It gutted him because it didn’t come from resentment. It came from weariness. From the quiet kind of truth people only say when they think no one is listening.
And he had listened.
Every word.
From the hallway, Adair finally realized the life he built with her might’ve started from love but somewhere along the way, it became a map she didn’t draw and all this time, he thought he was the provider. The protector. The husband who sacrificed for his family.
But maybe all he’d done was cage her comfort and call it duty.Maybe he hadn’t been the safe place she thought he was and once that thought cracked open, it never resealed.
That was the moment the insecurity of the husband and father he thought he was began to seep deep into his ego. Not because she’d said anything cruel but because she hadn’t meant for him to hear it and now he couldn’t unhear it.
Now it lived in him.
Festered.
Gnawed at the part of him that once believed he was a good man. A good husband. A present father.
Because how good could he be if the woman he loved was drowning in the life he dragged her into? A life she hated. Regretted.
That memory crept up sometimes when he least expected it and today, sitting in his office with nothing but silence and regret to keep him company, it came back like smoke through a cracked door.
The sound of her voice on that call.
The way she said,“I regret not putting up more fight.”
Adair could feel it again. That same sting. That same punch to the gut. He leaned forward at his desk, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. It wasn’t the kiss with Corrine. It wasn’t the night Sabine left. It wasn’t even the hospital.
All of that was the aftermath of that moment.
It wasthatmoment.
That was when he knew something in their marriage had already started to die. Quietly. Softly. Without warning.
And he’d let it.
He never brought it up. Never told Sabine he overheard. Never used it to explain away his own unraveling because he wasn’t a coward and he wasn’t gonna claim a cop-out. Especially not with a woman who’d suffered more in their marriage than he ever could.
Sabine had carried it all. The weight. The children. The disappointment. The grief and still tried to keep the roof from caving in.
And Adair? He let her.
He’d built their life with ambition and good intentions, but somewhere along the way, she became collateral and now, no matter how many times he replayed it, how many times he rewound the clock in his mind—he still ended up here. Alone. Sitting in a glass tower she helped him build, without the one person it was all supposed to be for.
Adair closed his eyes, the guilt heavy as lead in his chest. That moment—that call—had haunted him every day since and the worst part? He still hadn’t figured out how to forgive himself for it. How to somehow make up for failing at every single thing he’d set out to do with her by his side.
He’d wanted to be the man who changed her life for the better. The man who protected her, uplifted her, gave her a future she could thrive in. A future her father thought he couldn’t provide.
But what kind of man builds a future so bright that his wife has to dim herself just to live in it? He thought about how young she was back then. Twenty-two. New city. No tribe. No plan except him and he’d been so blinded by what he thought was love—what heknewwas love—that he never stopped to ask if the dream he was chasing made room for hers too.
He just expected her to follow and she did. Even when she was breaking. Even when the pieces of her were too small to name.
Sabine followed.
Adair turned toward the window, the city stretching out before him like a reminder that ambition had its cost and he’d paid it.
In trust.
In closeness.