The penthouse smelled like the dinner I'd cooked. Rosemary chicken. Roasted potatoes. A bottle of wine I'd picked out three weeks ago because the label had a sketch of two birds on it, and I'd thought it was romantic. Cruz sat across from me at the table, his tie loosened, his jaw set in that particular way that meant he'd already decided something and was just waiting for me to catch up.
I refilled his glass. He didn't say thank you.
"Tiana," he said, "we need to talk."
I set the bottle down carefully. My hand was steady. I noticed that. "Okay."
He leaned back in his chair and looked at me the way he looked at quarterly reports—scanning for the relevant data, skipping the rest. "I need you to do something for me. It's temporary. Just a hundred days."
I waited.
"I lost a bet," he said. His voice was calm. Patient. Like he was explaining a simple concept to someone slow. "With Harley. You remember Harley, right? My childhood friend."
I remembered Harley. The girl I'd paid to send to university in London. The girl who'd sent me a thank-you card with a pressed flower inside. The girl who'd been back in New York for eight months and had somehow ended up at our apartment for dinner twice a week.
"I remember," I said.
Cruz smiled. It didn't reach his eyes. "She's always wondered what it would be like. Being married. The whole experience. And I told her it wasn't that special, and she said I was just jaded, and we made a stupid bet, and I lost." He shrugged, like this was all very reasonable. "So I need to give her the experience. A hundred days. She gets to be my wife, legally, and then we switch back. It's just paperwork."
The room was very quiet. I could hear the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. The distant sound of traffic twenty floors below. My own heartbeat, slow and even.
"You want a divorce," I said.
"A temporary one," Cruz corrected. He reached for his wine and took a sip. "It's not a big deal, Tiana. You're making it sound dramatic. Harley's like a sister to me. You know that. This is just—it's a favor. For a friend."
I looked at him. Really looked at him. The man sitting across from me had Cruz's face. Cruz's hands. The scar on his left forearm from the night he'd stepped between me and a mugger's knife outside the campus library, bleeding onto the sidewalk with his jaw set and his eyes fierce. But the man sitting across from me now wasn't him. That man was gone. I didn't know when it had happened. Maybe it had been slow. Maybe I'd been too loyal to notice.
"And if I say no?" I asked.
Cruz sighed. He set his glass down and looked at me like I was being difficult. "Then you're being unreasonable. It's a hundred days, Tiana. Three months. You'll barely notice. And honestly—" He paused, and something shifted in his expression. Something colder. "Honestly, it might be good for us. Give us some space. You've been… clingy lately."
Clingy.
I'd cooked him dinner every night this month. I'd rearranged my schedule to attend his investor meetings. I'd smiled for photos at his company events and listened to him talk about quarterly projections and market expansions and the new hotel concept he was developing. I had been present. I had been his wife.
And he thought I was clingy.
"Okay," I said.
Cruz blinked. "Okay?"
"Okay," I repeated. I stood up and started clearing the plates. My hands were steady. My voice was calm. "If that's what you want."
He looked relieved. Actually relieved. "I knew you'd understand. You're always so reasonable, Tiana. That's what I love about you."
I carried the plates into the kitchen and set them in the sink. I turned on the water and watched it run. Behind me, Cruz was already on his phone. I heard him typing. Probably texting Harley. Telling her the good news.
I turned off the water.
That night, I lay in our bed—Cruz had gone out, said he needed to clear his head—and stared at the ceiling. The grief I'd been carrying for months, the quiet ache of watching the man I loved disappear into someone I didn't recognize, was gone. In its place was something colder. Clearer.
I got up and walked to my desk. I opened the bottom drawer and took out the photograph I kept there. Cruz and me, sophomore year, outside the library. His arm around my shoulders. Both of us laughing. I held it for a long moment.
Then I walked to the fireplace, struck a match, and let it burn.
I watched the edges curl and blacken. Watched our faces disappear. When there was nothing left but ash, I took out my phone and scrolled to a name I hadn't called in two years.
Ace Morgan.
I pressed dial. He answered on the first ring.
"Tiana," he said. His voice was steady. Awake. Like he'd been waiting.
"It's time," I said.
There was a pause. Not hesitation. Just the space of a breath.
"Tell me what you need," Ace said.
I closed my eyes. For the first time in months, I felt the weight lift.
"Everything," I said.
I ended the call and lay back down in the dark. And for the first time in months, I slept without grief.
