Page 127 of Wait for Him

Jackson

It's been three weeks since I walked out of Rose's apartment.

She's held true to her word. I haven't seen her. She's been working, emails come through, her status light burns green on my screen like a pulse I check more often than I'll ever admit, but I haven't laid eyes on her since the day her lights went out in that lobby.

My father was arrested the day after his visit to the building, exactly as planned. The marriage is dissolved. Elyse is off my property. I expected one of those things to feel bigger than it does, maybe all of them, but mostly there's just the absence of weight. Turns out three years of shackles don't make much noise when they come off. They just stop pulling.

The press was relentless for a while, trying to paint Rose as unstable after the lobby footage leaked. We stopped what we could, but enough got out that she had to tell Bennet what happened to her. I don't know how that conversation went. I only know he was in pieces for nearly a week afterward, inconsolable in a way I've never seen him before, and whatever Rose gave him, he hasn't spoken a word of it to me.

Good.

At least one of us learned the lesson before it cost him everything.

We're walking out of a press conference where Blaire Monroe finally addressed the public. Her husband had been abusing her for the entirety of their marriage, brutally, and Bennet and I took a trip to Houston beforehand to have a very direct conversation with the motherfucker about how things would proceed from there.

Turns out Blaire is a pretty cool chick underneath all that armor, and my best friend is completely fucking gone for her. He told me last night he's planning to propose soon.

I'm happy for him.

I am.

Just in the distant way you're happy about weather in someone else's city. Nice that the sun is shining somewhere.

A board meeting was called immediately after the press conference, and I don't give a single shit what's on the agenda. The only thing I care about is that Rose will be there.

I need to see her.

Not talk to her. I know better than to ask for that yet.

Just see her.

Make sure she's standing. Make sure she's eating. Make sure there is still some version of her moving through the world that I can look at from across a table and know I didn't destroy completely.

By the time everyone settles into the conference room, I can barely sit still.

Frank is here too. He still holds his board seat for strategic reasons only, and he knows exactly how lucky he is to have it because the alternative was a cell somewhere down the hall from my father's. He hasn't looked directly at me once since I sat down.

Smart man.

The conference room door opens as Rose walks in, and every cell in my body turns toward her like she's true north.

There's a young woman I don't recognize walking a step behind her, but I barely register her because I'm waiting for Rose's eyes to find mine. One glance. One flicker. Anything that tells me I'm still somewhere in the landscape.

She doesn't look at me.

Not even accidentally.

That's somehow worse than deliberate avoidance. If she looked away too quickly, if her jaw tightened, if anything in her face shifted when she passed my side of the table, I could at least tell myself I still affect her.

But there is nothing.

I'm simply not in the room she's walking through.

Rose takes her seat with the young woman on her right and Bennet on her left, opens the folder in front of her and starts arranging papers like this is any other meeting.

And I learn, in real time, what it costs to become furniture to the woman who owns you.

"Anybody know what this is about?" Bennet asks the table.