"I said it's fine. Eat."
We eat. He heats the pasta and sets it in front of me like an apology and I accept it like one. The kitchen is quiet in the specific way it gets when two people are not saying something.
He checks his phone halfway through dinner, catches himself and sets it face-down on the table and doesn't pick it up again. I notice that I've stopped finding that gesture reassuring and started finding it exhausting.
He asks about my day. I tell him about the chapter I finally cracked, the scene that had been stuck for two weeks, and I watch him listen. He's there—he's nodding, he's asking a follow-up question—but he's also somewhere else. Crawford Group, Richard Hale, whatever the meeting was about tonight. I can feel the split. It's been there for weeks, that half-attention, and I've been telling myself it's temporary and I'm running out of ways to believe that.
I stand and start clearing the plates. He gets up to help and I shake my head without thinking and then immediately wish I hadn't because now he's just standing there watching me at the sink and I can feel him trying to read what's wrong, and the fact that he has to figure it out, that it isn't obvious to him, is the whole answer right there.
"The files are on the table again," I say.
"I'll move them."
"You said that yesterday."
He pauses. "I know. I'll move them tonight."
"It's not about the files."
He looks at me steadily. "I know that too."
I put the last dish in the rack and dry my hands and turn around and lean against the counter and look at him across the kitchen. He's still in his work clothes, sleeves rolled up and he looks like a man bracing for something he knew was coming.
"You've been gone for weeks," I say. "Not physically. You're here. But you're not here."
"I'm handling a crisis."
"I know you are. I'm not asking you to stop." I keep my voice even. "I'm asking you to still be in the room when you're in the room."
He exhales. Runs a hand through his hair. "I'm doing the best I can, Jade. You know what's at stake right now. The assets, the regulatory inquiry, Richard?—"
"I know what's at stake." I look at him. "What I'm talking about is something different. I'm watching you seal yourself up one layer at a time and I keep waiting for you to come back and you keep not coming back."
Something shifts in his face. Not anger—more like a man recognizing a fight he didn't want but can't avoid. "That's not fair."
"Which part?"
"You knew what my life looked like when you came into it."
There it is. I can hear that he doesn't mean it cruelly, that it's coming from somewhere tired and defensive and scared. But it still hurts.
"My mother said that," I say quietly. "About Nicholas. She said she knew what she was getting into."
The kitchen goes very still.
Phoenix looks at me and I look back and I watch something move through him.
"I'm not him." His voice is quiet and tight. "I've told you that."
"I know you're not."
"Do you?" The control slips slightly, just enough. "Because it feels like every time I make a hard call or go quiet under pressure you're measuring me against him. Like you're waiting for me to turn into someone you’ve already decided I'd be."
That hits somewhere true. "That's not what I'm doing."
"Isn't it?"
"No." I push off the counter. "What I'm doing is watching someone I love disappear behind a version of himself that doesn't need me and trying to figure out if that's permanent or temporary."
