Chapter Two

My silk pajama top was still bunched around my collarbone the next morning, in my old bedroom, at my parents' house.

Nate had frozen for a full five seconds when his hand landed on empty sheets — a woman-shaped absence in a bed he thought was full. I wasn't there to see it. I was two towns over, working out how to say any of this to two people who wouldn't handle it well.

My parents weren't as steady as they used to be. Whatever I told them, I needed to get the wording right.

Nate and I met in college.

My dad hated him on sight. "His family's got nothing," he told me. "Marry into that and you're signing up for years of hard living."

I didn't listen. I was twenty-two and full of movie logic — two broke kids in a bad apartment, instant noodles and moonlight, fighting their way up against the odds together.

I thought he was the one. So when he put every dollar we'd saved for the wedding into a half-dead vineyard nobody else wanted, I didn't hesitate. I handed over my dowry and the condo my parents gave me, and I went all in with him.

I still remember his face when I did it. Shock first. Then something in him just broke open.

Everyone told him he was out of his mind. I was the only one who backed him without blinking.

Turned out, twenty-two-year-old me called it right.

We caught the wave right as small-label wine started pulling real money. The three of us went from pruning vines by hand behind a rented farmhouse to running a full estate — tasting room, staff, investors lined up at the gate.

At the regional harvest awards that year, the host introduced us as "the team who turned a bankrupt vineyard into an internationally awarded label, from nothing."

I used to think that was going to be the whole story of my life.

Turns out surviving the hard years together doesn't mean you survive the good ones the same way.

The bigger we got, the more we fought. I wanted to slow the expansion down. He said the market wouldn't wait for anyone. I wanted to build the team carefully. He wanted to cut anyone who slowed him down. I said we could wait on the next funding round. He said I didn't understand the business anymore.

By the time the estate had three buildings, my office had moved from next to his to the far end of the hall.

I don't know exactly when the trust went. Maybe when he changed his phone password. Maybe the first time he went dark for a whole day and never said where.

The next morning, I drove to the estate.

Two years gone, and half the faces in the tasting room were new to me. The few who still recognized me gave me a nod and nothing else.

Two years ago, I'd been pregnant. Between the travel and the buyer dinners, I lost the baby. My family told me to come home, rest, focus on trying again. Let the men run the business.

Nate held my hands that day, eyes bloodshot. "Viv, I've got this. Everything we built — I'll hold it together for our kid."

Two years was all it took for that to fall apart.

My old office had been gutted. Desk gone. Shelves gone. The awards stripped off the wall. Even the pothos I'd kept alive on the windowsill for three years — gone. Just a few unpacked boxes shoved in the corner, gathering dust.

Funny how it goes. A woman marries, and every road after that seems to end somewhere bad. Doesn't matter if she's got money or not, clear-eyed or not.

At the end of that road, nobody's ever rooting for the wife.

Footsteps came up fast behind me.

"Viv? What are you doing here?"

I took a breath and turned around slow. "Can't I be here?"

He clearly hadn't planned for that answer. It took him a second to recover. "Where'd you go last night? You weren't home."

"My parents'."

I turned back to the gutted office. "One of your guys mentioned things here went sideways. I cut my leave short. Figured I'd come help."

I glanced at him sideways.

"Since the office got torn out anyway, why don't we just share one? You don't mind, do you?"