Chapter Fifteen
Divorce Rumors
The gossip columns moved quickly.
By Friday: Source close to the Lancaster family says the marriage is "struggling."
By Saturday: a photograph of Lucas and Vanessa at lunch — a working lunch his assistant had confirmed, arranged through channels Vanessa had carefully cultivated — ran on four different entertainment sites with four different captions, all of which said the same thing.
By Sunday, Vanessa called me.
I don't know how she got the number. I answered because the name wasn't in my contacts and I thought it might be a supplier.
"Sophia." Her voice was warm in the way that expensive knives are warm when they catch light. "I thought we should talk. Woman to woman."
"I don't think we should," I said.
"You're very brave," she said, as if I hadn't spoken. "Taking all of this on. But you have to understand — Lucas doesn't do feelings. He never has. This was always going to be temporary." A pause. "Let him go with some dignity, darling. For your sake."
I hung up.
I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time.
The thing was — she wasn't entirely wrong about the facts. He didn't do feelings. He'd said so himself. He'd written it into a contract. I'd agreed to the terms.
And I was sitting here eight months later, counting the seconds he'd held my hand in a lobby, remembering what it felt like when he checked my temperature in the dark.
I got up. Went to my closet. Pulled out the overnight bag I'd used for industry trips.
Started folding things into it.
Not all of it. Not dramatically. Just — a few things. Enough to go somewhere for a while. Enough to put some distance between myself and the man sleeping forty feet away who made me feel things that a contract said I wasn't allowed to feel.
I was a self-respecting woman. I wasn't going to stay somewhere I wasn't chosen.
I zipped the bag.
I put it by the door of my room.
Then I sat back on the bed and looked at it.
And didn't move it.
Not yet.
