach tightened, but not with hurt.
With irritation.
“What about her?”
”She’s… she’s not doing well.
After the hospital.
She’s scared.
Really scared.” He took a step closer to my desk.
His eyes were pleading.
“She thinks you hate her. She thinks he’s going to… I don’t know, punish her. Take everything. She’s barely sleeping.”
I stared at him.
He had come to my workplace, to my new life, to tell me that the woman who broke our marriage was having trouble sleeping.
The air in my new office, my sanctuary, instantly smelled like their old bedroom, like his soap and her perfume and betrayal.
The ghost in the VP’s suit shuddered.
“And she sent you here to tell me this?” I asked.
“She asked me to talk to you. To see if… if there’s any way to fix this. To make things less awful.”
He sank into the chair across from my desk without being asked.
He looked small in it.
“She’s carrying a baby, Ner. The stress isn’t good. For Jovi or…”
He didn’t finish.
He didn’t have to.
For Jovi or the baby.
My baby was dead.
Hers was alive, and its health was now the most important thing.
The math was so cruel it was almost funny.
A cold, clear clarity settled over me.
This wasn’t about Jovi’s fear.
This was a move.
She was using Zane, using his old protector instincts, to get to me.
To make me feel guilty.
To soften me up.
“What exactly does she want me to do, Zane?” I kept my voice flat.
“Forgive her? Throw her a baby shower? Tell my boss to be nicer?”
He flinched.
“No. God, no. Just… maybe you could talk to him? He listens to you. You could tell him to go easy on her. To not make this harder than it has to be. For the baby’s sake.”
There it was.
The ask.
Jovi wanted me to be her messenger to my own ally.
To use my hard-won influence to protect my rival in love.
I stood up slowly.
I walked to the window and looked out at the city.
I could see my reflection, and his behind me, watching me.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, still looking out.
“She slept with you, in our home, got pregnant, and now she’s scared of the consequences. So she sends you, my husband, to ask me, the wife she betrayed, to ask my boss, her husband, to be nice to her. Is that right?”
Behind me, I heard him shift in the chair.
“When you say it like that…”
“She’s not scared of the consequences, Zane. She’s scared they’re not the consequences she wanted. She thought she could have you and her money and her comfortable life, and no one would really mind. She miscalculated. And now, instead of dealing with it, she’s sending you to do her emotional dirty work. Again.”
His face paled.
“That’s not fair. She’s fragile.”
”She’s not fragile.
She’s strategic.
And you’re her favorite tool.” The words were harsh, but I said them without heat.
They were just facts.
“You need to leave. You shouldn’t be here.”
”Nerissa, please.” He stood up, his hands out.
“I’m worried about her. And I’m… I’m lost. I don’t know what to do. I hurt you. I lost… we lost…” His voice broke.
“I don’t know how to fix any of it.”
For a second, the old Nerissa, the one who had loved him since she was fourteen, wanted to reach out.
To comfort him.
To tell him it would be okay.
Again.
Like a fool.
But that woman was gone.
She had died in a hospital hallway.
“You don’t fix it,” I said.
My voice was quiet but absolute.
“You live with it.
That’s the consequence.
You made your choice.
It wasn’t me.
Now you live with her, and her fears, and her baby.
That’s your life.
This,” I gestured to the office, to myself in the suit, “is mine.
They don’t mix.”