The Ring He Stole

Chapter 4: The Third Man

Rosalind's POV

The screen lit up in my palm before I'd finished reading Sebastian's message twice.

Unknown Number: You don't have to go down. But I think you want to.

I read that twice, something in it landing differently than I expected. Not an instruction. Barely even a suggestion. Just an observation, the kind that left the decision entirely in my hands. I stood there a moment longer, phone glowing in the dark apartment, weighing what it meant that a stranger had somehow guessed exactly what I needed to hear before I'd admitted it to myself.

I grabbed the cardigan off the back of the couch, because some habits about not answering a door in a robe outlasted even a marriage collapsing, and made my way down four flights instead of waiting for the elevator, my bare feet cold against each landing, the stairwell smelling faintly of rain and old paint the way it always did this time of year.

The lobby door stuck the way it always did in the rain, swollen wood against a frame that never quite fit right, and I had to put my shoulder into it before it gave, the cold air hitting me all at once, sharp and clean after the stale warmth of the stairwell.

Sebastian saw me first.

Finally, he said, already stepping forward, his voice pitched for reasonableness, the same tone he used when a deal wasn't going his way and he needed everyone to remember he was the calm one in the room. We need to talk. Actually talk, not you running out on me in front of clients.

I didn't move past the doorway. I want you to leave.

I made a mistake, he said. One mistake. Don't throw away three years over one mistake, Rosalind.

You embarrassed me in front of everyone I know, he added, almost in the same breath, like the two sentences belonged to entirely different conversations. Do you understand what people are saying about us now?

There it was, the same shape it always took, sorry and then somehow still my fault, both halves delivered without him seeming to notice they didn't fit together. I'd heard some version of that particular sleight of hand for three years without ever quite naming it. Standing on the sidewalk in the cold, I finally could.

This has nothing to do with him, I said, nodding once toward the man standing several feet away who hadn't said a word since I'd come outside. It has everything to do with you.

Sebastian's eyes flicked toward Kane, then back to me, and something in his face shifted, recalculating. You're seriously choosing him over three years of marriage?

I'm not choosing anyone, I said. I'm choosing myself. That's the part you never understood, even when we were married. I existed outside of what I did for you.

Standing there in the rain, he looked smaller than I remembered. Not shorter. Just diminished, somehow, the way a photograph looks different once you know what happened just outside its frame. I used to think his confidence was the steadiest thing in any room. Now it just looked like a costume he'd forgotten to take off.

He took a step closer, close enough that I caught the whiskey on his breath even through the rain, close enough that some old instinct in me almost stepped back automatically before I stopped myself, planted my feet, and stayed exactly where I was.

Kane didn't move. Didn't step forward. Didn't say a word. I felt him there at the edge of my vision, steady, watching, but he let the silence between Sebastian and me stretch without filling it, and something about that restraint gave me more room to stand my ground than if he'd said anything at all.

You should leave now, I said to Sebastian. I'm not asking twice.

Sebastian looked at Kane, waiting for him to intervene, to say something, to give him someone else to direct his anger toward. Kane simply watched, hands in his coat pockets, giving him nothing.

Sebastian's jaw tightened when he understood I meant it. Fine. Keep whatever this is. But don't think for one second the divorce is going to be simple. My lawyers are already looking at the apartment, the accounts, everything we built together.

We didn't build anything together, I said. I built it. You just lived in it.

That landed somewhere, I could see it, a flicker of something real crossing his face before the practiced calm slid back over it. He held my gaze a moment longer, something almost pleading beneath the anger, rain running down the collar of his coat, and for one unguarded second I saw the man I'd married instead of the one who'd apologized to a stranger before he'd apologized to me.

I don't want this to be how it ends, he said quietly.

It already ended, I said. Saturday night. You just weren't paying attention.

He turned and walked back toward the car idling at the curb. He stopped at the door, one hand on the frame, and looked back at the building one more time before he got in. Not at me, at my window on the fourth floor. The door slammed harder than it needed to. The car pulled away, tires hissing against the wet street, taillights disappearing around the corner, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.

Silence settled over the sidewalk, just the rain ticking against the awning above us, the street empty now except for the two of us and the wet shine of streetlight on pavement.

You didn't say anything, I told Kane.

You didn't need me to.

That surprised me more than if he'd said something clever. You could have. You were standing right there.

It wasn't my fight, he said. You handled it.

I studied him for a moment, rain beading on his shoulders, silver eyes catching the streetlight in a way that made them look almost colorless. Why did you come, then. If you weren't going to say anything.

Because you didn't ask me to.

That doesn't make any sense.

It does to me.

I almost laughed, the sound catching somewhere between exhaustion and disbelief. You're impossible to get a straight answer out of.

Something shifted in his face, close to amusement, gone before I could be certain of it. I'm working on it.

Before I could respond, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at it, and something changed, brief but unmistakable, the first crack I'd seen in that careful composure since the moment I'd spilled wine down his jacket. Whatever was on that screen, it wasn't something he'd been expecting.

Everything alright, I asked.

He slid the phone back into his pocket without answering right away, his expression settling back into something unreadable, though not quite as smoothly as before, like a door pulled shut a half second too late to hide what was behind it.

I have to go, he said.

Wait, I started.

He paused, half turned toward the car I hadn't noticed idling at the far curb, and looked back at me properly for the first time since Sebastian had driven off, rain catching in his dark hair, his expression unreadable again in the particular way that made me want to keep looking anyway.

You handled him well, he said. That's all I came down to confirm.

Then he walked to the car, and this time he didn't offer me anything else, no instructions, no warnings, no claims on what happened next. Just the taillights disappearing the same direction Sebastian's had gone, and me standing alone on the wet sidewalk in my cardigan and bare feet, the rain finally starting to ease, oddly certain for the first time in days that whatever came next, I'd be the one deciding it.