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Amber with some random guy’s face eight inches away from hers, their body language shouting couple so loudly, he could hear it all the way across the bar.
Tony’s hand reached out and gripped the top of the nearest chair.
His arm locked. Everything in him locked tight with rage.
For a minute, all he could do was stand there and watch and think, over and over again, You knew this would happen. You knew it. You knew. But even as he blamed himself, he felt nothing but fury—fury that he’d let this happen, and now he couldn’t move.
He watched, paralyzed. Waiting for it to get worse. For the man to touch his wife. To kiss his wife. Then Tony would kill him.
It didn’t happen.
The man kept leaning in, but Amber—was she tilting herself away from him, just a bit? Was Tony imagining how stiff her shoulders were?
The man said something and chuckled, but Amber didn’t laugh. Her smile was tight. Fake.
When he put his hand on her back, the smile vanished, and Amber took a step away from him.
She shook her head.
Not interested.
When the guy walked away a few seconds later, all the breath whooshed out of Tony in one exhale, and he felt dizzy. The chair he was holding on to slid a few inches across the tiled floor, the screech of its movement inexplicably audible over the music being piped into the bar.
“The Limbo,” of all things.
How low could he go?
Chasing his wife to the Caribbean, crashing her solo vacation, and then assuming on the basis of a haircut and a new dress that she was having an affair?
Pretty fucking low.
Tony let go of the chair he’d been gripping, pulled it out, and sat. Amber hadn’t seen him yet. Maybe she’d turn around soon. Maybe she wouldn’t.
Either way, he needed to sit. To breathe.
He needed to figure out what was supposed to happen in the giant planning gap between “get to Amber” and “fly home with your marriage miraculously fixed.”
Tony sighed and rubbed at his temples. His hands were shaking.
He had no clue how to do this.
Their marriage was a system with no slack in it. They had work, they had three kids, they had ten or twenty minutes together in bed at night before they fell asleep. He didn’t know what was wrong with Amber—what was making her cry—and frankly he was afraid to find out. He’d been afraid to find out for a long time.
Because he was pretty sure that whatever it was, he couldn’t fix it.
He couldn’t work less—not and keep the house. He couldn’t take back the children he’d given her, he couldn’t hire a team of housekeepers and nannies to make her life easier.
He could tell her he loved her a hundred times, but she already knew that, and whether she believed it or didn’t—whether it mattered to her or not—what could he do? Nothing.
He could take her to bed and make love to her for two days straight, and that would be pretty fucking grand, but what would it change? Nothing.
They were stuck with the lives they’d made for themselves, and he wanted to keep her stuck if the alternative was to let her escape.
Which made it hard for him to think of any way to also help her out.
Amber picked up her drink and swirled it around. It was green. Foggy-looking. She took a sip. The lines at the edges of her mouth drew deeper. She didn’t like it, but she was trying not to let on.
She scanned the room and saw him.
